CAT Tracks for June 26, 2011
A PIECE OF CAKE

...it was not!

So, now, instead of serving as a principal in Washington, DC, he will bake and serve cupcakes!


HA!

After reading the full article...

...if the identified and reported frustration is what drove Principal Bill Kerlina out of D.C., it's good he didn't touch down in Cairo School District Number One. Dude wouldn't have lasted two weeks, much less two years.

Wonder if the Cairo Board of Education asked former CJSHS Principal Mark McClintock why he chose to leave Cairo?

HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!!!

District insiders know the answer to that question!

The Cairo Board of Education was too busy holding sham meetings and interviews for the position of Interim Superintendent to give a second thought to Mark McClintock.

The Cairo Board of Education was too hell-bent on rewarding their failed, "retiring" Superintendent with a new Interim position where he can make even more money than he did before and spend even less time in Cairo! Our "former" Superintendent of Schools will have even more free time to golf on the "impoverished" District's dime, while staying in his free District-provided dwelling with free utilities...when he's not residing 375 miles away, paying Chicago property taxes with Cairo taxpayer dollars.

We can only hope...

...that with his new part-time gig, Superintendent Leotis "Tiger" Swopes will confine his golfing exploits to off-duty hours rather than during school hours.

(Okay, okay, yes...hope died on the evening of June 24, 2011 in CSD #1 and it was a silly thought anyway. Golfing is "Job 1" for Cairo's Superintendent of Schools! Nevermind...)


Whew...

...and Bill Kerlina thought he had frustrations?

Whiner...wuss!


Time for me to "move on"...


One final observation:

The closing lament in the article below:

Elsewhere in the article it refers to the instability of a school having "three principals in a decade".

Damn...Cairo Jr/Sr High School should be so lucky!!!

C'mon, faculty, help an old retired CAT out here. My memory is fading...

  • 2011-????...Zena Madison

  • 2009-2011...Mark McClintock

  • 2007-2009...Lynn Byrd

  • 2005-2007...Tony Maltbia/Superintendent Gary Whitledge...because after hiring Maltbia as Principal, the Cairo Board of Education "discovered" that he was not certified for the position. Instead of rescinding their action which might be seen as an admission of error - which they would never do...admit, not make - the BOE allowed Tony to pursue certification on school time and had Gary "sign off" on official documents as Principal/Superintendent.

  • 2004-???? Awww...hell. That's enough...you get the point. Four/five principals in six/seven years.

If any big-brained, anal-retentive types out there want to complete the list...drop me an e-mail and I will update it.

A further observation...if you go back, back into time, the situation does not improve. Hell, there was at least one year when Cairo High School had three principals in one damned year! Turnover, thy name is Cairo School District Number One!

Yeah...

Had to chuckle yesterday when I drove by the CJSHS Marquee and saw that Dr. McPherson and his wife, Naomi, were to be featured speakers at an upcoming event. DOCTOR McPherson and wife...both ex-District employees...run out of the District by a previous school board...not good enough (too good?) for the children of Cairo...


The faculty and staff have struggled against all odds over the years...to provide the stability lacking in the administration. They have ignored abuse by successive Superintendents and Boards of Education, trying to provide an education so that a declining population in a declining city might have to means to survive, escape, prosper.

The faculty and staff, desperately clinging to hope...that the "powers that be" would finally see the error of their ways...that sanity would finally prevail.

Hope...

...that died last Friday night!

Instead of cutting their losses and moving forward, the Cairo Board of Education voted to nourish the problem rather than seek a solution...

Rest in Peace


Damn, Ron...lighten up, already.

Easy for you to say...

I've been fighting CSD sh*t since I became an active CAT-IEA-NEA member in 1980...31 effing years and counting. Actually, borrowing a reference used to describe folks that look like they've "been rode hard and put up wet"...make that 62 years if you count days AND nights!!!

Lighten up?

It was me (and Madam President) sitting on the hard-assed (oops, pardon my French. I meant to say sitting on the hard-azzed) steps at the Central Office awaiting the announcement of their latest folly.

Don't get me wrong...

...I've seen worse, MUCH worse.

I've sat back and pondered weak and weary...as members of a previous Cairo Board of Education marched into the Alexander County Court House to support Superintendent Robert Isom when he was arraigned after being arrested for driving his District-provided car to a neighboring community allegedly to shoot his wife's lover. I sat back and watched this same Superintendent suspend MY wife without pay for missing work over Christmas vaction...because she was confined to a hospital with diverticulitis. I sat back and watch that same school board FIRE my wife despite 30+ years of loyal service to the District...on trumped up charges of being "inefficient". I sat at her bedside (at home and in the hospital) and watched her suffer, near death, for over two years as her lawyers fought to get her reinstated...and did, with back-pay. (I still drive the Lincoln Towncar that we bought with the settlement she won from the District. We parked it in the handicapped spot by the front door of Cairo High School on the first day of the following school year, where District officials would have to walk past it on their way to the Teachers' Institute...because the terms of the settlement forbid her from telling anyone how much money the District had to pay her.)

And...

...before, during and after my wife's passing, I helped fight the 5-year battle of James Gibson vs Cairo School District Number One...which I guess I will fight for the rest of my days. (Yes...when it appeared that it was over and that the feeding of lawyers would finally end, said bottom-feeders have raised a new issue to keep their gravy train alive!)

Hey, it's the Cairo Board of Education in action...give life support to gravy trains; pull the plug on hope.


But this latest SNAFU is the final straw to break any CAT's back.

In the previous cases, the BOE was reacting to events...desperately trying to cover a steaming, stinking pile of manure into which they had already stepped.

However...

This latest in a long line of cluster ducks was so easily avoided...the "history" so fresh. The BOE had already made the "hard decision"...they had turned thumbs down on the Superintendent's performance. They had his resignation in hand, had already presented the bogus retirement bell. ("Bogus", not because he "came back", but because he didn't put in the 20 years required to earn it! Of course, Leotis is a definite subscriber to RHIP, that rank has its privileges...he who takes vacation days and personal days whenever the whim strikes, while denying similar contractual guarantees to employees.)

And...it's not like the BOE didn't have a choice. They had two other qulaified applicants: Former District Teacher/Administrator Constance Williams and current CHS mathematics teacher Ronald James. Pick A or B...and move forward.

Oh, but, NO...

...not the Cairo Board of Education! The gang-who-couldn't-shoot-straight picks their failed Superintendent...who golfs publicly on school time and causes unfair labor practices to be brought against the District.

THAT is what has overloaded my frustration circuits!


So...

...lighten up?

I will...

...as soon as YOU send me an e-mail that you will be joining Madam President on the hard-effing-azzed steps of the Central Office on Monday night for the Special BOE Meeting and the Regular FOP Meeting.

I will...

...as soon as YOU free up your schedule for the next year or so...so that you can join Madam President sitting across the table from the BOE negotiating team and their $1000-a-night lawyer. (Note to Cairo BOE: If you want to dispute my estimate of $1000 a night, feel free to send me a copy of all your legal bills and I will publish them. I'd submit a FOIA - Freedom of Information Act - request, but you would contact your lawyer and pay him to find a way to hide the information from the taxpayers.)


All right, I will lighten up...on you.

I'm not mad at you...YOU are not making me (or Madam President) do this. I/We chose to do this. We got mad about something years ago and decided to try to do something about it. (I honestly don't remember what triggered my ire. I do know that there have been many a wee-hour morning when I have wished that I had just counted to ten and moved on...or done like one of our other previous superintendents - whose grievances seem so petty compared to his successors - and just kicked a pumpkin or walked across the street and kicked gravel. Woulda saved many a sleepless night in Cairo!)

And, hey, the consolation prize for our efforts...all the war stories!


Due to the weather conditions today, I am putting my life on the line with the following advice...risking lightning bolts from the heavenly sky!

To say that my dearly departed wife, Julie, was a fighter is the greatest of understatements. Any resolve that I have been able to summon over the years can be directly attributed to her...along with my innate stubbornness. (One of her favorite rejoinders to me was "Stubborn as a Newell", although it should be noted that she gave up a last name of Jones to become one! Plus, in our personal "stand-offs", she most often prevailed!) In her tribute, I posted a copy of her favorite poem on the website I created to get me through her passing (which is reproduced immediately below for your convenience):

Yes, I'm risking life and limb 'cause I'm telling YOU...

...if you are an employee of Cairo School District Number One (excluding of course His Royal Highness Leotis D. Swopes), the time has come for you to go! Don't "hope" that it will get better...it won't. This is as good as it gets. As we have seen so often, when you think it can't get any worse...it does.

Case in point...

If you were buoyed by the previous announcement that Superintendent Swopes was leaving Las Cairo...well, see! That's what "hope" gets you. They never said he was leaving...they said he was resigning/retiring. You did one of those ass-u-me things.

If you get another job offer this summer...take it. If you haven't applied elsewhere...do.

And...

...make Bill Kerlina your idol, your poster boy for change!

Be like Bill...

...do NOT place limits on yourself!

There is another world out there...a non-education world...a world where YOU are not the cause of all that is wrong. Hell, after a couple of years, you may even get comfortable enough in your new life style that you will be able to sit back in your easy chair at night (no papers to grade, no lesson plans to prepare), watch TV, and recite "Damn teachers!" on cue to the latest media cue.

Instead of raising the living room window and screaming "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore", you can get up during the commercial, walk out to the kitchen, and get a cupcake.

Sit back, relax, enjoy...


Footnotes:

  • Assuming my wife reads between the lines and does not hurl the killing blow, I can be located on the steps of the old junior high school building tomorrow evening, ready to report the latest lunacy. (If you don't know where the old junior high building is, look for the sign..."No Golfing Allowed On School Property".)

  • I've already spent a couple/three hours on this rant. Don't expect me to go back and proofread. Hell, if I did, I'd probably never get through...would think of some other stupid-assed thing that this District hath perpetrated upon its employees and the taxpayers that would piss off the Pope.

Have a nice day...


Postscript:

Damn...

The thunder is rumbling, the lights are flickering.

Julie...

(CAT Tracks Editor's Note: If there is no CAT Tracks by Tuesday morning, you will know that the sweet chariot has done come and taken me home. Hey, I didn't quit...I got "fired"!)


From the Washington Post


Link to Original Story

Young D.C. principal quits and tells why

By Bill Turque, Published: June 25

Bill Kerlina won a plum assignment when he was hired away from Montgomery County in July 2009 to become a principal in Northwest Washington. Phoebe Hearst Elementary was a small, high-performing school, right across the street from Sidwell Friends.

He grew to love its students, teachers and — for the most part — its parents.

“If I could lift that school up and put it in a functional school system, it would be perfect,” he said.

Instead, he said, the dysfunction he encountered in D.C. public schools led him to quit this month, fed up and burned out.

Principals in the District and other cities leave all the time, for a range of reasons. At least 20 of the District’s 123 public schools will have new leaders when classes begin in late August.The churn is especially heavy at low-performing schools. A 2010 study showed that nearly two-thirds of Chicago’s struggling schools had three or more principals in the past decade.

But Kerlina, a baby-faced 39, is leaving Hearst, not a struggling school in a poor neighborhood. He’s also leaving education altogether after 17 years — to go into the gourmet cupcake business.

Usually, resignations and firings unfold in silence, with officials citing privacy laws and educators reluctant to burn bridges. But a series of interviews with Kerlina offers a rare view of D.C. reform from an insider talking out of school.

He said he is quitting a system that evaluates teachers but doesn’t support their growth, that knuckles under to unreasonable demands from parents, and that focuses excessively on recruiting neighborhood families to a school where most students come from outside the attendance zone.

Kerlina said his two years left him with high blood pressure, extra pounds from a stress-induced diet of Armand’s and McDonald’s lunches, and a sense that life is too short. He is quick to acknowledge that he was far from the perfect principal and that his grievances may strike some as whiny or carping. He also acknowledges that money figured into his discontent: He said he was hired with the promise of making more than his $94,995 annual salary.

Other principals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating school system leadership, said they understand Kerlina’s frustrations.

“He’s a loss,” said one veteran principal. “Bill was a tremendously bright guy.” But, the principal added, the District can be a shock to administrators from smooth-running suburban systems.

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said that she was surprised by Kerlina’s resignation and that it was the first she’d heard of his unhappiness. She also said she was disappointed that he didn’t air his grievances more fully before he made his decision. Working in the District, she acknowledged, poses challenges.

“I guess that we all know everything ain’t for everybody,” Henderson said. “DCPS is a work in progress. Not everybody is willing to lead under the circumstances we ask them to lead under, in a developing urban school district. It is much different than a place where things are completed and fully successful.”

Hearst parents and teachers said they were disappointed. PTA President Jen Wilcox said Kerlina’s open-door policy, his efforts to upgrade classroom technology and his easy, energetic manner with kids made him “a breath of fresh air.”

“He cared about children, and he was a hard-working principal,” veteran teacher Bill Rope said. “He didn’t leave because he wanted to make cupcakes.”

Major changes

Kerlina taught grade school in Montgomery, rising to assistant principal at Takoma Park Elementary. By 2009, he felt ready to move up, but principal turnover was low in the county. Kerlina was also intrigued by then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s vow to close the black-white achievement gap. He joined a contingent of Montgomery educators who signed on with Rhee, including Dawn Ellis, who left as Murch Elementary principal this month.

Kerlina said his interview with Rhee was brief. She quizzed him about reading scores at Takoma Park and asked what he would do for scores at Hearst, where reading proficiency on the citywide test in 2009 was 80 percent and math proficiency was 92 percent. He promised to at least hold them steady. But they fell, along with elementary scores throughout the city. Reading proficiency dipped five percentage points in 2010, and math proficiency fell to 67 percent.

Kerlina signed on just as Rhee was rolling out the IMPACT evaluation system, which called for five classroom observations to assess criteria such as clarity of presentation, content knowledge and ability to teach children with varying skill levels. Some teachers would be held accountable for student growth on standardized tests. Those with poor evaluations were subject to dismissal.

It was a major change.Kerlina said he was surprised when he heard it would not be tried on a pilot basis, which was standard practice in Montgomery. He said he came to believe that the initiative offered virtually no provisions to help teachers improve.

“The reform, in my opinion, is getting rid of people,” he said.

D.C. officials dispute that, pointing to mentors, instructional coaches and master educators who are available, along with professional development courses offered by the District and the Washington Teachers’ Union. Video clips of teachers who earned top ratings also will be made available in the coming school year.

Dealing with parents

Kerlina said that he had good relations with most parents but that some could be a trial.

One parent called his cellphone over Memorial Day weekend to complain that a tutor from Sidwell had not shown up at Hearst for her child that Friday. Another couple was convinced that delays by teachers in writing private-school references had ruined their child’s chances. Kerlina said he called each of the schools to assure them the applications were on time.

More problematic, Kerlina said, were parents who went straight to the central office without trying to speak to him. D.C. principals are often undermined, he said, by a system that indulges questionable parent behavior.Kerlina criticized the school system’s “critical response team,” which he described as a cadre of young staff with little school-level experience.

“If they call, you know you’re going to be told you did something wrong,” he said.

Henderson said the team was formed because of a long, dismal legacy of D.C. schools not returning parents’ calls. “Our role is not to frustrate our principals,” she said.

In April, Kerlina said, the response team told him to readmit a student who had been removed from Hearst two months earlier after an investigation found that his family lived in Prince George’s County. Kerlina said team member Jared Solomon told him the family had established residence in Southeast Washington.

Kerlina wondered why the student, who had originally come to Hearst through the out-of-boundary lottery, was not sent to his neighborhood school, Moten Elementary @ Wilkinson. Hearst had a long waiting list, he said, and the student in question was a “behavior nightmare.”

“It’s in the best interests of the child,” Kerlina recalled Solomon saying.

“I have the best interests of a school to think about,” Kerlina said.

Soon after the student returned to Hearst, Kerlina said, he was suspended for stabbing another student with a pen.

Solomon, who no longer works for the system, could not be reached to comment.

A few days before he quit, Kerlina received his annual evaluation from Instructional Superintendent Amanda Alexander. It was a positive appraisal, school officials confirmed, and Henderson sent Kerlina a letter of reappointment. But Alexander raised a concern, he said: Why were there not more white families at Hearst?

The question is sensitive in the D.C. system, where only about a third of students attend neighborhood schools. It is especially sensitive in affluent and largely white areas of Northwest Washington. At Hearst, 70 percent of the 241 students come from outside the neighborhood. Most are African Americans.

D.C. officials say they simply want more neighbors in neighborhood schools. But Kerlina took offense at Alexander’s question, which implied that as a white male, he should have been more successful at recruiting. The next day, in an e-mail to Alexander that he wrote but decided not to send, he laid out a taxonomy of Northwest parents in an effort to show the hurdles to recruiting more neighborhood families.

The well-to-do private school families, “the majority” in the neighborhood, he wrote, were a lost cause. “I have not courted them and do not plan to do so, since they will never consider DCPS,” Kerlina wrote.

Next were those afflicted with what he called “Murch and Eaton envy,” a reference to two much-in-demand Northwest elementary schools. He told Alexander that six in-boundary families had enrolled at Hearst for the fall but pulled out when slots at Eaton and Murch opened up.

“I have been working with these families but it’s hard to change a culture of thoughts and ideas,” he wrote.

Finally, he wrote, there were families with racial prejudices. He said this conclusion came from a series of conversations he had with prospective neighborhood parents “that delicately asked about the number of out-of-boundary families and made reference to the ‘diversity’ of Hearst.”

“They will never come to Hearst because of the number of out-of-boundary black families,” he wrote.

One way to lure neighboring families — restricting the number of out-of-boundary seats — would be a “horrible mistake,” Kerlina wrote, as “the diversity at Hearst is what makes it a great school.”

He offered another solution: Move the school toward “inquiry-based learning,” stressing group activities, hands-on projects and student curiosity. It’s standard practice, he said, at the private school across 37th Street NW.

“The reason people spend [more than $30,000] a year to send their children to Sidwell is because they believe in inquiry-based learning,” Kerlina wrote. “DCPS does not — the approach is too scripted and doesn’t allow for students to think outside of the box.”

Alexander declined to comment.

There was no real tipping point, Kerlina said, just an accumulation of frustrations. He said his last goodbyes Monday afternoon, after the final half-day of classes. Around 4, he walked the halls one more time, turning off lights and shutting doors. As he drove away, he said later, he realized that he had heard nothing from any D.C. school official in two weeks. A minor slight, but telling, in his view.

His cupcake shop in Howard County will be called Cooks ‘n Cakes.

A search is underway for another principal. A panel of parents and staff interviewed candidates last week. Wilcox, the PTA president, said she is concerned that what drove Kerlina away could lead to more turnover. “What does this mean for our next principal?” she asked. “What’s to prevent what happened with Bill from happening to the next person?”