Forum Index
»
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
Churchill Getting a New Principal
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| I'm interested in what the teachers/staff thought of her. From a parent's perspective, there's absolutely no reason to demote her, at least so early in her tenure. I wonder if there was a real problem between her and the teachers? |
Anonymous
She is guilty of doing a good job and being white |
Anonymous
| There were problems that hit the media and problems that didn’t. It’s an internal and confidential matter. |
Anonymous
I think you need to ask yourself whether principals at other schools have had some of those same or similar “internal problems” and yet are still in their position. I know of some pretty explosive things that happened elsewhere and those principals still have their jobs. If you don’t apply the same standard everywhere you will get these kinds of questions. |
Anonymous
|
Well, the radio silence on both sides would be consistent with some kind of lawsuit.
At the same time, I personally took a position similar to a principal (in a different industry, but moving from a general staff role to supervising a very large group of people) when I had little kids. And I found it to be the most stressful several years of my life-- and that was without Covid. So I think there's a real possibility that this was either her decision or a mutual decision and she just doesn't want to get into the scrum of justifying her decision. (In my case, although it was entirely my decision to step down, I'm sure that at least half of the staff reporting to me assume otherwise and why should I bother to correct them?) |
Anonymous
Nope, not trolling. I live near WC, and it happens frequently. |
Anonymous
+1 Before the pandemic the path on the cafeteria side of the building was where the drug dealing took place. Near the field hockey field. |
Anonymous
"...and being white" Got, the racism in that. She was an extraordinary advocate for changing things at Churchill that were tied to the racism found at the school, maybe too much so to an extent. Is there a problem? Yes, go on IG and read the posts for @minorityatchurhill and you'll get a sense of the problem. Is it systemic? I don't think so, but the professional training was, for the entire year, focused on this issue and many of the staff were getting sick of it. That said, she's hardly a victim of being white. |
Anonymous
| You don't need to go onto instagram to see the racism. Just read this thread in full. A thread focused on hiring a new principal turned into a thread of parents complaining that their kids were being taught not to be racist. |
Anonymous
She came in and ticked off the staff on day one when she started, and I think her first year was bad with growing pains, but I don't think she deserves being demoted to an AP at another school if that's what's happening and it seems unfair to be judged on a first year and then a pandemic year which, on the whole, I think she handled reasonably well. But at the same time I question how the academic standards have been lowered, but again that's hard to gauge relative to a year when you're working through a pandemic. Bottom line, if she's being demoted I don't think it's fair. I personally had no love for her, but at the same time I think she was trying and deserved more time to get into the job. Something that I personally didn't witness but was shared with me by a number of colleagues was her dissing Joan Benz. She seemed to deliberately want to dissociate herself from Dr. Benz, and didn't seem to want her in the building or have anything to do with her. If this is an accurate reflection of how she was acting (again, I didn't see this), then that was a huge mistake. Joan is tied to the community, has friends at MCPS, and no matter what one may think of her (I personally liked her a lot, but I thought it was time for her to retire), she deserved respect and a certain degree of solicitude, and the word was out that this was very much lacking on the part of Brandi. Brandi was more interested in what was happening on her phone (a constant thing with her, really, she was as bad as a student and being principal she was getting away with it) than in being smart about how she treated Benz. So on the whole I'd say that there was a measure of immaturity on Brandi's part, and I think that, more than anything else, was likely the reason for the change. I don't think she was necessarily given a fair chance to grow into the job, but then Churchill is a high-vis position, a tough crowd vis-a-vis the parents, and there were things which were bringing negative attention to the school in the last two years which, to some degree, Brandi had control over which she handled poorly. |
Anonymous
There are "bad" teachers in Math and Science? Really? Who and why are they "bad"? Ernst in bio, gone - an idiot from the getgo, and his interactions with female students was beyond the pale. Sanford in chemistry, where he should never have been sent to begin with, was constantly not there for one reason or another, and was thought to be drunk in the building at least once - gone. So that's 2 out of many 20, where else is there "rot"? |
Anonymous
| Wow, I’m sure this is painful for her right now, but I think in the long run she will lead a happier life somewhere else. I personally would not want that job after reading this thread. I don’t know all the details, but I’ve witnessed enough MCPS political maneuvering in my time in the district to know that people often are treated unfairly, sometimes even humiliated. They will promote someone who behaved poorly, which means someone more deserving no longer can get that position. Depending on your supervisor, you can be subpar and stick around for years, or as with Brandi, get pushed out lightning fast. I’ve seen other principals push equally hard to make changes in addressing racism, and at least one I know of has been criticized by his staff and community for being too single-minded, though neither he nor any of the others prioritizing this work have been as publicly criticized as Brandi. I think the key is that principals need to involve teachers and the community more in the anti-racism work, and at a speed they can keep up with, because this is new for a lot of people. I think the principals doing this work who succeed also will be the ones who make it clear that while anti-racism work is a main priority, they won’t be neglecting other changes that need to occur in their cluster and they will listen to the community’s broader concerns. I think the frustration for some staff and parents, at Churchill and in other W schools, is that many of the people who agree that the anti-racist work is critical also feel that other things are being neglected, like meeting the needs of students with special needs or addressing concerns about drugs, or offering enough rigor, or more in-person learning, or whatever is on people’s mind. |
Anonymous
The IG page is worth going to for the racism in the school, faculty (names are called out) and the student body. No question there's racism here, but those are the parents - the IG page is a clear indication that the apples don't fall far from the tree, but the faculty, that's a problem. Things have been said and done by faculty which clearly indicate that there's a problem. That said, I haven't a clue to what extent the issues pointed out in the IG page were ever addressed with the faculty, instead ALL of the faculty gets to go through awareness training (last year's professional training was only about equity and race) and MCPS imposes Student Learning Objectives to help us see our problems with students of color and to track them (you gotta love the idiot at MCPS who came up with that, where the acronym is SLO - students identified in a teacher's SLO are the SLOW students, I mean perfectly idiotic on the part of MCPS and that no one has addressed this with them, and here I'm assuming, is telling - you track poorly performing students, with specific emphasis on FARMS and minority, who may or may not have academic problems but you're supposed to track them using MyMCPS data which helps teachers not one bit. It does provide for an excellent pencil whipping drill twice a semester for ALL teachers, though.) |
Anonymous
Spill or it didn't happen |
Anonymous
FWIW people on this forum seem to haste Benz too.There have been multi-page threads going on and on about her ineffectiveness. Now I have no idea if any of this was warranted. People here like to complain. |