Walk A Mile In Our Shoes – Milner Parents Demonstrate Walk to SAND School

Posted on Author Robert Cotto Jr.

Below is a summary of a parent demonstration and explanation of why Milner School parents decided on this walk.

The Hartford Board of Education intends to close Milner School and force families to transfer to struggling schools in the North End such as Wish and SAND. Because transportation would not be provided for all students to the new schools because of grade and distance restrictions, Milner School parents showed what the walk from Milner to SAND is like on June 12, 2018. The streets between the schools are littered with trash, have open drug dealing, and gun violence even in broad daylight. They used the walk to highlight the fact that the Mayor and Board of Education will be forcing their children to walk through this part of the neighborhood everyday starting in 2019-20.

For this walk, parents had a police escort along the way. With police presence, the trip was fairly peaceful. However, shorty after the walk, the police escort was called to a crime scene one street next to where parents walked. It appeared that the SWAT team and at least five other police cars raided a house and there was talk of gun shots fired. This happened directly in between Milner and SAND school where students would have to walk to school everyday if Milner were to close and transportation not provided. This is precisely the parents point: closing Milner school without providing transportation for all kids to new schools is a dangerous policy.

See some photos from the walk here. You can read the Hartford Courant’s report here.

Views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trinity College.

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Robert Cotto Jr.

Robert Cotto, Jr. is a Lecturer in the Educational Studies department. Before his work at Trinity, he was a Senior Policy Fellow in K-12 Education for CT Voices for Children where he published reports on Connecticut’s testing system, public school choice, and K-12 education data and policy. He taught for seven years as a social studies teacher at the Metropolitan Learning Center for Global and International Studies (MLC), an interdistrict magnet school intended to provide a high-quality education and promote racial, ethnic, and economic integration. Born and raised in Connecticut, Mr. Cotto was the first in his family to go to college and he earned his B.A. degree in sociology at Dartmouth College, his Ed.M. at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. in American Studies at Trinity College. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in education policy at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education. Robert lives with his wife and son in the Forster Heights area of the Southwest neighborhood in Hartford. Views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trinity College.