A quarter of the teachers at Lakewood Elementary are leaving.

[Anonymous]

If Her boss Direct Michelle Schultze is also not listening to the concerns from the parents, time to contact the boss of Mrs. Schultze.

Mr. Peter O Moran, Associate Superintendent, looks like is the supervisor.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMFd46tqGytxLSlOjzKRLsH3vJGtU46u2kDXpZaM0GA/edit#gid=148468415

If the situation is really this bad, (1) setup a change.org petition to show the unity of the community and requesting a dialogue (not principal replacement), (2) email Mr. Moran and cc Mrs. Schultz and Principal Kelly.

Following are some examples: (not saying these are successful or not successful)
https://www.change.org/p/mr-nardi-remove-dear-from-thomas-w-pyle-middle-school
https://www.change.org/p/craig-staton-make-julius-west-ms-stop-giving-students-the-myp-classroom-because-it-is-boring
https://www.change.org/p/remove-connect-time-at-hoover

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really comes down to having exit interviews for departing staff (at Lakewood and all schools). The county should have a way to determine if teachers are fleeing a school due to a principal or for a myriad of other reasons. If teachers are fleeing the school, then the central office absolutely should intervene. There is a HUGE teacher shortage and the last thing that is needed is for MCPS not to be able to retain the talent that they have due to a principal.

I do not work at this school, but at another MCPS elementary school that is also seeing a lot of fleeing staff. At our school, it is absolutely tied to a weak principal but also due to county policies around not being able to discipline children who are physically and mentally abusing teachers and other students. Each day is a struggle to get through even if I never see the principal. I think this is equally important for the central office to know that their policies are not evening out the playing field, but instead making kids feel that school is not a safe place.

They don’t even seem to do surveys anymore. If one was done this year, it wasn’t published. I think a lot of principals were hemorrhaging teachers before the pandemic but now can blame it on that. Rarely is anything done to improve the working conditions for teachers in schools with ineffective leaders.

Exactly, MCPS doesn’t seem to care at all. After seeing so many complaints from parents, her boss director Michelle Schultze still came out to fully support her and told the community the Principal did nothing wrong. It’s just beyond ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Her boss Direct Michelle Schultze is also not listening to the concerns from the parents, time to contact the boss of Mrs. Schultze.

Mr. Peter O Moran, Associate Superintendent, looks like is the supervisor.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMFd46tqGytxLSlOjzKRLsH3vJGtU46u2kDXpZaM0GA/edit#gid=148468415

If the situation is really this bad, (1) setup a change.org petition to show the unity of the community and requesting a dialogue (not principal replacement), (2) email Mr. Moran and cc Mrs. Schultz and Principal Kelly.

Following are some examples: (not saying these are successful or not successful)
https://www.change.org/p/mr-nardi-remove-dear-from-thomas-w-pyle-middle-school
https://www.change.org/p/craig-staton-make-julius-west-ms-stop-giving-students-the-myp-classroom-because-it-is-boring
https://www.change.org/p/remove-connect-time-at-hoover

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really comes down to having exit interviews for departing staff (at Lakewood and all schools). The county should have a way to determine if teachers are fleeing a school due to a principal or for a myriad of other reasons. If teachers are fleeing the school, then the central office absolutely should intervene. There is a HUGE teacher shortage and the last thing that is needed is for MCPS not to be able to retain the talent that they have due to a principal.

I do not work at this school, but at another MCPS elementary school that is also seeing a lot of fleeing staff. At our school, it is absolutely tied to a weak principal but also due to county policies around not being able to discipline children who are physically and mentally abusing teachers and other students. Each day is a struggle to get through even if I never see the principal. I think this is equally important for the central office to know that their policies are not evening out the playing field, but instead making kids feel that school is not a safe place.

They don’t even seem to do surveys anymore. If one was done this year, it wasn’t published. I think a lot of principals were hemorrhaging teachers before the pandemic but now can blame it on that. Rarely is anything done to improve the working conditions for teachers in schools with ineffective leaders.

Exactly, MCPS doesn’t seem to care at all. After seeing so many complaints from parents, her boss director Michelle Schultze still came out to fully support her and told the community the Principal did nothing wrong. It’s just beyond ridiculous.

Peter Moran is in the CC list from Schultze’s response to parents. He knows the whole situation.

[Anonymous]

Looks like Mr. Moran was quite famous. Time to quote his excellent work Glenallan ES such "He often rides the bus to and from school to enhance relationships with students and parents" and asked to be treated the same as in Lakewood ES.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/951037.page

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Her boss Direct Michelle Schultze is also not listening to the concerns from the parents, time to contact the boss of Mrs. Schultze.

Mr. Peter O Moran, Associate Superintendent, looks like is the supervisor.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMFd46tqGytxLSlOjzKRLsH3vJGtU46u2kDXpZaM0GA/edit#gid=148468415

If the situation is really this bad, (1) setup a change.org petition to show the unity of the community and requesting a dialogue (not principal replacement), (2) email Mr. Moran and cc Mrs. Schultz and Principal Kelly.

Following are some examples: (not saying these are successful or not successful)
https://www.change.org/p/mr-nardi-remove-dear-from-thomas-w-pyle-middle-school
https://www.change.org/p/craig-staton-make-julius-west-ms-stop-giving-students-the-myp-classroom-because-it-is-boring
https://www.change.org/p/remove-connect-time-at-hoover

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really comes down to having exit interviews for departing staff (at Lakewood and all schools). The county should have a way to determine if teachers are fleeing a school due to a principal or for a myriad of other reasons. If teachers are fleeing the school, then the central office absolutely should intervene. There is a HUGE teacher shortage and the last thing that is needed is for MCPS not to be able to retain the talent that they have due to a principal.

I do not work at this school, but at another MCPS elementary school that is also seeing a lot of fleeing staff. At our school, it is absolutely tied to a weak principal but also due to county policies around not being able to discipline children who are physically and mentally abusing teachers and other students. Each day is a struggle to get through even if I never see the principal. I think this is equally important for the central office to know that their policies are not evening out the playing field, but instead making kids feel that school is not a safe place.

They don’t even seem to do surveys anymore. If one was done this year, it wasn’t published. I think a lot of principals were hemorrhaging teachers before the pandemic but now can blame it on that. Rarely is anything done to improve the working conditions for teachers in schools with ineffective leaders.

Exactly, MCPS doesn’t seem to care at all. After seeing so many complaints from parents, her boss director Michelle Schultze still came out to fully support her and told the community the Principal did nothing wrong. It’s just beyond ridiculous.

Peter Moran is in the CC list from Schultze’s response to parents. He knows the whole situation.

[Anonymous]

So in yesterday's fifth grade promotion ceremony the students sang the "Black National Anthem".

I personally missed the title of it because I was watching the students. The music was drowning out the students and I couldn't really tell what was going on.

It wasn't until later that I heard people pointing out that the title on the screen was Black National Anthem and that several of their kids said that they didn't want to sing it.

I didn't even know that there was a Black National Anthem and you couldn't help but wonder if the technical difficulties were really a way of teachers protesting.

But this morning I had to look it up and found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i30SdcfEpSE

And it's a beautiful song with a beautiful message, helped conveyed by the video too. And thinking about, it probably really was technical difficulties where it was probably one of the few songs that had background music/singing that students had to sing over.

But coming from Dr. Kelly, and having no background on the song and the way things have been going on, all the families saw on the big screen were the words Black National Anthem. So what were families supposed to think?

In regards to previous poster commenting about optics, this should've been put in consideration when choosing a principal for the school. If there's any conflicts with the community, it can't help looking the way it is because that's how the community is made up. Several years ago supposedly there was a community in MCPS that was able to change their principal because they wanted a principal that looked like them and could relate to them. So they were able to drive out that current principal and replace them with a principal of color. I'm not saying that it needs to go to that level but leadership should've considered the potential optics of this kind of thing. It's reasonable to expect conflicts with a principal.

And this isn't a "Black" thing. The principal at Frost, who is also Black, also gave a short speech. And a lot of people noted how different and positive his energy was compared to Dr. Kelly's. So people are hopeful for a more positive experience at Frost. MCPS has a lot of great Black leaders. The one major difference is that I would guess a lot of them are experienced.

The defenders of Dr. Kelly, or the ones willing to give her a benefit of the doubt, say that her issues are just due to her inexperience. And this leads to her communication issues. For example instead of coming in and seemingly saying:
"I'm going to change you all and make you all an antiracist community"

Something like this would've come across better:
"I value diversity and equity. I'm also a big supporter and believer in Dr. McKnight's mission.... In the coming years you can expect..."
and then of course make gradual changes depending on the type of changes.

Then with her staff, it probably would've been helpful to have discussions in advance on her plans and why she was going to make the changes. And if she thought some changes were more "beneficial" for them (ie they weren't doing a good job in their previous position) or their actions weren't acceptable, be frank about it, so it'd easier for them to take.

Then with last night's song. It would've helped a lot if she gave some background on the song. The community is already distrustful of her. So if all they see is the words Black National Anthem on the screen, it's kind of reasonable for them to be skeptical. I know I was when I found out.

It's kind of like Dr. Kelly said, the only way you learn to chop down a tree, is to actually go out and chop it down.

And if I'm willing to look at things in a different way, I can see how a lot of Dr. Kelly's issues is due to her inexperience, including her ignorance. But her inexperience, actions and decisions lead to questions if she really has the benefit of the students and school in mind. And I don't think many people are willing to let their students be negatively impacted while she's learning her way.

Also during the townhall meeting, it's not a good look when our kids come in and look at the screen and seeing other parents tear into Dr. Kelly or seeing her tear up and have her to turn off her screen for a moment. I've wanted to ask my kids if they hear anything from other kids about any opinions about Dr. Kelly but end up not wanting to because don't want them to have any seeds of negativity towards her. But who knows what goes on in other households and what kids hear.

Dr. Kelly really needs to reconsider how she comes across and some of her decisions and actions she's making. There's a big question on if she's willing to change and a lot of families see her as digging in and fighting back more. There's a question if she's ready and maybe would benefit of going through more training. And there's already a lot of damage done with the relationship in the community and I'm not sure how easy it would be to fix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like a hot mess over there but the point about the meeting being locked to MCPS-only accounts as some kind of nefarious plot is completely off the mark. MCPS Zoom accounts have always been locked down so only MCPS email addresses can log in, since early 2020. It's a systemwide setting and schools can't change it. It's for security and to block Zoom-bombing by trolls, not a new plot against Lakewood ES parents. They should have communicated better that you needed to be on your child's account to log in, but locking the meeting like that has been standard and unchangeable for years.

As for recording it, no. You must be joking. It is 100% guaranteed in 2023 that some unhinged parent would share it around and somebody would take snips from it and blast it on TikTok or Twitter and the lunatic fringe from 4chan would SWAT the school in an anti-DEI frenzy or something. Public discourse is in the gutter. I don't blame them for not providing loaded weapons to use against themselves. People these days get very angry about everything and can't be trusted.

It doesn't mean that everybody in this thread doesn't have very valid concerns and that things aren't being poorly run over there, but those specific criticisms I think are not well-made.

I work for the Virtual Academy, and there is a setting MCPS enabled so that we can unlock that setting. We do that for equitable purposes as well as record meetings outside of the school setting for parents (again, equity). This principal was doing her own thing. People are right to be upset.

I stand corrected. But I still don't think it was out of line not to do so. People have lost their minds about education and civilized behavior. Recording innocuous Virtual Academy sessions is different. Do you actually think somebody wouldn't have shared snippets of a recording around to "just a few people" and the next thing you know, it's a TikTok meme and the phones are deluged with hate calls? Really?

So she had a right not to be recorded for fear of being ridiculed? It’s HER JOB to address and inform the community. Since so many people wanted to join the call but were not able to log in, that 100% warrants recording the meeting. There’s a lot to be said if the principal can’t even handle that responsibility.

I do see your point about social media being an issue, and that makes sense. However, I also think that when the meeting is over 150 people, like it was on Monday, the cat is already out of the bag. Any sufficiently motivated and tech-savvy parent (and there are a lot of them at Lakewood...) could screen record the meeting, or just record the screen with a phone. If she can explain and justify her policies to the 150+ members of the community that attended the meeting, what she said should also be heard by other members of the community as well.

It's also to her own benefit. Parents can't accuse her of lying or put words in her mouth if she has a video to support what she says, right?

[Anonymous]

Lakewood has been a mess for a very long time. We pulled our DD after two years of 30+ kids in the classroom with one teacher. That was probably 2 principals ago, but they seemed like they were coasting even then. Lesson learned - look carefully at your elementary schools even when the high school is "highly rated."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really comes down to having exit interviews for departing staff (at Lakewood and all schools). The county should have a way to determine if teachers are fleeing a school due to a principal or for a myriad of other reasons. If teachers are fleeing the school, then the central office absolutely should intervene. There is a HUGE teacher shortage and the last thing that is needed is for MCPS not to be able to retain the talent that they have due to a principal.

I do not work at this school, but at another MCPS elementary school that is also seeing a lot of fleeing staff. At our school, it is absolutely tied to a weak principal but also due to county policies around not being able to discipline children who are physically and mentally abusing teachers and other students. Each day is a struggle to get through even if I never see the principal. I think this is equally important for the central office to know that their policies are not evening out the playing field, but instead making kids feel that school is not a safe place.

They don’t even seem to do surveys anymore. If one was done this year, it wasn’t published. I think a lot of principals were hemorrhaging teachers before the pandemic but now can blame it on that. Rarely is anything done to improve the working conditions for teachers in schools with ineffective leaders.

Exactly, MCPS doesn’t seem to care at all. After seeing so many complaints from parents, her boss director Michelle Schultze still came out to fully support her and told the community the Principal did nothing wrong. It’s just beyond ridiculous.

I think we need to be more effective where we apply pressure. Michelle Schultze is retiring soon, so she probably really doesn't GAF. As far as she is concerned, she just needs to fend off these parents long enough for her to ride off into the sunset, at which point it will no longer be her problem. Why would she bother making waves or starting the process when she can just coast for the next couple months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really comes down to having exit interviews for departing staff (at Lakewood and all schools). The county should have a way to determine if teachers are fleeing a school due to a principal or for a myriad of other reasons. If teachers are fleeing the school, then the central office absolutely should intervene. There is a HUGE teacher shortage and the last thing that is needed is for MCPS not to be able to retain the talent that they have due to a principal.

I do not work at this school, but at another MCPS elementary school that is also seeing a lot of fleeing staff. At our school, it is absolutely tied to a weak principal but also due to county policies around not being able to discipline children who are physically and mentally abusing teachers and other students. Each day is a struggle to get through even if I never see the principal. I think this is equally important for the central office to know that their policies are not evening out the playing field, but instead making kids feel that school is not a safe place.

They don’t even seem to do surveys anymore. If one was done this year, it wasn’t published. I think a lot of principals were hemorrhaging teachers before the pandemic but now can blame it on that. Rarely is anything done to improve the working conditions for teachers in schools with ineffective leaders.

Exactly, MCPS doesn’t seem to care at all. After seeing so many complaints from parents, her boss director Michelle Schultze still came out to fully support her and told the community the Principal did nothing wrong. It’s just beyond ridiculous.

I think we need to be more effective where we apply pressure. Michelle Schultze is retiring soon, so she probably really doesn't GAF. As far as she is concerned, she just needs to fend off these parents long enough for her to ride off into the sunset, at which point it will no longer be her problem. Why would she bother making waves or starting the process when she can just coast for the next couple months.

I'm not even sure going through the chain is helpful. It probably the right place to start but it looks like it's not effective.

It seems like the role of the management is to support the principal.

And maybe it's best to bring these issues to the BOE who is supposed to represent the community?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really comes down to having exit interviews for departing staff (at Lakewood and all schools). The county should have a way to determine if teachers are fleeing a school due to a principal or for a myriad of other reasons. If teachers are fleeing the school, then the central office absolutely should intervene. There is a HUGE teacher shortage and the last thing that is needed is for MCPS not to be able to retain the talent that they have due to a principal.

I do not work at this school, but at another MCPS elementary school that is also seeing a lot of fleeing staff. At our school, it is absolutely tied to a weak principal but also due to county policies around not being able to discipline children who are physically and mentally abusing teachers and other students. Each day is a struggle to get through even if I never see the principal. I think this is equally important for the central office to know that their policies are not evening out the playing field, but instead making kids feel that school is not a safe place.

They don’t even seem to do surveys anymore. If one was done this year, it wasn’t published. I think a lot of principals were hemorrhaging teachers before the pandemic but now can blame it on that. Rarely is anything done to improve the working conditions for teachers in schools with ineffective leaders.

Exactly, MCPS doesn’t seem to care at all. After seeing so many complaints from parents, her boss director Michelle Schultze still came out to fully support her and told the community the Principal did nothing wrong. It’s just beyond ridiculous.

I think we need to be more effective where we apply pressure. Michelle Schultze is retiring soon, so she probably really doesn't GAF. As far as she is concerned, she just needs to fend off these parents long enough for her to ride off into the sunset, at which point it will no longer be her problem. Why would she bother making waves or starting the process when she can just coast for the next couple months.

It's not about parents applying the right pressure. MCPS has an organizational culture that is AVERSE to accountability for its own. They will defend their own NO MATTER WHAT. Even when they're wrong. On the off chance they do admit the MCPS official erred, they'll either just chalk it up to a misunderstanding or just move that official somewhere within the system, sometimes even PROMOTING them to central office.

It's a cultural problem. MCPS is allergic to change, accountability and transparency. They like the smoke and mirrors and they'll tell you one thing while they do another.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So in yesterday's fifth grade promotion ceremony the students sang the "Black National Anthem".

I personally missed the title of it because I was watching the students. The music was drowning out the students and I couldn't really tell what was going on.

It wasn't until later that I heard people pointing out that the title on the screen was Black National Anthem and that several of their kids said that they didn't want to sing it.

I didn't even know that there was a Black National Anthem and you couldn't help but wonder if the technical difficulties were really a way of teachers protesting.

But this morning I had to look it up and found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i30SdcfEpSE

And it's a beautiful song with a beautiful message, helped conveyed by the video too. And thinking about, it probably really was technical difficulties where it was probably one of the few songs that had background music/singing that students had to sing over.

But coming from Dr. Kelly, and having no background on the song and the way things have been going on, all the families saw on the big screen were the words Black National Anthem. So what were families supposed to think?

In regards to previous poster commenting about optics, this should've been put in consideration when choosing a principal for the school. If there's any conflicts with the community, it can't help looking the way it is because that's how the community is made up. Several years ago supposedly there was a community in MCPS that was able to change their principal because they wanted a principal that looked like them and could relate to them. So they were able to drive out that current principal and replace them with a principal of color. I'm not saying that it needs to go to that level but leadership should've considered the potential optics of this kind of thing. It's reasonable to expect conflicts with a principal.

And this isn't a "Black" thing. The principal at Frost, who is also Black, also gave a short speech. And a lot of people noted how different and positive his energy was compared to Dr. Kelly's. So people are hopeful for a more positive experience at Frost. MCPS has a lot of great Black leaders. The one major difference is that I would guess a lot of them are experienced.

The defenders of Dr. Kelly, or the ones willing to give her a benefit of the doubt, say that her issues are just due to her inexperience. And this leads to her communication issues. For example instead of coming in and seemingly saying:
"I'm going to change you all and make you all an antiracist community"

Something like this would've come across better:
"I value diversity and equity. I'm also a big supporter and believer in Dr. McKnight's mission.... In the coming years you can expect..."
and then of course make gradual changes depending on the type of changes.

Then with her staff, it probably would've been helpful to have discussions in advance on her plans and why she was going to make the changes. And if she thought some changes were more "beneficial" for them (ie they weren't doing a good job in their previous position) or their actions weren't acceptable, be frank about it, so it'd easier for them to take.

Then with last night's song. It would've helped a lot if she gave some background on the song. The community is already distrustful of her. So if all they see is the words Black National Anthem on the screen, it's kind of reasonable for them to be skeptical. I know I was when I found out.

It's kind of like Dr. Kelly said, the only way you learn to chop down a tree, is to actually go out and chop it down.

And if I'm willing to look at things in a different way, I can see how a lot of Dr. Kelly's issues is due to her inexperience, including her ignorance. But her inexperience, actions and decisions lead to questions if she really has the benefit of the students and school in mind. And I don't think many people are willing to let their students be negatively impacted while she's learning her way.

Also during the townhall meeting, it's not a good look when our kids come in and look at the screen and seeing other parents tear into Dr. Kelly or seeing her tear up and have her to turn off her screen for a moment. I've wanted to ask my kids if they hear anything from other kids about any opinions about Dr. Kelly but end up not wanting to because don't want them to have any seeds of negativity towards her. But who knows what goes on in other households and what kids hear.

Dr. Kelly really needs to reconsider how she comes across and some of her decisions and actions she's making. There's a big question on if she's willing to change and a lot of families see her as digging in and fighting back more. There's a question if she's ready and maybe would benefit of going through more training. And there's already a lot of damage done with the relationship in the community and I'm not sure how easy it would be to fix.

I am having big troubles understanding why she is making big decisions at this time. Teacher grade shuffle is one of them. The other thing is that she is trying to get rid of 4th and 5th grade departmentalization. It seems she just announced it in the townhall and then she will just implement it in the coming fall without much input from parents. Hard to understand why she’s trying to mess up the current system while being onboard for less than a year. What is the agenda behind it? What’s the hurry? Why is she not giving us enough time and opportunities to give feedback? It all comes down to lack of transparency and communication but I don’t see that she’s going to change her style.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At MCPS middle school I was at about 1/3 of the staff left when a new principal came in.

Staff turnover with new principals is unfortunately not unusual especially when the previous principal has been there a long time.

Happy teachers like to have a niche with little micromanagement from admin.

Now you are treating extreme cases as the norm. Are u expect that to happen in every school?

Read the research paper shared in previous thread
https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departmen...20Report%20Final.pdf

This was a middle school that had a very high population, special programs that often burned new teachers out, and in a location where staff often didnt want to live near since it was away from most major transportation. A lot of young staff. Add in a new principal and get a lot of the situations mentioned in the report as resulting in relatively high staff turnover.

[Anonymous]

I agreed that using MCPS-only account is reasonable to prevent zoom-bombing. Maybe sufficient advance notices were not given (that is a leadership team issue) Is the Assistant Principal also new? Wouldn't the AP remind the Principal too?

Speaking of the school leadership team, where is the Assistant Principal?

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like a hot mess over there but the point about the meeting being locked to MCPS-only accounts as some kind of nefarious plot is completely off the mark. MCPS Zoom accounts have always been locked down so only MCPS email addresses can log in, since early 2020. It's a systemwide setting and schools can't change it. It's for security and to block Zoom-bombing by trolls, not a new plot against Lakewood ES parents. They should have communicated better that you needed to be on your child's account to log in, but locking the meeting like that has been standard and unchangeable for years.

As for recording it, no. You must be joking. It is 100% guaranteed in 2023 that some unhinged parent would share it around and somebody would take snips from it and blast it on TikTok or Twitter and the lunatic fringe from 4chan would SWAT the school in an anti-DEI frenzy or something. Public discourse is in the gutter. I don't blame them for not providing loaded weapons to use against themselves. People these days get very angry about everything and can't be trusted.

It doesn't mean that everybody in this thread doesn't have very valid concerns and that things aren't being poorly run over there, but those specific criticisms I think are not well-made.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for pointing out her messaging part. But as a new principal, shouldn't "We" is more powerful than using I and You?

Anonymous wrote:So in yesterday's fifth grade promotion ceremony the students sang the "Black National Anthem".

I personally missed the title of it because I was watching the students. The music was drowning out the students and I couldn't really tell what was going on.

It wasn't until later that I heard people pointing out that the title on the screen was Black National Anthem and that several of their kids said that they didn't want to sing it.

I didn't even know that there was a Black National Anthem and you couldn't help but wonder if the technical difficulties were really a way of teachers protesting.

But this morning I had to look it up and found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i30SdcfEpSE

And it's a beautiful song with a beautiful message, helped conveyed by the video too. And thinking about, it probably really was technical difficulties where it was probably one of the few songs that had background music/singing that students had to sing over.

But coming from Dr. Kelly, and having no background on the song and the way things have been going on, all the families saw on the big screen were the words Black National Anthem. So what were families supposed to think?

In regards to previous poster commenting about optics, this should've been put in consideration when choosing a principal for the school. If there's any conflicts with the community, it can't help looking the way it is because that's how the community is made up. Several years ago supposedly there was a community in MCPS that was able to change their principal because they wanted a principal that looked like them and could relate to them. So they were able to drive out that current principal and replace them with a principal of color. I'm not saying that it needs to go to that level but leadership should've considered the potential optics of this kind of thing. It's reasonable to expect conflicts with a principal.

And this isn't a "Black" thing. The principal at Frost, who is also Black, also gave a short speech. And a lot of people noted how different and positive his energy was compared to Dr. Kelly's. So people are hopeful for a more positive experience at Frost. MCPS has a lot of great Black leaders. The one major difference is that I would guess a lot of them are experienced.

The defenders of Dr. Kelly, or the ones willing to give her a benefit of the doubt, say that her issues are just due to her inexperience. And this leads to her communication issues. For example instead of coming in and seemingly saying:
"I'm going to change you all and make you all an antiracist community"

Something like this would've come across better:
"I value diversity and equity. I'm also a big supporter and believer in Dr. McKnight's mission.... In the coming years you can expect..."
and then of course make gradual changes depending on the type of changes.

Then with her staff, it probably would've been helpful to have discussions in advance on her plans and why she was going to make the changes. And if she thought some changes were more "beneficial" for them (ie they weren't doing a good job in their previous position) or their actions weren't acceptable, be frank about it, so it'd easier for them to take.

Then with last night's song. It would've helped a lot if she gave some background on the song. The community is already distrustful of her. So if all they see is the words Black National Anthem on the screen, it's kind of reasonable for them to be skeptical. I know I was when I found out.

It's kind of like Dr. Kelly said, the only way you learn to chop down a tree, is to actually go out and chop it down.

And if I'm willing to look at things in a different way, I can see how a lot of Dr. Kelly's issues is due to her inexperience, including her ignorance. But her inexperience, actions and decisions lead to questions if she really has the benefit of the students and school in mind. And I don't think many people are willing to let their students be negatively impacted while she's learning her way.

Also during the townhall meeting, it's not a good look when our kids come in and look at the screen and seeing other parents tear into Dr. Kelly or seeing her tear up and have her to turn off her screen for a moment. I've wanted to ask my kids if they hear anything from other kids about any opinions about Dr. Kelly but end up not wanting to because don't want them to have any seeds of negativity towards her. But who knows what goes on in other households and what kids hear.

Dr. Kelly really needs to reconsider how she comes across and some of her decisions and actions she's making. There's a big question on if she's willing to change and a lot of families see her as digging in and fighting back more. There's a question if she's ready and maybe would benefit of going through more training. And there's already a lot of damage done with the relationship in the community and I'm not sure how easy it would be to fix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for pointing out her messaging part. But as a new principal, shouldn't "We" is more powerful than using I and You?

lol I'm not really good at wording things. But then again I'm also not in a position to be a leader in the community and have to be aware of how I word things.

But that is how I interpreted her message for the entire year. "Yeah I'm going to teach and change you all..."

And if she gave some background on herself, her goals and her vision or even if that it's the overall school system's mission, it would've come across a lot differently then it did.

After looking at the situation a little bit more, I think some of it might've been her enthusiasm was misinterpreted. But I also think she wasn't aware and sensitive of the community and I know she offended me in her messages and have to be skeptical about the way she does some things.

In regards to departmentalization, I don't even know what that is. I've had some people try to describe it to me. I logged on to the townhall late and saw others were asking what it meant too. But I figured it was discussed earlier and I could find out what it was and the pros and cons when I watched the video recording of the meeting. Oops....

Who knows. She may have some really great ideas. But I don't think anyone really trusts her. It might've helped if she got her staff, who the community does know and trust, to buy in and support her and her vision. But that's not the way she chose to go about it.

[Anonymous]

So, I really don't think parents are going to get what they want here because nothing I've seen described in this thread goes outside the purview of a principal within their own school.

Moving teachers between grade levels, choosing to departmentalize (or not) certain grades, stating that she wants to take an anti-racist approach, being a Black woman in a plurality Asian American school.

None of those are things that MCPS is going to fire someone for, even if they did a bad job communicating, because the last thing MCPS wants is parents rising up and demanding a principal be replaced every time an administrator makes a decision that parents disagree with.