“OPEN SCHOOLS,” HIGH SCHOOL IN THE COMMUNITY, AND THE NEW HAVEN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, New Haven teachers organized and striked to radically reimagine New Haven’s public schools. During a strike in 1970, teachers created “Open Schools,” which were “run entirely by striking teachers, which children could attend during the strike in lieu of those schools that were being picketed.” As teacher Mary Johnson wrote for union newsletter: “[n]on-federation as well as Federation teachers have volunteered to teach in the Open Schools and serve on the organizing committee. All of them have agreed that parents and other citizens should be directly involved in the organization and operation of the Open Schools just as they should be involved in the New Haven Public Schools. To this end the committee is in the process of contacting community people and involving them in committee to acquire sites, to plan curriculum, to raise money, find supplies, and work on personnel distribution and recruitment.” During this strike, “teachers and community members were not simply suspending the Board of Education’s authority; they were effectively building an alternative to it.” The school year following the strike was the first year that High School in the Community, HSC, a “joint teacher-community controlled” school, would open, and would remain “self-managed” until 2015.

A New Left Teachers’ Union