Yesenia Rivera is currently the Program Director at Edgewood PTA Child Care and is the Director of Housing Assessment and Integration at The Connection’s Supportive House for Families Program.
As a parent and as child care director, Yesenia has been committed to the New Haven Public Schools since 1996 as member of the PTA at Edgewood School and Wilbur Cross High School.
Yesenia is a proud wife and mother to three beautiful daughters who all attended New Haven Public Schools. She is a long time resident of New Haven; she attended Troup Middle School and is a graduate of Hill Regional Career High School.
Ms. Rivera also attended college locally earning her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Albertus Magnus College.
Present and past Memberships include:
Board of Directors, Edgewood PTA Child Care Program, Inc.
State of Connecticut Healthy Homes Coalition
State of Connecticut Hoarding Workgroup
State of Connecticut Subsidized Housing Workgroup
Child Welfare League of America
Mr. Matthew Wilcox, Vice President
Matt Wilcox is a graduate of programs at Asbury University, James Madison University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Matt has spent his career in libraries and higher education. He currently serves as the director of the Edward and Barbara Netter Library at Quinnipiac University. Matt, his spouse JoAnne, and their family have lived in New Haven for more than twenty years. Their children attend and have graduated from New Haven Public Schools. Matt has a deep and abiding belief that all children can learn and have a right to a high quality, free public education. “Education is not simply done to prepare a person for a lifetime of work, but to help a student build a life – a fulfilling life – as an active, engaged, and thoughtful member of our community.”
Dr. Edward Joyner, Secretary
Dr. Edward Joyner was born in the small rural community of Farmville, North Carolina where he attended segregated schools. He graduated from H. B. Suggs High School in 1965 with honors and attended Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, North Carolina where he graduated with high honors receiving a degree in the Social Sciences. While at Elizabeth City State, Joyner was active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the vehicle that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used as the vanguard for the human rights movement. He established the African American History curriculum at Hillhouse High School in 1970 with support from Mr. Thomas Raggozino, the chair of the history department, and Mr. Eugene Vitelli the school’s principal. He received a Master of Arts in Teaching from Wesleyan University in 1973 with high honors and completed his doctoral studies in School Administration at the University of Bridgeport in 1989. He has been an assistant principal and principal at the high and middle school levels, a head basketball coach (community college) and an assistant professor and administrator at the Yale Child Study Center where he was the Executive Director of the School Development Program at Yale, the oldest and most comprehensive school change program in America. He retired from Sacred Heart University in 2013 where he had served as the Director of the Five Year Masters of Arts in Education Program. Over the course of his 8 year tenure at Sacred Heart, Dr, Joyner taught and mentored several hundred teacher education majors. Some are currently employed in the New Haven Public Schools. Dr. Joyner has presented throughout the world and trained educators and social policy makers throughout the United States. He has appeared on BET Tonight, NBC, and ABC addressing issues related to improving schools, especially for minority children. He is the author of the award winning Ebony Guide to Black Student Excellence and has been honored with several other awards in communities throughout the country for his work as an education change agent. He is the co-author of six books addressing the education of poor and/or minority children. They include Rallying the Village and Child by Child, two of the best sellers at Columbia Teachers College Press. He is the lead author of the Field Guide to Comer Schools in Action (Corwin Press, 2005) that describes thirty-five years of work done by the staff of the School Development Program and its founder, Dr. James P. Comer. And he has written chapters in several other books addressing issues of large-scale change in diverse communities. His worked with the ABC television network to do a retrospective evaluation of the Black and White kindergartners who integrated the Shaker Heights school system near Cleveland, Ohio several years after the Brown decision. The results were used to create an ABC primetime special on school integration that was shown on August 2005. His favorite quote is taken from the words of one of his intellectual heroes, Dr. Benjamin Mays, who was president of Morehouse College: “When you are born behind in the race of life, you must run faster.”
Mr. Darnell Goldson
Darnell Goldsonis was born and raised in New Haven, first attending Ivy Street School, Lincoln Bassett, Sheridan Junior High, and graduating as a merit scholar from James Hillhouse High School. While in his senior year at Hillhouse, Mr. Goldson attended a semester at the University of New Haven, and after graduation, attended Tufts University and NYU.
Mr. Goldson has over thirty four (35) years of management, administrative, political and advocacy experience, working in both the public and private fields. After leaving Tufts he joined the staff of Connecticut Congressman Bruce A. Morrison (CT-3); the first presidential campaign of Rev. Jesse Jackson; and various federal, state and local campaigns in and out of New Haven. He was the legislative assistant to the mayor of New Haven; as well as advocacy work for several organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), where he spent several years leading that organization’s relief effort in response to Hurricane Katrina. He clerked both the Connecticut State legislature’s Housing and General Law Committees. He led the region’s largest anti-poverty agency, the Community Action Agency, as well as the national YouthBuild program in Massachusetts, where he developed programs to reintegrate high school dropouts into school or alternate educational and training programs. He is currently the Public Relations Director for two companies in northern Connecticut.
Mr. Goldson’s overall goal is to contribute to an educational reform movement that puts Kids First.
President Elected Member, New Haven District 2 Term Expires: 12/2019
Edgar “Nico” Rivera is a rising junior at Metropolitan Business Academy. He was born and raised in New Haven, CT along with his three siblings and a loving grandmother. Nico has attended New Haven Public Schools for all of his educational life. He began in kindergarten at John S. Martinez Sea Sky Stem Magnet school. After graduating from Martinez School, he chose to attend Metropolitan Business Academy, where he is studying Media and Digital Arts and taking some minor law classes. He is also a proud student athlete playing baseball, track and field, and football for Wilbur Cross.
Nico is a hard working person and leader. He credits his father, a twenty-two year U.S. Army veteran, for instilling the qualities of leadership in him. Nico proudly took the oath to be of service to his community, state, and nation through the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary called Civil Air Patrol were he has attained the rank of staff sergeant. Nico has held multiple positions of leadership including squadron flight sergeant. Also through the Civil Air Patrol he acquired the training to be part of ground team and search and rescue units as a medic. Nico is currently working his way up to ground team leader which is the highest position. Nico aspires to attend the U.S. Military Academy West Point in West Point, New York.
As a student member of the New Haven Board of Education, Nico's goal is to give the student population more of a voice in Board decisions when it comes to topics that are going to affect students in many ways.
Student Representative Term Expires: 6/2020
nicorivera825@gmail.com
Ms. Lihame Arouna
Lihame is currently a sophomore who attends Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.
Yesenia Rivera is currently the Program Director at Edgewood PTA Child Care and is the Director of Housing Assessment and Integration at The Connection’s Supportive House for Families Program.
Matt Wilcox is a graduate of programs at Asbury University, James Madison University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Matt has spent his career in libraries and higher education. He currently serves as the director of the Edward and Barbara Netter Library at Quinnipiac University.
Dr. Edward Joyner was born in the small rural community of Farmville, North Carolina where he attended segregated schools. He graduated from H. B. Suggs High School in 1965 with honors and attended Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, North Carolina where he graduated with high honors receiving a degree in the Social Sciences.
Darnell Goldson
Edgar “Nico” Rivera is a rising junior at Metropolitan Business Academy. He was born and raised in New Haven, CT along with his three siblings and a loving grandmother. Nico has attended New Haven Public Schools for all of his educational life. He began in kindergarten at John S. Martinez Sea Sky Stem Magnet school. After graduating from Martinez School, he chose to attend Metropolitan Business Academy, where he is studying Media and Digital Arts and taking some minor law classes. He is also a proud student athlete playing baseball, track and field, and football for Wilbur Cross.
Lihame is currently a sophomore who attends Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.