Dr. Broquard/Lafayette

[Anonymous]

Lafayette is the only elementary school in the city that is the same size as the proposed Miner/Maury cluster. I wonder if this move is to position her to take charge of the cluster.

[Anonymous]

Why all the hate, she’s been a great principal
at Lafayette.

[Anonymous]

Lots of non-nuanced takes here. I’m a Lafayette parent, not a teacher, but my impression was that Dr. B ran a tight ship and was pretty focused on metrics. This had plusses - consistently high test scores and low tolerance for do-nothing teachers - and minuses - namely, inflexibility and an unwillingness to be bothered by student/parent/teacher problems that wouldn’t have macro effects on the school. Caveat though that my kids don’t have SNs and I don’t have much exposure on how she is with accommodations issues.

[Anonymous]

My only complaint is that she is a micro manager and expects the worst in people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of non-nuanced takes here. I’m a Lafayette parent, not a teacher, but my impression was that Dr. B ran a tight ship and was pretty focused on metrics. This had plusses - consistently high test scores and low tolerance for do-nothing teachers - and minuses - namely, inflexibility and an unwillingness to be bothered by student/parent/teacher problems that wouldn’t have macro effects on the school. Caveat though that my kids don’t have SNs and I don’t have much exposure on how she is with accommodations issues.

This was my sense as well. But I’m not terribly involved with the school/haven’t had to interact with her. The teacher turnover has been troubling. I’m hopeful we get someone great - the size of the school and parent population makes it a challenging position. But I think a change could be a good thing for all.

[Anonymous]

She is great with complex administrative and logistical situations - the building renovation, opening during COVID (I believe Lafayette got the most kids back the earliest), generally operating 900+ student school. I’m sure that’s why DCPS wants her at Miner, given the upcoming changes there.

Miner parents - she will be good. She’s just not the “warm hug” we normally think of when we think of elementary principal. She’s also got a sarcastic sense of humor, which I rather enjoy, but I can imagine might be misinterpreted by others…especially anyone feeling vulnerable. Should she learn to communicate differently in those situations? Yes, but no one is perfect.

And yes, sometimes she can be overly guarded with parents. In some cases that isn’t deserved. However, we have to recognize as a Lafayette community that there are also some parents here that are litigious, demanding, bat poop crazies. It takes a village.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My only complaint is that she is a micro manager and expects the worst in people.

Good teachers don’t like to be micromanaged but you do need to manage bad teachers. There is a fine line

[Anonymous]

Agreed, she is amazing at logistics.

But looking at the number of creative, dedicated teachers who've left Lafayette over the past 10 years.. that's a concern, especially if one knows them well enough to hear their individual stories. It will be very telling to see how many Lafayette teachers follow Broquard to Miner, and whether staff turnover changes (+/-) at Miner.

Good principals often have teachers "follow" them to their new schools. Good principals tend to have low staff turnover. On the flip side, high staff turnover can be a sign of unhappiness with the leadership. Especially in schools like Lafayette, where the students are generally prepared for school, not trauma-slammed, generally rule-abiding, and there are generally enough supplies for teachers, the working conditions themselves don't usually drive teachers away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She is great with complex administrative and logistical situations - the building renovation, opening during COVID (I believe Lafayette got the most kids back the earliest), generally operating 900+ student school. I’m sure that’s why DCPS wants her at Miner, given the upcoming changes there.

Miner parents - she will be good. She’s just not the “warm hug” we normally think of when we think of elementary principal. She’s also got a sarcastic sense of humor, which I rather enjoy, but I can imagine might be misinterpreted by others…especially anyone feeling vulnerable. Should she learn to communicate differently in those situations? Yes, but no one is perfect.

And yes, sometimes she can be overly guarded with parents. In some cases that isn’t deserved. However, we have to recognize as a Lafayette community that there are also some parents here that are litigious, demanding, bat poop crazies. It takes a village.

This right here. She was disliked by some parents at Lafayette because she wouldn't accede to every single one of their (often unhinged) demands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She is great with complex administrative and logistical situations - the building renovation, opening during COVID (I believe Lafayette got the most kids back the earliest), generally operating 900+ student school. I’m sure that’s why DCPS wants her at Miner, given the upcoming changes there.

Miner parents - she will be good. She’s just not the “warm hug” we normally think of when we think of elementary principal. She’s also got a sarcastic sense of humor, which I rather enjoy, but I can imagine might be misinterpreted by others…especially anyone feeling vulnerable. Should she learn to communicate differently in those situations? Yes, but no one is perfect.

And yes, sometimes she can be overly guarded with parents. In some cases that isn’t deserved. However, we have to recognize as a Lafayette community that there are also some parents here that are litigious, demanding, bat poop crazies. It takes a village.

This right here. She was disliked by some parents at Lafayette because she wouldn't accede to every single one of their (often unhinged) demands.

I am the PP who mentioned that the takes here were not nuanced. I want to stress that from talking with other parents, I do think that she ignored some very legitimate, non-unhinged concerns of parents. This was either because the concern was serious but specific to just 1-2 kids, so (I assume) not worth her time when she was tasked with governing a school of 900 kids, or because addressing the parents' concerns would result in disciplining or firing a teacher that was "high performing" in the sense that the teacher's students scored well on tests. That's not good and resulted in some really bad outcomes for individual families that I know and respect. However, the tradeoff is that her laser focus on keeping this giant school running smoothly and making sure test scores stayed high and low performers were weeded out resulted in a high-quality school that works for the vast majority of kids.

I really hope the new principal, whoever they are, can both keep the school running smoothly and also be more sensitive to parents' legitimate concerns. Hard to screen for that though!

[Anonymous]

You couldn’t pay me enough to be an elementary school principal. They have to be a business manager. Politician. Fundraiser. Cheerleader. Counselor. Pedagogical leader. Facilities manager. They have to manage really creative folks who may have vested a lot of time and energy into special units and activities that from year to year may not fit into the curriculum, and deal with those teachers when they get upset. Newer teachers are often more willing to go with the curriculum of the month, but fewer of them want to work the 60 hours a week that teachers used to, And they’re often not as excited about carrying on unpaid extra traditions. And in DC, the number of personnel evaluations that Principals have to write is crazy. Unless it’s changed, I think they have to do written evaluations of multiple paragraphs for every staff member multiple times a year. It’s a ridiculous amount— order of magnitude more human resources paperwork than managers of other similarly sized organizations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You couldn’t pay me enough to be an elementary school principal. They have to be a business manager. Politician. Fundraiser. Cheerleader. Counselor. Pedagogical leader. Facilities manager. They have to manage really creative folks who may have vested a lot of time and energy into special units and activities that from year to year may not fit into the curriculum, and deal with those teachers when they get upset. Newer teachers are often more willing to go with the curriculum of the month, but fewer of them want to work the 60 hours a week that teachers used to, And they’re often not as excited about carrying on unpaid extra traditions. And in DC, the number of personnel evaluations that Principals have to write is crazy. Unless it’s changed, I think they have to do written evaluations of multiple paragraphs for every staff member multiple times a year. It’s a ridiculous amount— order of magnitude more human resources paperwork than managers of other similarly sized organizations.

First of all which principal is a counselor, pedagogical leader, or facilities manager?

That is the actual counselors, social workers, and teachers. Pedagogical leader? Yes I’m sure all of them have experience in special education, ELL, and the range of grades at one school.
Facilities? They all have a manger of operations.

Evaluations? They write a few sentences based off a rubric.

I will say managing adults is hard. But a good leader knows how to do these things and if you worked in DCPS you’d know there is no set curriculum, only set standards and tests. So no, they don’t have to ‘make’ teachers get on board with a curriculum unless they are a poor leader mandating everyone to do the exact same thing, thinking that means the same results will be produced.

I could go on about the other things mentioned, it’s true being a principal is difficult but let’s not act like they are the end all be all.

[Anonymous]

Anyone know any Lafayette teachers who would recommend working for her?

I’ll wait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed, she is amazing at logistics.

But looking at the number of creative, dedicated teachers who've left Lafayette over the past 10 years.. that's a concern, especially if one knows them well enough to hear their individual stories. It will be very telling to see how many Lafayette teachers follow Broquard to Miner, and whether staff turnover changes (+/-) at Miner.

LOL yes can someone please track these metrics (former Laf staff here)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You couldn’t pay me enough to be an elementary school principal. They have to be a business manager. Politician. Fundraiser. Cheerleader. Counselor. Pedagogical leader. Facilities manager. They have to manage really creative folks who may have vested a lot of time and energy into special units and activities that from year to year may not fit into the curriculum, and deal with those teachers when they get upset. Newer teachers are often more willing to go with the curriculum of the month, but fewer of them want to work the 60 hours a week that teachers used to, And they’re often not as excited about carrying on unpaid extra traditions. And in DC, the number of personnel evaluations that Principals have to write is crazy. Unless it’s changed, I think they have to do written evaluations of multiple paragraphs for every staff member multiple times a year. It’s a ridiculous amount— order of magnitude more human resources paperwork than managers of other similarly sized organizations.

First of all which principal is a counselor, pedagogical leader, or facilities manager?

That is the actual counselors, social workers, and teachers. Pedagogical leader? Yes I’m sure all of them have experience in special education, ELL, and the range of grades at one school.
Facilities? They all have a manger of operations.

Evaluations? They write a few sentences based off a rubric.

I will say managing adults is hard. But a good leader knows how to do these things and if you worked in DCPS you’d know there is no set curriculum, only set standards and tests. So no, they don’t have to ‘make’ teachers get on board with a curriculum unless they are a poor leader mandating everyone to do the exact same thing, thinking that means the same results will be produced.

I could go on about the other things mentioned, it’s true being a principal is difficult but let’s not act like they are the end all be all.

Well, not all elementary Principals have manager of operations.