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Letters
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Business New Haven
3/9/1998
By: BNH
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Blissful Ignorance
I am responding to your editorial entitled “Where's the Outrage?” (BNH, February 9).
Please entitle this response “When Will You Get a Clue?” The editorial was the equivalent of a gratuitous, journalistic drive-by shooting. Business New Haven has never spoken to anyone in the New Haven [school] district. BNH has never visited a school in New Haven. BNH has never engaged in a partnership with the New Haven district. BNH has never even reported on the issue.
Of course, had BNH done so, you would not have been able to pontificate from your blissful perspective of ignorance. Further, meaningfully exploring the matter of Mastery Test performance would make it much harder for BNH to fit your conclusions to the facts, so I understand why you avoid the facts.
However, the editorial did give Mitchell Young and Michael Bingham a chance to work out their personal frustrations at public officials, the NAACP, the New Haven Register, the relocation of bus stops and children, so the effort was not entirely wasted on their behalf.
Please be assured that I do get outraged, particularly at amateurs. When BNH is ready to talk facts, give me a call at 946-8200. Or perhaps, aside from advertising, I take BNH too seriously.
- John DeStefano Jr.
Mayor
City of New Haven
The editor replies: One of the qualities we admire about Mayor DeStefano is the passion he brings to his job. In this case, however, we respectfully suggest that the passion with which he levels the above personal attack on the co-principals of the company that publishes Business New Haven would more usefully be directed toward improving the performance of New Haven's public schools.
The fact that last fall's Mastery Test scores were second-worst in the state - only the now-state-run Hartford schools were worse - cannot be obscured by attacking the messenger.
If the present state of public education in Connecticut's cities remains unchanged, consider this:
Over the next decade, the cities of New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Meriden and Waterbury will likely spend almost ten billion dollars to create a permanent underclass of some 45,000 to 65,000 human beings. That's taking into account the current “incremental improvements” touted by education officials in New Haven, Hartford and Bridgeport.
That ten billion dollars is what we as taxpayers hope will help these children become productive and prosperous citizens capable of contributing to the society in which they live.
Instead, we have erected a system that will consign far too many of them to lives of unfulfilled promise.
If anyone alive can create a logical argument in defense of that, we have yet to hear it.
Finally, with regard to whether we at BNH are gold medal-winners or also-rans - well, that's a judgment we entrust to our readers.
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