Connecticut Juvenile Training School workers decry layoffs in Middletown

MIDDLETOWN >> The abrupt layoffs this week of more than 100 staff members at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School has had a devastating impact on students at the school, staff members say.

“It was horrendous — and it didn’t need to be that way,” said Paula Dillon, a teacher at the Cady School. Dillon was among more than 60 unionized staff members who held a press conference across from the school on Silver Street Thursday afternoon.

School personnel are members of CSEA/SEIU Local 2001. The union used the press conference to highlight what members said was a chaotic layoff situation, as a call for a more orderly process in the event of any future layoffs and a chance to introduce several laid-off workers.

The layoffs of nearly a third of the staff took place Monday morning. Individual staff members were stopped on their way into the school, taken aside and told they was being laid off, union officials said.

Gov. Malloy ordered the layoffs as part of his program to reduce state spending amid a swelling budget deficit.

“Whether the layoffs were necessary is not the real issue,” said state Sen. Dante Bartolomeo, D-13. “The way it was done was unconscionable.”

The press conference also served as an opportunity for several speakers to criticize child advocates who last year demanded the school be closed. “Where are those advocates today when the kids are suffering?” one speaker asked.

Remaining staff members are being forced to work double shifts and “the kids are unsettled” by the drastic disruptions caused by the layoffs, speakers said. Union members acknowledged there had been an incident Wednesday in which a gym teacher was assaulted.

“This is not the ‘orderly process’ we were promised,” CSEA President Stephen Anderson said. The abrupt layoffs and the resulting disorientation of many of the students “have created a dangerous situation,” Anderson added.

The school is scheduled to close in 2018, according to Ben Phillips, spokesman for the CSEA.

In the meantime, “We were promised we would continue to have solid vocational programs,” said Dillon, a union member and official. “Yet, they wiped them all out,” he said, including the culinary, barbering and auto-detailing programs.

Teachers and students who had bonded with one another were not allowed to say goodbye, several speakers said. “These kids — many of whom she said have ‘attachment issues’ — were devastated,” Dillon said. “It was cruel and inhumane.”

Erika Johnson, a teacher who was laid off, spoke of “my rage and my heartache. I worry about my peers who have to deal with the outcomes of these layoffs,” Johnson said

But most of all, Johnson said, “I think of all the students who didn’t get a chance to say goodbye” to a favorite teacher — and the teachers who could not even say goodbye to their students.

“The most troubled youths in the state” lost their teachers “in the blink of an eye,” another speaker said. “There was no heads-up, no chance for closure, no chance to even say goodbye,” she said.

The way the layoffs were carried out was “unacceptable and borderline criminal,” the speaker said.

In her remarks, Bartolomeo said the school and its staff have been unfairly “criticized and berated.”

“I know you care about the kids,” Bartolomeo said. And yet CJTS “continues to be portrayed in a very negative light.”

The school has become “a political football and you guys have suffered the consequences,” Bartolomeo added.

Nikki Montone had worked at the school for seven years when she was laid off. “I’m just a middle-class taxpayer. Me being laid off doesn’t help the economy or the kids,” she said. “Hopefully, the governor will make a better decision for all us, especially the kids.”

Middletown Mayor Dan Drew thanked the staff members “for the work you do” in trying to protect the fraying social safety net that “serves the most vulnerable in our society.”

“Today’s a little better,” said Linetta Gaunichaux, a unit supervisor who has worked for the state Department of Children and Families for 23 years. “The kids are seeking out the staff today,” she said.

“There needs to be some closure. The kids need to see the staff, and the staff needs to see the kids.”