It is disruptive change. It is a significant, massive change, when you change the entire staff, potentially at a school, and close a school. Were taking that step, recognizing that we have work to do in these schools, but we also have work to do throughout the system.
These young people did not get to middle school and suddenly sink to a place that their performance was the lowest 5 percent (in the state). A better way of putting it, in my opinion is, we have not yet as a system been able to figure out how to extract kids from a performance that by middle school, places them in a very vulnerable position.
I can assure you that throughout the school system as a result of this last week and as a result of these announcements and the work being done, there are major conversations taking place in every school, with every staff, with every leader, with every principal on “What’s our part of this? What do we need to do?” So, work is already begun.
We have not taken an approach that says this is somebody’s fault (or) this is the fault of the teachers and somehow teachers are at blame. We’ve taken the route that says we need our best teachers. We need alignment of our curriculum and our staff. We need professional development (to prepare our folks, for example, to each at a) STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) school, to make sure that they have all the tools that they need as a staff.
In return, the Teachers Association and the teachers have been, in my opinion, outstanding partners. I would do everything possible to emphasize that this is work that’s going to be done with our teachers and how do we help structure (this effort for) our teachers. Along the way we will be reevaluating our system. We will be changing the compensation system. We will be looking at the assignment systems so that we can best and better match teachers and (their skills with) the focus of the school.
So with that, we’ve got the need to take care of our young people as they go through this disruption – particularly at Hunt. We’ve got the need to work with and take care of our staff and engage our staff in the work to be done. That work is underway. We have to find, and the question comes up, “Where will you find this leadership? Can you find it internally or do you find it externally?” Where we can find it, the leadership is crucial.
I want to interject for just a moment. It sounds like a foreign topic, but I really don’t think it is. On Friday morning, 12 hours after our last board meeting, we lost a teacher. A violent crime, literally on the doorstep of Birney Elementary, and that obviously was traumatic for everyone and we have been going through the agony of that event these last few days. I want to pull two things out of that: One is the tremendous compliment to the staff who pulled this (middle school grant application) together in four days of work time since we last met to bring this to you with a very, very strong considered philosophy, a considered approach, a focused look. You will see generalities here (in the application) that we don’t know yet how some of the pieces play out. You’ll see areas we’re guesstimating and estimating at best we can professionally. But with that, that work was being done in the most stressful of circumstances, having announced this happening at a school and created the disruption and then having the trauma throughout the system. So as the Superintendent and to the board of directors, I want to say I could not be more proud of the work done by this staff. (Assistant Superintendent) Rosanne Fulton, her group, (Deputy Superintendent) Carla Santorno: it was not easy.
I don’t use it as any defense; I just simply present it in really extreme gratitude for the work that has been presented to you. Secondly, I think I want to close now, with the comments that have been made in the last couple days and want to pay tribute to Jennifer Paulson. Just pay tribute to a teacher. Let’s pay tribute to teachers. This work is not set out to punish teachers. I want to put a public voice to that.
While (the federal initiative) seems to start in that place, it really is saying to the system, “You’ve got to do a better job matching teachers, teacher passions, and a focus of the work to the kids’ needs, and be partners with the parents and the community.” That’s what this is about.