School starts with Stifled Steam and Sequestered Sails

after working all year to ensure a smooth start to the rapidly approaching school year, my colleagues and i were in for a shock when that work was slowed down and devalued by administrative oversight and some would say quite accurately, incompetence…

among the various reform mandates heaved upon us this year, superintendent brewer’s High Priority School District, moving from year round calenders to traditional, and restructuring the school into Personalized Learning Communities to name a few… our staff took to the task of preparing ourselves to be the most successful in the coming year. our principal however was busy “taking a gamble” on norm projections (despite mounting evidence of LAUSD’s enrollment crisis). he over hired, anticipating the district to not enforce their policies on enrollment ratios to teacher positions…
in short he gambled with people’s jobs, their livelihood, their emotions.

hiring 9 new teachers, the already committed staff took to the task of welcoming them into our family and supporting them immediately into the difficult work of pushing this massive school in the right direction. they were committed and excited for the challenge. and we were excited to have them on our already fabulous team. then, on the very day much of our difficult preparation was to culminate, he told them that they could no longer be a part of they had worked so hard for.

9 new teachers, “displaced”. a tragic but all to common scenario in LAUSD. (not totally biased i try to include multiple perspectives, including the screwy district i work for… but pay attention to the word “generally”)

but what of the rest of us? his apology, if it could be called that, was not felt. and although his intentions may have been in the right place, he stepped right back to the task of making our jobs more emotionally and mentally impossible, exhaustible… in short he asked us to fix the problem that he helped engineer. and when we tirelessly came up with a solution, he allowed us to go home feeling somewhat accomplished in the face of adversity, only to email us at 9:30 PM the night before we were to initiate our new plan and ask us to modify it to an option that had been previously and unanimously deemed as the worst option…

welcome back to school… hang on to your seats ladies and gentlemen… this is going to be one wild ride.