Ludlow-Taylor principal made permanent!
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Anonymous
It reminds me of people who claim to be informed voters but are like "I might vote for trump because Harris seems like a flip flopper." Like just a fundamental inability to look at the big picture. |
Anonymous
That principal didn’t leave because of parents. I liked her a lot though. |
Anonymous
Anyone remember the firestorm over bologna sandwiches at LT aftercare? I guess there’s a long tradition of this, part of what makes the “LT community” so special! |
Anonymous
Q: are the teachers who drove that one out still at L-T? I remember that bring such a big thing, how there were some long tenured teachers at the school who just refused to work with her and torpedoed her administration. But then after Miller showed up that talk quoted down even though Miller also gets criticized a ton by teachers and parents. Based on the school's past experiences I almost wonder if bring universally criticized but staying in the post is a sign of quality admin. Because it means you can persevere even when under constant attack. |
Anonymous
I think there was a transition for a lot of Hill schools where certain teachers were able to exert a lot of power at the school for a long time (the survivors who had outlasted Rhee). They get phased out eventually. We were lucky enough to go to a Hill school where this transition had already happened and the longtimers still there were incredibly talented teachers. |
Anonymous
Yes we are also at a Hill school with amazing longtime teachers. TBH all the consternation over the administration at L-T confuses me because my experience with a Hill elementary is that the teachers are the most important (that's who you interact with most and that's who makes or breaks your kid's experience) and then the front of office admin staff are next most important (the people you directly interact with on stuff like absences or enrollment or getting questions about the school answered). And then the principal is like in the background dealing with DCPS or handling building-related issues. Pops up at PTA meetings sometimes to discuss things like budgeting or hiring but is not a large presence because the PTA deals with stuff that is pretty separate from what the principal does. I'm sure principals impact teacher experience a lot so you need someone who can work with the teachers and not make their jobs harder with stuff like scheduling or administrative duties or meetings. But I largely view the principal as a background person at our school. I could see how a really great principal could set a great tone for kids or get people to rally around specific initiatives but we have a merely adequate principal and it's totally fine. At the end of the day the teachers are what make or break a school. |
Anonymous
1 of the teachers retired; 2 are still there. I do want to emphasize that all 3 of them were and are truly excellent teachers. Beloved by students and academically some of the best teachers (reflected by scores) around. They had sway over colleagues for good reasons, not bad ones. I do know that some teachers have regrets about how things with that principal played out. Some of it was her own fault (hired an external AP who was awful and Principal Miller rightly pushed out at the end of that year instead of the internal candidate who could have helped her navigate these issues and had relationships and credibility to do so). Some of it was COVID (that first back to school year was an extremely challenging time to come into a school as principal; everyone was pissed for reasons totally in conflict with each other.) That was probably the nadir of parent-teacher relations, which are now back to being excellent in general. I have criticized some things about LT on this thread, but the teachers are excellent overall. Best thing about the school. Some of the parent frustration with Principal Miller is because the administrative chaos negatively effects teachers and we hear about it and hate it for them. |
Anonymous
This is all totally correct. It’s also why most people at LT complain about admin, but still love the school. The teachers are great. |
Anonymous
Not necessarily. A principal can make or break a school because teachers will leave if it’s a toxic environment for them. Then your kids experience and education is directly affected. Also principals can support or not support your teachers and that hugely affects classroom behavior management, curriculum, staff morale, etc…. |
Anonymous
The place the principal is critical is hiring. If the principal can't be bothered to hire for the special ed classrooms, the special ed kids get warehoused with long-term subs and unfollowed IEPs. Miller has some weaknesses as an administrator that annoy the teachers and don't impact the students, but she's been negligent in staffing the special ed classrooms for *three years*, leading to at least one student who went from kinder to second grade without having the same teacher for longer than two months. Special ed staffing is hard, but if you don't post your openings early, you end up hiring people with no experience and leaving a lot of empty positions. Unsurprisingly, the new hires leave because they're thrust into a situation that would be challenging even for experienced teachers. Last year, the new K-2 CES teacher quit in Oct. The experienced CES teacher left abruptly mid-year after having all the K-2 autistic kids added to her 3-5 classroom. By the end of the year, Pk3 through 5th grade IEPs were all on the remaining teacher's shoulders, and day-to-day classroom management was handed off to paraprofessionals. This is actually a big improvement over the prior two years, when the CES teachers quit in Sept and Oct and no one took over case management at all. A message board like this has a certain amount of unjustified whining, but Miller failed those vulnerable kids in a profound way, and DCPS was sued by at least two sets of parents because of it. |
Anonymous
The first bolded sentence is untrue. That teacher was fired for extremely good reason. However, I completely agree that that's partially a function of Miller and Watson seemingly being terrible at hiring in general, but specifically for SPED. Last year's SPED Coordinator was awful and then soft quit mid-year and then fully quit, so that didn't help the situation either (and she never once went into the classroom to help despite the lack of teachers).The second sentence is completely true. That teacher was excellent and asked for help and support so many times from admin and was just completely failed. |
Anonymous
I'm not surprised, although I'm pretty unhappy that parents of those students weren't informed at the time. (In fact, parents weren't informed that the teacher was gone, period. Miller, when asked why not in an LSAT meeting, said, "Oh, i thought I sent an email." Three. Weeks. After. It. Happened.) I know the previous year's teacher was either fired or should have been, too. Just bad hires. |
Anonymous
that is bad. this is also why I refused to consider a self-contained placement for my kid … so all you parents complaining about the “bad kids” in the mainstream classroom would do well to understand what goes on. |
Anonymous
Good point. There are a lot of other very good reasons to not support Kamala Harris. |
Anonymous
Yeah, the previous guy was indeed fired too. And absolutely her communication across the board is horrendous, but particularly when it comes to SpEd-related issues. |