Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez has been the superintendent of Hartford Public Schools since 2017. She said that she and her team initially worked hard to redesign and resize the district because they had too many schools, under-enrolled schools, and environments that were not in any condition for students to be learning in and for teachers to be teaching in, and so they now have new innovative facilities and have been able to add programs like middle school sports and student support centers at some of the high schools. This has allowed for a lot of teachers to coplan with each other; not all schools had this originally, and teachers need time to plan and collaborate to determine what their students need. So these are some of the things that she and her office are proud of. 

One of the biggest challenges that Dr. Torres-Rodriguez has faced during her time as superintendent is the financial challenges in the district. The way that Hartford Public Schools is funded and the resources that come in do not keep pace with the costs, outputs, and the money that has to be spent. This has been a challenge since she started her job, and it has required that they mitigate the deficit. “I always work with schools, the board of education, and the community to figure out how we do more with so much less. So that has been the persistent challenge,” said Dr. Torres-Rodriguez. “The other one is chronic absenteeism and the fact that early on, I declared it an emergency in the city back in 2018, and then we began to understand what it means, how we track it better across our schools, and we were beginning to see improvement, and then the pandemic hit, and now it feels like it is even more of a complex challenge for us to mitigate.” 

Students, especially at the middle and high school levels, have also been saying that they want to experience what is called “collective learning.” They want to know why they are learning a certain concept and how it will benefit them later in life. Dr. Torres-Rodriguez said that this is a challenge because education in general has been approached in a very specific way. A teacher has the content knowledge, and they are the ones that are imparting the knowledge, whereas she believes that the student also brings in a level of knowledge and expertise, so she feels that students should also be drivers of their learning, and changing this concept in the district has been a challenge. 

One lesson that Dr. Torres-Rodriguez and her team have learned is that you need to engage the whole community in the budget process because it is complex, and it requires collective advocacy. For the district to have what every student deserves to have in terms of their school experience, it needs more resources. She also said that students should be engaged in this process because they have ideas on how the district can engage with partners and navigate the deficit. Another thing that she mentioned is to create more opportunities for teachers to not only teach students but also teach each other. The world is also changing rapidly, particularly with artificial intelligence. She recommends that everyone find a way to learn more about this so that teachers and students can be at their best. She wants to navigate this in a way that places students in positions that are best for their future since we do not know what the future entails, so you need to stay open to the shifts and stay open to making sure that you are supporting your community along the way. 

When she took this job, Dr. Torres-Rodriguez hoped to be here longer than what the research shows because across the country, the role of an urban superintendent is highly complex, and how long the superintendent is in the position is about three and a half years. So she did not envision herself being on the job for over eight years because there is no data to support it. She is the only Latina woman in the country that has had this role for this long. It was hard in the beginning when she had to consolidate for the district and make recommendations to close schools, so she was not sure if she would be able to navigate it. 

Due to the budget deficit, Hartford Public Schools has had to cut positions over the past few years. Dr. Torres-Rodriguez has made sure that there is an open dialogue with the city of Hartford, which is especially important for resource allocation and knowing what the priorities of both the city and the school district are. They ultimately are working towards the same thing but may go about it differently. She also said that city leadership is understanding of the challenges and what is working well in the district. “It is especially important for us to remind people like the mayor, city council, and other elected officials of the things that are working well in the school system and the great things that our students are doing and achieving because of the great work that our educators, school leaders, and families are doing,” said Dr. Torres-Rodriguez.

Dr. Torres-Rodriguez also led the district through the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that she thrives best in terms of her leadership when she is helping to manage a crisis. She was able to help her team learn a lot because it required her to bring them along every step of the way and speak about what she was thinking, and they made sure that they carried on with the plan so that she could secure COVID-19 vaccines for staff before everyone else had access to them. She wanted to make sure that everyone was at their best so that they could be teaching their students. It really taught her and her team how to lead from a space of vulnerability and being in a space where they didn’t know what would happen the next day but were able to lead through that. 

As Dr. Torres-Rodriguez prepares to step down, she is hoping that Hartford Public Schools continues to create a space for multiple voices to be heard so that the community can be empowered to speak as to whether or not something is working. When they were designing the district model for excellence, they asked people to discuss it with them, then continued to go back and discuss it with them. When she was asked about advice that she would leave for the next superintendent, she said to make sure that you work with the community and not for it, and it requires proximity to interact with people and listen to them and give them your full attention so that you can empathize with someone and understand where they are coming from and what matters to them. 

We wish Dr. Torres-Rodriguez all the best on her next adventure and are grateful for the dedication that she has shown since she got on the job in 2017.