This month marks one year since Salt Lake City clocked possibly the shortest public comment in city council history when police removed activist Jenna Martin after only 20 seconds of speaking that began, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Martin, who was wearing a keffiyeh pinned in the front like a shawl, then accused Mayor Erin Mendenhall of having police arrest local pro-Palestinian activist Michael Valentine on multiple occasions for “the most bullshit reasons.”
The council promptly ejected Martin, who could hardly be described as causing any type of disturbance given that she only had the floor for 20 seconds and her comments were entirely relevant to matters of public concern. But apparently, the council did not like people cursing in front of the mayor.
On Aug. 14, 2024, FIRE wrote the council, explaining that the First Amendment protects the public’s right to comment on matters related to the city and its leaders, even if the commentary is less than “respectful,” so long as the speaker is not disrupting the meeting. Pointed criticism is not the same as disruption.
Mandating respectful discourse is an example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination because the city is sure to enforce the rule only against criticism, not praise. It’s also vague because what qualifies as “respectful” is undefined, constitutes a matter of opinion, and falls to the complete discretion of the same elected officials who are often the subject of that very criticism. The law recognizes that you cannot have the fox guarding the hen house.
Although not pertinent to Martin’s case, FIRE also warned the council that its unqualified ban on “discriminatory” language is unconstitutional for the same reasons. After FIRE sent a second letter on Oct. 7, a city attorney acknowledged the council had no basis to eject Martin, confirmed the policy had been revised to comply with the First Amendment, and noted that the city implemented “First Amendment training after receiving FIRE’s notice and plans to continue to reinforce that training.”
Instead of vague and viewpoint-discriminatory categorical prohibitions on speech, the policy now encourages speakers to “avoid … intimidating or discriminatory language,” “profanity,” “threats,” and “personal attacks.” The policy also now explicitly acknowledges that speakers have free speech rights that the council cannot infringe upon:
The Council respects constitutional rights to free speech. It recognizes that some comments may be legally permissible under the U.S. and Utah Constitutions or other federal and state laws. However, the Council reserves the right to address behavior that creates disruption or safety risk or constitutes unprotected speech (such as true threats).
Salt Lake City’s previous decorum policy highlights a common misconception among elected officials across the country regarding the contours of the First Amendment. While they may encourage the public to be respectful, they absolutely cannot censor or eject a speaker on these grounds. The mere use of profanity does not justify censorship either. FIRE will watch to ensure the city actually enforces the new policy in line with the First Amendment.
Salt Lake City Council meetings are, at minimum, limited public forums. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that in limited public forums, towns can restrict speech only in a reasonable and viewpoint-neutral manner. For instance, Salt Lake City can decide when the public may speak, and may require comments to be relevant to city affairs — but it cannot cut off the public simply for using profanity or accusing the mayor of an abuse of power.
The First Amendment protects not just the content of speech but also the tone and intensity of that speech — an essential part of how people communicate opinions and ideas.
If Martin can’t hold the mayor accountable for a perceived abuse of authority at a city meeting, where can she voice her grievances? City meetings are supposed to encourage civic engagement and inform the public. Yet FIRE has had to repeatedly hold local government officials accountable for censoring public comments beyond constitutional bounds. Fortunately, we’ve recently secured a couple victories on that front.
We commend Salt Lake City for taking corrective action and realizing that salty speech is not a threat to democracy, but a sign of its good health.
FIRE defends the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — no matter their views. FIRE’s proven approach to advocacy has vindicated the rights of thousands of Americans through targeted media campaigns, correspondence with officials, open records requests, litigation, and other advocacy tactics. If you think your rights have been violated, submit your case to FIRE today.
Tuesday Willaredt knew her older daughter, Vivienne, struggled to read.
She tentatively accepted teachers’ reassurances and the obvious explanations: Remote learning during the COVID pandemic was disruptive. Returning to school was chaotic. All students were behind.
Annie Watson was concerned about her son Henry’s performance in kindergarten and first grade.
But his teachers weren’t. There was a pandemic, they said. He was a boy. Henry wasn’t really lagging behind his classmates.
So Willaredt and Watson kept asking questions. So did Tricia McGhee, Abbey and Aaron Dunbar, Lisa Salazar Tingey, Kelly Reardon and T.C. — all parents who spoke to The Beacon about getting support for their kids’ reading struggles. (The Beacon is identifying T.C. by her initials because she works for a school district.)
After schools gave reassurances or rationalizations or denied services, the parents kept raising concerns, seeking advice from teachers and fellow parents and pursuing formal evaluations.
Eventually, they all reached the same conclusion. Their children had dyslexia, a disability that makes it more difficult to learn to read and write well.
They also realized something else. Schools — whether private, public, charter or homeschool — aren’t always equipped to immediately catch the problem and provide enough support, even though some estimates suggest up to 20% of students have dyslexia symptoms.
Instead, the parents took matters into their own hands, seeking diagnoses, advocating for extra help and accommodations, moving to another district or paying for tutoring or private school.
“You get a diagnosis from a medical professional,” Salazar Tingey said. “Then you go to the school and you’re like, ‘This is what they say is best practice for this diagnosis.’ And they’re like, ‘That’s not our policy.’”
Recognizing dyslexia
It wasn’t until Vivienne, now 12, was in sixth grade and struggling to keep up at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy Middle School that a teacher said the word “dyslexic” to Willaredt.
After the Kansas City Public Schools teacher mentioned dyslexia, Willaredt made an appointment at Children’s Mercy Hospital, waited months for an opening and ultimately confirmed that Vivienne had dyslexia. Her younger daughter Harlow, age 9, was diagnosed even more recently.
Willaredt now wonders if any of Vivienne’s other teachers suspected the truth. A reading specialist at Vivienne’s former charter school had said her primary problem was focus.
“There’s this whole bureaucracy within the school,” she said. “They don’t want to call it what it is, necessarily, because then the school’s on the hook” to provide services.
Missouri law requires that students in grades K-3 be screened for possible dyslexia, said Shain Bergan, public relations coordinator for Kansas City Public Schools. If they’re flagged, the school notifies their parents and makes a reading success plan.
Schools don’t formally diagnose students, though. That’s something families can pursue — and pay for — on their own by consulting a health professional.
“Missouri teachers, by and large, aren’t specially trained to identify or address dyslexia in particular,” Bergan wrote in an email. “They identify and address specific reading issues students are having, whether it’s because the student has a specific condition or not.”
Bergan later added that KCPS early elementary and reading-specific teachers complete state-mandated dyslexia training through LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), an intensive teacher education program that emphasizes scientific research about how students learn to read.
In an emailed statement, the North Kansas City School District said staff members “receive training on dyslexia and classroom strategies,” and the district uses a screening “to help identify students who may need additional reading support.”
Public school students with dyslexia or another disability might be eligible for an individualized education program, or IEP, a formal plan for providing special education services which comes with federal civil rights protections.
But a diagnosis isn’t enough to prove eligibility, and developing an IEP can be a lengthy process that requires strong advocacy from parents. Students who don’t qualify might be eligible for accommodations through a 504 plan.
A spokesperson for Olathe Public Schools said in an email that the district’s teachers participate in state-mandated dyslexia training but don’t diagnose dyslexia.
The district takes outside diagnoses into consideration, but “if a student is making progress in the general education curriculum and able to access it, then the diagnosis alone would not necessarily demonstrate the need for support and services.”
Why dyslexia gets missed
Some families find that teachers dismiss valid concerns, delaying diagnoses that parents see as key to getting proper support.
Salazar Tingey alerted teachers that her son, Cal, was struggling with reading compared to his older siblings. Each year, starting in an Iowa preschool and continuing after the family moved to the North Kansas City School District, she heard his issues were common and unconcerning.
She felt validated when a Sunday school teacher suggested dyslexia and recommended talking to a pediatrician.
After Cal was diagnosed, Salazar Tingey asked his second grade teacher about the methods she used to teach dyslexic kids. She didn’t expect to hear, “That’s not really my specialty.”
“I guess I thought that if you’re a K-3 teacher, that would be pretty standard,” she said. “I don’t think (dyslexia is) that uncommon.”
Louise Spear-Swerling, a professor emerita in the Department of Special Education at Southern Connecticut State University, said estimates of the prevalence of dyslexia range from as high as 20% to as low as 3 to 5%. She thinks 5 to 10% is reasonable.
“That means that the typical general education teacher, if you have a class of, say, 20 students, will see at least one child with dyslexia every year — year after year after year,” she said.
Early intervention is key, Spear-Swerling said, but it doesn’t always happen.
To receive services for dyslexia under federal special education guidelines, students must have difficulty reading that isn’t primarily caused by something like poor instruction, another disability, economic disadvantage or being an English language learner, she said. And schools sometimes misidentify the primary cause.
Tricia McGhee, director of communications at Revolucion Educativa, a nonprofit that offers advocacy and support for Latinx families, has had that experience.
She said her daughter’s charter school flagged her issues with reading but said it was “typical that all bilingual or bicultural children were behind,” McGhee said. That didn’t sound right because her older child was grade levels ahead in reading.
“The first thing they told me is, ‘You just need to make sure to be reading to her every night,’” McGhee said. “I was like, ‘Thanks. I’ve done that every day since she was born.’”
McGhee is now a member of the KCPS school board. But she spoke to The Beacon before being elected, in her capacity as a parent and RevEd staff member.
Dyslexia also may not stand out among classmates who are struggling for various reasons.
Annie Watson, whose professional expertise is in early childhood education planning, strategy and advocacy, said some of Henry’s peers lacked access to high-quality early education and weren’t prepared for kindergarten.
“His handwriting is so poor,” she remembers telling his teacher.
The teacher assured her that Henry’s handwriting was among the best in the class.
“Let’s not compare against his peers,” Watson said. “Let’s compare against grade level standards.”
Receiving services for dyslexia
Watson cried during a Park Hill parent teacher conference when a reading interventionist said she was certified in Orton-Gillingham, an instruction method designed for students with dyslexia.
In an ideal world, Watson said, the mere mention of a teaching approach wouldn’t be so fraught.
Annie Watson with her son Henry, 11, before track practice. Henry went through intensive tutoring to help him learn to read well after his original school didn’t provide the services he needed. (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon)
“I would love to know less about this,” she said. “My goal is to read books with my kids every night, right? I would love for that to just be my role, and that hasn’t been it.”
By that point, Watson’s family had spent tens of thousands of dollars on Orton-Gillingham tutoring for Henry through Horizon Academy, a private school focused on students with dyslexia and similar disabilities.
They had ultimately moved to the Park Hill district, not convinced that charter schools or KCPS had enough resources to provide support.
“I felt so guilty in his charter school,” Watson said. “There were so many kids who needed so many things, and so it was hard to advocate for my kid who was writing better than a lot of the kids.”
So the idea that Henry’s little sister — who doesn’t have dyslexia — could get a bit of expert attention seamlessly, during the school day and without any special advocacy, made Watson emotional.
“Henry will never get that,” she said.
While Watson wonders if public schools in Park Hill could have been enough for Henry had he started there earlier, some families sought help outside of the public school system entirely.
The Reardon and Dunbar families, who eventually received some services from their respective schools, each enrolled a child full-time in Horizon Academy after deciding the services weren’t enough.
Kelly Reardon said her daughter originally went to a private Catholic school.
“With one teacher and 26 kids, there’s just no way that she would have gotten the individualized intervention that she needed,” she said.
The Dunbars’ son, Henry, had been homeschooled and attended an Olathe public school part-time.
Abbey Dunbar said Henry didn’t qualify for services from the Olathe district in kindergarten, but did when the family asked again in second grade. Henry has a diagnosed severe auditory processing disorder, and his family considers him to have dyslexia based on testing at school.
She said the school accommodated the family’s part-time schedule and the special education services they gave to Henry genuinely helped.
“I never want to undercut what they gave and what they did for him, because we did see progress,” Dunbar said. “But we need eight hours a day (of support), and I don’t think that’s something they could even begin to give in public school. There’s so many kids.”
T.C., whose daughters attended KCPS when they were diagnosed, also decided she couldn’t rely on services provided by the school alone. One daughter didn’t qualify for an IEP because the school said she was already achieving as expected for her IQ level.
In the end, T.C. said, her daughters did get the support they needed “because I paid for it.”
She found a tutor who was relatively inexpensive because she was finishing her degree. But at $55 per child, per session once or twice a week, tutoring still ate into the family’s budget and her children’s free time.
“If they were learning what they needed to learn at school… we wouldn’t have had that financial burden,” she said. Tutoring also meant “our kids couldn’t participate in other activities outside of school.”
Support and accommodations
Tuesday Willaredt is still figuring out exactly what support Vivienne needs.
Options include a KCPS neighborhood school, a charter school that extends through eighth grade or moving to another district. Outside tutoring will likely be part of the picture regardless.
Willaredt is worried that her kids aren’t being set up to love learning.
Vivienne, 12 (left), and Harlow, 9, were both diagnosed with dyslexia earlier this year. (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon)
“That’s where I get frustrated,” she said. “If interventions were put in earlier — meaning the tutoring that I would have had to seek — these frustrations and sadness that is their experience around learning wouldn’t have happened.”
When Lisa Salazar Tingey brought Cal’s dyslexia diagnosis to his school, he didn’t qualify for an IEP. But his classroom teacher offered extra support that seemed to catch him up.
In following years, though, Salazar Tingey has worried about Cal’s performance stagnating and considered formalizing his accommodations through a 504 plan.
She wants Cal, now 10, to be able to use things like voice to text or audiobooks if his dyslexia is limiting his intellectual exploration.
Before his diagnosis, she and her husband noticed that every school writing assignment Cal brought home was about volcanoes, even though “it wasn’t like he was a kid who was always talking about volcanoes.”
When he was diagnosed, they learned that sticking to familiar topics can be a side effect of dyslexia.
“He knows how to spell magma and lava and volcano, and so that’s all he ever wrote about,” Salazar Tingey said. “That’s sad to me. I want him to feel that the world is wide open, that he can read about anything.”
New Jersey City Universityis set to become part of nearbyKean Universityafter the two public institutions signed a letter of intent Thursday to combine by June 2026. The merger would be subject to accreditor and regulatory approvals.
Under the plan, Kean would assume NJCU’s assets and liabilities and operate the institution as “Kean Jersey City,” the universities said.Executive oversight would fall to Kean’s president, who would appoint a chancellor to lead Kean Jersey City.NJCU will have some representation on Kean’s board of trustees, per the letter.
NJCU signaled in March that it planned to pursue a merger with Kean after past years of budgetary struggles and a directive from a state-appointed monitor to find a financial partner.
Dive Insight:
In Thursday’s release, Kean and NJCU said that their combination would “preserve NJCU’s mission of serving first-generation, adult and historically underserved students while advancing Kean’s role as the state’s urban research university and a newly designated R2 research university.”
Luke Visconti, chair of the NJCU’s trustee board, said Thursday’s letter of intent “provides an important framework for the detailed discussions that will follow.”
Still to come are full due diligence, a definitive agreementand a detailed outline for combining the two public universities. That process will be collaborative and “rooted in student and community engagement” so that the merger with Kean celebrates the two “distinct cultures” of the universities, NJCU Interim President Andrés Acebo said in a statement.
According to the institutions, an integration planning team with representatives from both universities will begin work immediately,coordinating with New Jersey’s state higher education office. The two universities will develop shared services agreements to streamline operations and boost student success, officials said.
Kean is the larger institution of the two, with 13,352 students in fall 2023,which was down by 5% from five years prior, according to federal data.NJCU, meanwhile, had 5,833 students in 2023,down 10.8% from the year beforeand 27% lower than 2018 levels.
NJCU’s enrollment declines have contributed to its recent financial turmoil. A little over three years ago, the university declared a full-blown financial crisis after heavy spending on real estate expansions, student services and scholarshipsfailed to reverse its enrollment slowdown and enlarged the university’s expenses.
In 2023, the state comptroller’s office issued a scathing report that accused administratorsof failing to fully inform NJCU’s board of the dire financial state, and which also suggested the university “likely” broke federal law by using emergency pandemic funding for an existing scholarship program.
Since then, Acebo has taken the reins, and the state has appointed a monitor to help ensure NJCU rights its finances and operations. State lawmakers also provided $17 million in critical stabilization funding to the institution.
In November, Fitch Ratings lifted the university’s outlook from negative to stable, citing “significant progress toward achieving fiscal balance despite continued pressure on student enrollment.”
Inside a classroom at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park on a recent Monday morning, teacher Julian Colón was busy setting out notebooks, folders, pens and crayons on a table. Outside in the hallway, a sign taped to a wall reads “CLASES DE INGLÉS POR ESTE CAMINO” — English classes this way.
It was the first day of the spring semester in this predominantly Latino corner of the Brooklyn neighborhood, where Colón was expecting about 30 students in class.
Julian Colón teaches an English as a Second Language class at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, April 7, 2025. (Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY)
But not everyone who wanted a seat at the table was there. More than 400 students are now on the center’s waitlist, according to Maria Ferreira, its adult employment program director.
“I sit right by the reception, and every single day we get inquiries about ESOL,” Ferreira told THE CITY, using the acronym for English for Speakers of Other Languages. “Every day we’re adding people to the waiting list.”
Demand for English classes has increased with the influx of migrants that began in 2022, according to a new report by United Neighborhood Houses, which represents 46 settlement houses that help serve immigrant populations, even as City Hall has slashed funding.
At Flatbush-based social services giant CAMBA, program manager Jude Pierre said more than 700 prospective students are now waiting to get into one of its 10 city-funded ESL classes, which collectively accommodate about 200 students.
“With the migrant crisis…we ended up getting a lot of individuals coming here to register for classes to the point where we basically had to stop taking registrations,” Pierre told THE CITY. “We got to the point where it didn’t make any more sense to have thousands of people on a waiting list, knowing we would never get to most of them. We started saying, ‘Sorry, we can’t do this, because it’s not fair to you,’ and trying to refer them to other places.”
Last year, the Department of Youth and Community Development reduced funding for literacy classes by nearly 30% to $11.9 million from $16.8 million, the report noted. Many long-time providers in areas where migrant shelters were clustered also lost out on DYCD dollars after the agency adjusted its funding eligibility formula,” as THE CITY previously reported.
An immigrant student takes an English as a Second Language class at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, April 7, 2025. (Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY)
According to the report, many classes now depend entirely on discretionary dollars from the City Council, which increased its funding to $16.5 million in fiscal year 2025 from roughly $6.5 million in recent years to back organizations DYCD left behind.
Several providers, however, told THE CITY that compared to DYCD’s multi-year contracts, Council funding, which requires annual reconsideration, makes it difficult to plan ahead and maximize offerings.
And for some, like CAMBA, Council funding was not enough to cover the losses from DYCD with the group reducing the number of students it serves by 174 and closing its waitlist, Pierre said.
So far, providers say, demand among new arrivals has remained steady even as the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts have led many new arrivals fearful of working or sending kids to school or even walking the streets.
“Ideally, these programs would be supported by a robust, baselined program managed by DYCD that offered students and providers stability with year-over-year funding,” the report says. “However, until DYCD revisits its unnecessarily restrictive stance…it is crucial that the City Council continue this support to make sure that adult learners continue to have access to quality classes.”
‘I Understand People Now’
While fewer than 3% of the 1.7 million immigrants in need of English classes are able to access it through city-funded programs, according to the report, students who were able to find their way into a class told THE CITY improved English has helped with their daily lives — and their job prospects.
Currently, two-thirds of New Yorkers with limited English proficiency earn less than $25,000 a year, according to American Community Survey data cited in the report.
Rosanie Andre, 42, came to New York City from Haiti in 2023, and said she started taking English classes at CAMBA last year after three months on a waitlist. Since then, she’s been able to get a job serving food at Speedway while also delivering packages for Amazon per diem.
“When I did my interviews, you have to speak in English with the manager. And it helped me a lot because I understand people now,” Andre, a native Haitian Creole and French speaker, said in English.
Learning English has also helped Andre communicate with her 6-year-old — who only started speaking after their move to New York City.
“And she started to speak English — English only. She knows nothing in Creole,” Andre said. “I try to listen to my daughter and speak to her English-only.”
With her English improving, Andre said she is better able to help her daughter with her homework.
“I try to explain her how to do it in English,” Andre said. “If no CAMBA, I have difficulty to understand. Cuz when I come here, I don’t understand nothing. When people speak, I smile because I understand nothing.”
Roodleir Victor, 29, saw English classes as an essential stepping stone in furthering his education. He had completed his college coursework for an economics degree in his native Haiti, he said, though he ultimately fell just short of obtaining a degree because it would have required him to stay in the country’s capital, which has been embroiled in political turmoil and gang violence.
He started taking English classes when he moved to the city in 2023, he said, in hopes of continuing his studies here. For four days a week, he attended English classes in Flatbush from 1 to 4 p.m. before heading to Long Island to work at a pasta factory on a 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. overnight shift.
Victor is now enrolled in a GED class, he said, and hopes to study computer programming after that.
“I would like to study at a university which I can learn technology. But it’s difficult for me, because I don’t have the support I need to go there,” Victor said in English. “But for me personally, I believe in my capacity to adapt.”
‘It’s Not Impossible’
Back in Sunset Park, a 55 year-old asylum seeker was patiently waiting to enter the room half an hour before class started at 9 a.m.
“I’m just eager to learn,” the native of Ecuador said in Spanish. “It’s important because I want to communicate with others for a job.”
The mother of five arrived in New York City three months ago, she said, after seeking asylum at the Mexico-California border then being detained there for three months. She’s cleaning homes to help make ends meet, but hopes to land a job with steadier income soon.
“Whatever I can get I pick up, but those jobs come and go,” she said. “I was in a workforce development program but the curriculum was in English so I started looking for classes.”
Oscar Lima rolled into English class with his e-scooter just after class started at 9:30 a.m. The 34-year-old is now in his second semester of classes, he said, which he makes time for in between catering gigs, food deliveries and a third job as a barback.
Columbian immigrant Oscar Lima says learning English will help him work in the food service industry, April 7, 2025. (Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY)
“My bosses told me, ‘You’re a good worker, but you need to learn English,’” Lima said. “And I decided that I didn’t want to learn English myself.”
Lima and other students now settled into their seats, turning their attention to Colón.
“Everybody, are we ready? Listos?” Colón asked.
“Yes,” the class responded timidly.
Students practice learning the names of colors at an English as a Second Language class in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, April 7, 2025. (Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY)
Colón then began presenting ground rules on a digital whiteboard: Try to arrive within the five-minute grace period after the class start time, and come prepared with books, papers and pencils.
“The most important rule,” Colón continued, before repeating himself in Spanish. “Please don’t be afraid to participate and make mistakes.”
At break time, Lima shared how he, his wife and his two sons had arrived in the city from Colombia about three years ago. While the family had started off at a shelter, Lima said, they’re now able to afford an apartment of their own. His two kids — seven and ten years old — quiz him about names of objects around the house, he said, and often encourages him to learn English alongside with them.
“New York, it poses many challenges. It’s difficult at the beginning, but it’s not impossible,” Lima said in Spanish. “My American Dream is my sons…I want my children to perhaps have what I didn’t have, but at the same time I want to show them how to earn it, and how to work like good people.”
The institution revealed its ambition to open the campus in December, when it launched an Indian hub in New Delhi to support the institute’s admissions, recruitment, and partnerships in the region.
Approval for the £1 billion expenditure on the campus was announced at the London Stock Exchange on April 9 at the 13th UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD).
GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) is a business district in the Indian state of Gujarat.
“We are delighted that approval has been given to commence the set-up process for Coventry University GIFT City and know that many students will benefit from the high-quality education we can offer over the years to come,” said John Latham CBE, vice-chancellor of Coventry University and Group.
Competition among international universities has risen significantly in the region, with more UK universities keen on expanding into GIFT City. In January, The University of Surrey unveiled plans to open a campus in the city, as did Queen’s University Belfast.
We… know that many students will benefit from the high-quality education we can offer over the years to come John Latham, Coventry University
Coventry’s new India campus is offering postgraduate programs such as international business management and business and finance. The university plans to add further courses in the near future.
Alison Barrett, director of India at the British Council said: “It emphasises our shared commitment to the internationalisation of education, as highlighted in the National Education Policy 2020. Thousands of students will benefit from the high-quality education that the university can offer in the years to come.”
The campus building is set open its doors this month.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Marialexa Sanoja publicly quit her job as a Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools police officer over concerns with the district’s handling of student safety needs and founded a nonprofit to help kids escape the challenges in Wyandotte County.
In the three-and-a-half months Sanoja was stationed at Wyandotte High School, the district’s largest school with 1900 students, Sanoja said she filed 140 incident reports and that in most instances the district failed to take action. The district, through its YouTube channel, disputed her figures and asserted it handled concerns responsibly.
“It didn’t take long for me to find out that the students were not in the best interest of anybody,” Sanoja said. “When the police officer becomes a safe space for students, there is something wrong with that.”
After her resignation in December 2023, Sanoja founded Missión Despegue, translated to “mission takeoff,” a nonprofit that helps parents and students document their grievances with the school district to hold the district accountable for its handling of safety issues.
Sanoja saw the district’s response to a sexual assault case and its communication as inadequate, and experts echo her concerns. Now, Sanoja works with current and former students to get their GED certificates, drivers licenses, mental health care and prevent substance abuse.
Sanoja’s concerns
Sanoja said much of the Latino community, which makes up 72% of Wyandotte High School, is afraid to complain or make a scene because many of them are new to the country. She aims to empower them, and help them achieve the “American dream.”
One reason Sanoja resigned — and a former student dropped out — was because of the district’s response to the former student’s experience of being sexually assaulted at school. Kansas Reflector doesn’t identify minors who have been sexually assaulted.
According to an incident report filed by Sanoja, the former student was a freshman and alone in the Wyandotte High School stairwell when a group of older boys groped her and made sexual remarks. She began recording the boys with her phone, which prompted them to leave, the report said.
Sanoja was off duty that day. The former student asked the on-duty officer to file a report, which Sanoja says she never saw. The day after, Sanoja and the former student said they filed an incident, criminal, and Title IX report. The former student wanted to press charges.
“After that, I just stopped going to school, because I didn’t feel safe,” the former student said in an interview with Kansas Reflector.
Sanoja said security camera footage and the former student’s video showed the boys’ faces. The former student said the district told her that because the boys never returned to school, it could not suspend them. However, the former student said she continued to see the boys on campus.
“Ultimately, the district didn’t do anything about it. We were asking, at least, for suspension. That didn’t happen,” Sanoja said.
A spokesperson from the district told Kansas Reflector it was unable to provide comment on the former student’s case, or the district’s responsibility to handle reports of sexual assault.
Sanoja publicly resigned with a letter that accused the district of failing to communicate with parents. She wrote that she was worried about instances where students brought guns to school property and all parents weren’t notified.
In a response video to Sanoja’s resignation, district superintendent Anna Stubblefield said “those incidents are not always relayed to all families. Not because we’re hiding anything, but because the impact is low and to protect the privacy of our students.”
A district spokesperson told Kansas Reflector the “administration is required to contact parents regarding student issues — such as absences, drug-related concerns, or fights — in accordance with the Student Code of Conduct.”
Expert opinions
Ken Trump, an expert in school safety communications who is not related to the president, said parental anxiety over school safety is rising nationwide.
“It’s very easy to get caught up if you’ve got a couple thousand kids in a school, dealing with incidents and other things. But you need to take a tactical pause in this, and go back to looking at the communications,” Trump said. “You can’t go back to the old-school mindset of if someone finds out about it we’ll talk. That doesn’t work anymore.”
Sanoja said that after a student overdosed at school and she contacted the parents directly, the high school principal told Sanoja to route all communication with parents through administration.
Sanoja said that she continues to receive videos of physical fights in the schools, totaling in the hundreds, since her resignation.
Michael Dorn, a school safety expert who assists schools after major acts of violence, said Sanoja’s allegations were concerning. He said he would have responded to her concerns differently than the school district did.
“I was a school district police chief for 10 years,” Dorn said. “If an officer in my department wrote that kind of resignation letter, I would request a state police investigation. I would ask for a polygraph test, and I would ask that she be polygraphed. I wouldn’t do anything like that, but if someone alleged that I did and I didn’t do it, I would request that to clear my name.”
Sanoja worked as a police officer in Lenexa before transitioning to the school district and said Wyandotte High School presented the most significant challenges she’s seen. She believes the problems are “within the culture” of the school.
“Everybody’s tired of the way the district is handling things,” Sanoja said. “They’ve been failing these kids for years.”
Fixing root causes
Through her nonprofit, Sanoja helps students who leave the district, like the former student who was sexually assaulted, earn their GED certificate.
When they’re out of the school environment, Sanoja said, they thrive.
Sanoja said most of the families she works with are immigrants, and the parents do not speak English.
“We face the daunting task of ending the stigma, shame and judgement that come with our culture,” Sanoja said.
Missión Despegue seeks to fix the root causes of the problems seen in school — like substance abuse, violence, bullying, and mental health issues. Sanoja said she sees these problems reflected in things like the graduation rate of the district. For the 2023-2024 school year it was 78.1%, which is 11.4 percentage points lower than the state average.
Through donations, Sanoja covers the cost of mental health appointments, DMV license and GED class registrations, and laptop purchases for students pursuing their GED certificate without one. In February, she began converting first-time offenders’ court fees, in hopes of reducing recidivism.
With the help of more than 100 volunteers, Sanoja has hosted events where she provides Narcan and educates parents about the dangers of substance abuse. She also guides volunteers to further training, like drug prevention and compassion fatigue workshops.
Sanoja said she doesn’t get paid for her work with Missión Despegue. She said she needs an assistant, because she has “a long list of people that need help.”
“I see something in them. I know they’re going to be successful,” Sanoja said. “I want that opportunity for every kid I have.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.
Depending on how you look at it, mergers are either very common or very unusual in UK higher education.
Dig deep enough into the annals of any institutional history and you will most likely find at some point that the institution as we know it today emerged from the combination or absorption of various nineteenth or twentieth-century mechanics institutes, colleges of teaching or technical colleges.
But recent history of the sector has seen only a handful of mergers, most notably the merger of what was then Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in 2004, and the merger of the University of Glamorgan and University of Wales, Newport, to become the University of South Wales in 2013. More recently we’ve seen the merger of the Institute of Education into University College London, the merger of Writtle College with Anglia Ruskin University, recounted in detail on Wonkhe here, and the merger in 2024 of City, University of London and the medical school St George’s, University of London to create City St George’s, University of London.
The mergers paradox
Seen from the birds-eye view of Whitehall the relative recent paucity of higher education mergers can be puzzling to some. In the private sector mergers and acquisitions are a well-trodden path to gaining market share, reducing overheads, and generally creating the kind of organisational powerhouse before which others cower and cringe. Arguably, larger institutions can support a wider breadth of education and research activity, can have a greater impact on their external landscape, and are more protected from external change and financial twists of fortune.
But for higher education institutions there is much more to take into consideration than the goal of organisational heft and security – there is a public service mission, and the institution’s values and culture, which may be best served by remaining the same size or pursuing only modest growth. And there is the administrative complexity and effort of undertaking major organisational change, when in some cases, institutional leaders argue, the benefits of scale can be realised through strategic collaboration rather than full merger.
While it may look from the outside like the UK has a puzzlingly large number of universities and other providers of HE compared to our geographical footprint and population, we’re not a global outlier in that regard. Prospective students enjoy a broad choice of large multi-faculty institutions with a wide range of extra-curricular services and opportunities, and smaller, cosier, and more specialist offerings – indeed, higher education policy in recent decades has trended towards increasing the numbers of higher education providers.
Yet at times of financial challenge, such as those the sector is currently experiencing, talk inevitably turns to mergers and whether the sector as a whole would be more resilient if merger or acquisition was a more readily available tool in the financial sustainability arsenal. And here lies what might be termed the merger paradox – financially healthy institutions tend not to see a need for mergers or be motivated to pursue one even where a strategic business case might be made; whereas financially distressed ones are less likely to be an appealing prospect for a merger partner.
In the case of both Writtle and St George’s, their governing bodies were astute enough to realise that their institutions would not thrive in the long term, and to start considering merger well before reaching a point of crisis.
Being financially challenged is not the primary driver to merge with another institution,” says Richard Mills, Director, Head of Finance Consulting and lead for public sector M&A for KPMG in the UK. “Returns on investment take a long time to realise, and sometimes things get worse before they get better. The driver has to be strategic fit – for higher education a merger needs to be about strengthening the academic portfolio, and you need to be really clear on the vision and strategy for the merged organisation.”
Having the strategy in place, and a plan for the legal and financial aspects of managing a merger is only the beginning. “You need to consider the implications of integrating systems, processes, and culture,” says Margaret Daher, Director and major higher education change specialist at KPMG. “The worst case scenario is a Frankenstein model of bolt-ons rather than one organisation emerging. The work of a merger is much greater than the initial negotiations and the creation of a new legal entity – but that initial work can be so consuming that you end up risking letting the dual running of two distinct entities under one institution become an unintentional status quo.”
City St George’s story
Elisabeth Hill, Deputy President and Provost at City St George’s, joined what was then City, University of London in September 2022, and was given responsibility for delivery – and realising benefits from – the planned merger with St George’s, University of London which was under discussion at that point.
The merger was very much about strategy, not finances,” says Elisabeth. “City has always been a University focused on business and professional practice. When Anthony [Finkelstein] took up his post as President he saw the potential to expand the range of professions that we serve to include broader aspects of health as well as medicine. Being a larger institution gives us greater capacity, greater resilience, and a greater opportunity across a breadth of disciplines to leverage interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work internally and have a greater impact externally. All six of our academic schools already had some kind of interesting relationship with health and medicine so you could see how strengthening the breadth of health and medicine could align with City.”
At the very early stages of discussion, the governing bodies of both institutions had agreed some “red lines” – primarily to give security to the Council of St George’s that the institution’s long history would not simply be assimilated into City and disappear. The incorporation of St George’s into the new institution’s name was seen as essential, as was the idea that the merger was a combination of two universities rather than the incorporation of one by another, although it was agreed that in practice City’s structure and policies would become the reference point for subsequent work to establish the new institution.
Once it was clear that there was a strategic rationale and appetite to pursue merger for both Councils, a lot of “due diligence” work was required to make sure that the new institution would have the finances, and the expertise, to function and would be compliant in legal and regulatory terms. While neither institution felt itself to be in immediate financial peril, neither had the luxury of a financial cushion to support major investment, and it had to be clear that the combined finances of the two institutions would be sufficient both to fund the merger itself and to realise its planned benefits. Taking on space in the midst of a hospital site meant that City’s Council and executive team had to do a lot of work to establish risks and compliance expectations around estates maintenance and health and safety to ensure that they would not be putting City at risk as a result of the envisaged merger.
At this stage both institutions had to carefully manage their very distinctive relationship, i.e. having agreed to merge in principle, but not yet having merged. A tightly negotiated “transfer agreement” set out the conditions under which the merger would operate including the conditions whereby either party could legitimately back out and what information each was obliged to share, in some cases with reference to competition law. Also at this stage, work began with the Department for Education, Office for Students, Privy Council, and General Medical Council among others to work through the academic and legal governance issues of transferring powers and duties from one higher education institution to another. Further work was undertaken to understand the implications for students and prospective students and their likely response to the merger and any related impact.
A key thing was that there was little in terms of pre-defined process for dealing with a university merger of this type,” reflects Elisabeth. “At times it felt like we were making it up – albeit in a very thoughtful and evidence-informed way – as we went along. It was especially helpful to have people with insights from other sectors on our Council that we could draw on where useful or relevant in our sector and context. External bodies were very supportive, and we drew on significant external support, which is an absolute necessity in this kind of work. I don’t know how you could effect something like this without broader insight, guidance and expertise.”
Integration – two becoming one
The new City St George’s, University of London formally came into being on 1 August 2024, but the work of integration is ongoing. “We decided to leave most of the integration work until after the formal point of merger,” says Elisabeth. “By that time, we had been talking about merging for two years and there was a sense that some people were tired of the discussion and needed to see that it was really happening. And on a pragmatic level it is much easier to work through the integration challenges when everyone is under one metaphorical roof, there’s one vice chancellor, one senior team – so we judged that this approach would provide certainty and signal an ability to move forward, replacing uncertainty with certainty. Once we had access to all the detail of the information about St George’s programmes it also became clear that we weren’t going to have to deal with a lot of overlap, which was helpful because it meant we could deliver on a cultural expectation that we would respect the St George’s heritage, which by implication is fundamentally about the academic programmes and research.”
Key priorities for integration were about bringing together St George’s and City’s School of Health & Psychological Sciences into one academic unit, whose executive dean was appointed through an external recruitment process. There was also a mapping process to establish the university professional functions and roles, and assign some functions to the new school, and some to the university. An early priority was confirming directors of professional services for the merged institution, who were then tasked with managing the integration of their teams. This work is now underway.
While that integration work continues, Elisabeth points out that City St George’s like most universities, has a whole range of other strategic change agendas on the go, including portfolio review, curriculum management, creation of a student services hub, and replacement of some university professional services systems. There is also a root and branch review of professional services under way, looking at the location and effectiveness of roles and functions. That means it’s harder to attribute impact specifically to the merger process, but it’s also harder for people to blame the merger as the sole cause of unpalatable disruption.
There is active discussion at City St George’s Council about what above-baseline success measures for the merger should be. Some members of St George’s Council have joined an enlarged City St George’s Council and work is underway to establish the culture of the new institution and supporting processes, and the information needed by Council members to ensure their understanding of the combined institution and support informed decision making around strategic developments and operational priorities.
Institutionally, leadership continues to think on a day-to-day basis about the kind of integrated community it wants to have at the level of both school and university and what sorts of interventions will help people forge that community. Leaders are taking care to have visibility across all university campuses, putting effort into building relationships, undertaking more formal “road shows” to share strategy, hosting talks, and holding informal sessions with different staff groups. The two students’ unions have also merged – a separate merger in its own right – and continue to maintain an active presence on both sites, strengthening student representation and opportunities from the outset.
So what would Elisabeth say to another senior leader preparing for a merger? “It’s extremely intense, and for most people it starts outside your normal realm of expertise. You have to be prepared to run business as usual alongside all the additional work on merging, and you have to support staff and students to stay focused on the things they should be focusing on and not getting distracted either by opportunities for future alignment or deferring things to post-merger.”
Perhaps the most important lesson for any leader considering merger is having to be prepared to navigate the challenge of sticking to institutional and professional values while actually achieving what can be an intensely challenging process on a human level:
We always wanted to be respectful of context and history, to collaborate, be true to our values, and true to the commitments we made and the ethos of how the merger would be discussed and planned,” says Elisabeth. “But you can’t always be as collaborative as you might want to be – otherwise the risk is you fail to get to the point of merger agreement. At least one of the parties has to be pushing for progress and ensuring that decisions are made at any one time.”
Seven merger fundamentals
Having worked on the City St George’s merger, Margaret Daher and Richard Mills would strongly advise boards and executive teams to recognise that a merger is a serious strategic endeavour – it needs to be owned and delivered by resolute staff and managers. Their experience and studies of successful mergers highlights seven fundamentals which need to be got right, although they add that often these are still ignored.
Create and communicate a strong, clear vision. From the start, all staff should be informed of the compelling strategic rationale behind the merger, the transition process and the expected changes, and encouraged to engage in two-way feedback to increase the sense of involvement.
Select new leaders early and let them lead. By identifying and publicising the new leadership team, the merged entity can effectively cut links with past loyalties, provide clarity on leadership and lines of reporting, building cultural alignment and engagement.
Place an emphasis on integration planning. Having a robust and long-term post-merger integration plan is essential to overcoming fragmented ways of working, legacy structures and cultural issues, thereby reducing the risk of indefinitely dual running.
Do the due diligence. Giving proper consideration to short- versus long-term benefits, and carrying out robust due diligence to understand risks fully and test the plans will help the organisations set their sights on opportunities at an early stage, and incorporate anticipated issues into post-merger integration plans so they are monitored and addressed.
Win over stakeholders and develop cultural alignment. Staff are the people that make services happen, so it is vital to overcome any resistance to change. A comprehensive change management approach needs to be adopted, “change champions” should be chosen at an early stage, and given the responsibility and authority to influence and motivate their colleagues. Understanding cultural differences and how to achieve alignment is critical.
Develop both the structure and people. Make sure that the new merged organisation has the resources and the skills to manage the transition process by investing in suitable capability, as well as instituting structural and procedural changes such as mixed work schedules and cross-site working that can encourage collaboration and generate a new culture.
Have patience to achieve long term objectives. Mergers are highly challenging and integration is unlikely to happen quickly. To succeed every level of the organisation requires dedicated resources, experienced people, and strong pre- and post-merger planning, all of which take time to develop and deploy.
While there are obvious practical and cultural hurdles to overcome, what recent examples demonstrate is that with the right vision, case for change and supporting business rationale, a merger can be the strategic solution for long term sustainability.
The road home may have been a bit bumpy (thanks, CrowdStrike), but the two days CUPA-HR leaders spent in Kansas City at the annual Association Leadership Program (ALP) were packed with opportunities to smooth the way for higher ed HR in the year ahead.
On July 18-19, leaders from CUPA-HR’s national, region and chapter boards; cohorts from the Ignite and Emerging CUPA-HR Leaders programs; team members from the CUPA-HR national office; and key corporate partners gathered to discuss higher ed HR challenges, share successes, learn from one another, and build relationships. Here are some of the takeaways from this year’s event:
To be relevant and effective, higher education HR leaders must partner with their presidents and other campus leaders to connect their work to the institution’s mission and priorities and to understand current and emerging challenges for higher education.
The key to creating and sustaining inclusive campus communities is to focus on processes, policies, and learning opportunities that mitigate bias and promote belonging and civil discourse for all. CUPA-HR resources are available to support this work!
Gender gaps in leadership positionspersist. To expand the pipeline for leadership positions to include more women, start by reviewing promotion processes and criteria to mitigate bias and by training decision makers to recognize bias.
CUPA-HR higher ed workforce data is second to none, and the Research Center is an excellent source of high-level data to support workforce planning.
To promote civility and build authentic relationships in the workplace, speaker Alonzo Kelly emphasized the importance of:
Entering conversations with humility
Keeping in mind that your information may not be wrong, but may be incomplete
Being direct and kind
“A mistake repeated is a decision.”
CUPA-HR leaderslead because they are drawn to service, they are lifelong learners, and they value the friendships they’ve formed and the support they receive from the CUPA-HR community.
You can take CUPA-HR with you wherever you go — especially if you have a Roamin’ Robyn to keep you company. Think “Flat Stanley,” but featuring CUPA-HR’s board chair, Robyn Salvo! (Thanks to Joanne Santarelli for the awesome photo!)
Interested in Taking Your Professional Development Further?
CUPA-HR’s volunteer leaders have committed to advancing the profession and the mission of CUPA-HR. They understand the complexities of higher ed HR, and they want to enhance the knowledge and skills they need to lead their institutions into the future.
Are you ready to take that next step in developing your leadership skills, shaping the profession, and gaining one-of-a-kind access to successful practices and HR professionals from across the country? Then CUPA-HR leadership — in a chapter, at the region level, or even on the national board of directors — might be right for you. Learn more about how you can get involved.
You can take CUPA-HR with you wherever you go — especially if you have a Roamin’ Robyn to keep you company. Think “