Parents fight school takeover Learning Process

Parents fight school takeover

Written on July 21, 2011 – 10:19 pm | by Justin Fraser

Some parents in Bridgeport aren’t ready for the state to come in and take over their school system. On Thursday morning, they started their fight in court to keep it from happening.

Bridgeport’s Mayor, Superintendent, and School Board all want to invoke a new state law that lets the state come in and set up a new School Board, all to try to save Bridgeport’s failing schools. But today a group of parents came here to court to try and stop them.

It’s a small but vocal group opposing the plan for the state to install a new school board instead of the elected one.

“You don’t just come in and tell me my vote don’t matter. We elected these people, and it’s up to us to decide if we want to bring in other people and elect them to these seats,” said parent Shavonne Davis.

But the past months have brought protests, threats of school closures and still no school budget from the elected board, while test scores continue to be the lowest in the state. Still, these parents say there are other options.

“Like abolishing Bridgeport Schools altogether and sending them to neighboring school districts, or adopting the failing schools by neighboring districts,” said parent Karen Jackson.

But last week, Bridgeport’s Superintendent told News 8 that bringing in the state is the best option because the state has more resources to try to turn the district around. These parents mostly object that they won’t have any input in what happens.

“And the state doesn’t have the right to exclude them from the process. Parents need to be in the know, because they have to make good decisions,” said Gwen Samuel, CT Parents Union.

That’s the reason they went to court to try to get an injunction to stop the city from bringing in the state.

Wednesday in court, the city a motion to dismiss and say an injunction doesn’t make sense because the old school board has already been dissolved. It doesn’t exist anymore. The case has been continued until August 15.

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