With several fights between students captured on video and shared on social media, the first weeks of school are proving rocky for Hartford’s new Weaver Campus, where three public high schools were brought together under one roof this year.
Students have been disciplined in connection with four separate fights at the Granby Street school since it reopened in August following a $133 million renovation and reorganization. Police say they responded to a scuffle on Oct. 1 between four female students and a security officer, and on Oct. 3, another fight triggered a brief lockdown and resulted in a student being evaluated for injuries by the school nurse, according to district spokesman John Fergus.
The scuffles have not translated to a significant police presence. Officers have only responded to two incidents at Weaver this year, compared to seven disturbances and assaults at Bulkeley High School and 10 at Hartford Public High School, according to Lt. Paul Cicero.
But Weaver’s conflicts seem to have garnered more attention. Smartphone-wielding students captured some of the fights on video and circulated the clips on social media, drawing extra exposure. The school was already shaken by the death of a 17-year-old Weaver student who was fatally injured in a Sept. 1 shooting on Edgewood Street. And for North Hartford residents who were active in Weaver’s overhaul, the incidents have punctured the fresh start they hoped to give an old community school.
The Weaver Campus is home to two schools, Weaver High School — a consolidation of Journalism and Media Academy and High School Inc., which were both located at 150 Tower Ave. last year — and Kinsella Magnet School of Performing Arts, which relocated from the South End. All three were in need of permanent homes.
But members of the Weaver Steering Committee cautioned the school district that bringing together city schools with a magnet school, which enrolls both city and suburban students, could spark some tensions among students. Community members knew there was already fighting between JMA and High School, Inc., and it would take work to foster a strong culture and climate in the brand-new building, said Nyesha McCauley, who took part in the committee and works for Achieve Hartford, an education advocacy nonprofit.
McCauley, whose husband J. Stan McCauley is running for mayor of Hartford, said she’s disappointed that Weaver High School has not formed its School Governance Council — a group of parents, teachers, students and community members who meet and vote on social issues — even though its two academic pathways, journalism and media and finance and insurance, shared a building last year.
“The fact is that they’re starting at ground zero, and they didn’t have to be,” McCauley said.
The steering committee also hoped Weaver would open as a traditional community school, with in-house services for parents and an active presence from neighborhood organizations. And some features of the new building are not yet operational, like the radio broadcast booth that sits empty, its windows covered by brown paper, at the front entrance of the building.
Meanwhile, the fights that occurred at the old school on Tower Avenue have continued.
“We were told that we were engaged in a process that was leading us down a road to things being different, and here we’re hearing nothing has changed,” McCauley said. “It’s a sad state of affairs where fighting at Hartford Public and Bulkeley is just accepted as commonplace, as ‘That’s Hartford. That’s what happens,’ but people thought things were going to be different at Weaver. And nothing has changed, and the community is like, ‘What the hell?'”
Weaver Campus Executive Principal Glynis Richardson, Kinsella Principal Ken O’Brien and Board of Education Chairman Julio Flores declined to comment for this story.
Fergus, the district spokesperson, confirmed that the most recent fight broke out between students of Weaver and Kinsella, while the three previous incidents occurred between students of the same school.
On Oct. 3, students were returning to class after evacuating for a fire alarm when one boy went after another in a stairwell, according to Fergus. Friends of the second boy then jumped the first boy, and injured him, Fergus said.
A security officer was present and intervened, and the school was placed in a soft lockdown, called a “code yellow,” that lasted for several minutes, according to Fergus.
School nurses evaluated the injured boy and determined he did not need to be transported to the hospital, Fergus said. A parent signed him out and was considering taking him to urgent care, Fergus said. Staff have checked in, and he is “physically fine” and “doing OK,” Fergus said.
A video of the Oct. 3 incident, posted to social media, shows a group of students walking into a stairwell when one appears to be pushed to the ground. A swarm of students immediately forms, and boys can be seen kicking at someone, who is not visible through the crowd.
One boy can be seen stomping his foot into the fray as the security officer and another adult try to pull the students apart.
Fergus said the school investigated the incident and three other fights but does not release information about student discipline.
One Weaver mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s privacy, said her daughter has told her about 11 separate fights. She’s kept track — her daughter doesn’t feel safe going to school, and the mother is considering pulling her out of the district for home-schooling.
Last week, her daughter was frantic over being locked down in her classroom, and apparently unfounded rumors that the injured student had been unresponsive and rushed to a hospital.
“This is really scary as a parent,” the mom said this week.
Some of the fights have been captured on video and shared through social media. One student created a compilation video, stringing fight clips together over the “High School Musical” hit song “We’re All in This Together.”
Over the 40-second video, a student can be seen tackling another into a table in the Weaver cafeteria, a female student is shown being knocked to the ground in a hallway, apparently by a security officer, and other students are seen kicking and punching each other as staff try to break them apart.
The student who created the video may also face discipline, Fergus said, as Richardson, the Weaver principal, felt that it “made things look a lot worse than they are.”
Fergus said Richardson explained that the video depicted the same fights from different angles, which “made it look like they were different things.”
He added, “It’s not just the video. The events themselves are unacceptable, and this behavior’s unacceptable, and there will be consequences for the students engaging in them. But at the same time, (the video is) showing the school in the light that it’s completely out of control, which the principal felt strongly was not the case.”
In the wake of last week’s incident, school leaders met with district administrators and came up with a plan, Richardson wrote in a letter to parents.
They held staff meetings, sought help from Compass Peacebuilders, a Hartford anti-violence group, and held “restorative circles” to get students talking and listening to each other.
The school will also conduct a full review to determine if it needs to bring on additional support, Richardson wrote.
“Making sure that our school is a safe place for students, staff and visitors is our highest priority,” Richardson wrote. “Making sure that our kids are ready to learn without distraction is our mission.”
The letter continued, “Students who engage in acts of violence will receive the appropriate and necessary consequences.”
Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.
