Mad at the Board

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Oh wait…none of you will leave? That’s what I thought. Stop complaining and step up to volunteer. Get involved instead of being keyboard warriors

This attitude right here is what’s created this problem. Instead of being responsive to any concerns, the school and the board closed ranks and insisted there was no problem and that if you don’t like it, you should just leave. 20% of last year’s eighth grade did that.

I have high hopes for the school to rebound successfully, but I think the narrative needs to change and the school needs to start to consider the customers.

In the MT days with a 97% retention rate, they could put forward the ‘if you don’t like it, leave’ message, but that doesn’t work with the current environment.

I agree. The board just assumes that parents must accept anything they do. In most organizations, when serious mistakes happen, the CEO takes responsibility and steps down. In a school, the equivalent of a CEO is the president of the board of trustees.

No. The head is the CEO.🤦‍♂️

Who is ultimately responsible for the financial sustainability of a school? Just read any school website.

In any non-for-profit the board has fiduciary responsibility, but in a school, the HOS is the CEO responsible for every single function and system of the organization. The board hires the head of school to be the CEO. The head of school hires a CFO. The board expects that the CEO/HOS is the professional that knows how to run the organization. The HOS makes the budget with the CFO. Yes there is a board president and a finance chair and they exercise their fiduciary responsibility to oversee the HOS and the CFO and ask questions when appropriate. But in a school that is running well, those are strong and respectful relationships and there is a collaborative process, not a combative one.

Key important decisions like raising the tuition, managing the endowment, purchase of new assets, recruiting HoS, and borrowing all come from the board. The point is that they should also be accountable. Only in monarchies people are not accountable.

Of all the things you enumerated the only thing the board does solely is higher the HOS. Everything else isn’t conjunction with the HOS and the CFO.

[Anonymous]

*hire. And to take it a little further, the things you enumerated are financial matters and the CFO should be the smartest person at the table on all of those items. By the time those conversations reach a board meeting, the HOS, CFO, board president and finance chair have already strategized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Oh wait…none of you will leave? That’s what I thought. Stop complaining and step up to volunteer. Get involved instead of being keyboard warriors

This attitude right here is what’s created this problem. Instead of being responsive to any concerns, the school and the board closed ranks and insisted there was no problem and that if you don’t like it, you should just leave. 20% of last year’s eighth grade did that.

I have high hopes for the school to rebound successfully, but I think the narrative needs to change and the school needs to start to consider the customers.

In the MT days with a 97% retention rate, they could put forward the ‘if you don’t like it, leave’ message, but that doesn’t work with the current environment.

I agree. The board just assumes that parents must accept anything they do. In most organizations, when serious mistakes happen, the CEO takes responsibility and steps down. In a school, the equivalent of a CEO is the president of the board of trustees.

No. The head is the CEO.🤦‍♂️

Who is ultimately responsible for the financial sustainability of a school? Just read any school website.

In any non-for-profit the board has fiduciary responsibility, but in a school, the HOS is the CEO responsible for every single function and system of the organization. The board hires the head of school to be the CEO. The head of school hires a CFO. The board expects that the CEO/HOS is the professional that knows how to run the organization. The HOS makes the budget with the CFO. Yes there is a board president and a finance chair and they exercise their fiduciary responsibility to oversee the HOS and the CFO and ask questions when appropriate. But in a school that is running well, those are strong and respectful relationships and there is a collaborative process, not a combative one.

Key important decisions like raising the tuition, managing the endowment, purchase of new assets, recruiting HoS, and borrowing all come from the board. The point is that they should also be accountable. Only in monarchies people are not accountable.

By that measure, the Board is doing really well. The school’s financial health is in great footing all the while keeping a commitment to financial aid and keeping tuition lower than competitors. I think they’d happily be held accountable when it comes to financial stewardship.

Is the represented in a secret spreadsheet or report? I saw giving at the gala dwindle by 2/3 over the last few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing that stood out in the MPA meeting was how nervous and apologetic the president of the board of trustees looked—saying things like “this is a tough spot to be in,” and even apologizing for having to read a prepared statement instead of speaking to us directly about the issues. The HoS, for his part, appeared almost melancholic about the decision to leave. If this were truly his own initiative, you would expect the opposite reaction. In situations like this, you learn far more from the board members’ body language than from their actual words.

Keeping score here...So, we've gone from "he definitely was fired and there is a conspiracy/cover-up underway by the Board, which is lying like crazy to parents" to "naturally people might think that" he was fired due to the way some prior personnel issues were handled, to now relying on your interpretation of body language and the melancholic tone of speeches. I think it's time to hang up your tinfoil hat.

[Anonymous]

To answer the OP's question:

Write a letter and send a copy to each board member. Insist that the board is transparent about their actions and current plans for the hiring of the new HOS. Insist that the board hire a proper school consultant to onboard the new HOS and train the Board of Trustees. If you hear nothing back, you should consult an education law attorney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that stood out in the MPA meeting was how nervous and apologetic the president of the board of trustees looked—saying things like “this is a tough spot to be in,” and even apologizing for having to read a prepared statement instead of speaking to us directly about the issues. The HoS, for his part, appeared almost melancholic about the decision to leave. If this were truly his own initiative, you would expect the opposite reaction. In situations like this, you learn far more from the board members’ body language than from their actual words.

Keeping score here...So, we've gone from "he definitely was fired and there is a conspiracy/cover-up underway by the Board, which is lying like crazy to parents" to "naturally people might think that" he was fired due to the way some prior personnel issues were handled, to now relying on your interpretation of body language and the melancholic tone of speeches. I think it's time to hang up your tinfoil hat.

You could be a good candidate for the board. you’re completely clueless about what’s going on around you.

[Anonymous]

Conspiracy theories aside, it doesn’t really matter whether the current head was fired or chose to leave.

The real issue here is that Marjo brought the school from relative mediocrity to one competitive with other top DC schools and in two years the board and head of school have undone all her work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Conspiracy theories aside, it doesn’t really matter whether the current head was fired or chose to leave.

The real issue here is that Marjo brought the school from relative mediocrity to one competitive with other top DC schools and in two years the board and head of school have undone all her work.

If she was a strong head of school, it wouldn’t be easy to ‘undo all of her work’. Which goes to show she wasn’t a great head of school after all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Conspiracy theories aside, it doesn’t really matter whether the current head was fired or chose to leave.

The real issue here is that Marjo brought the school from relative mediocrity to one competitive with other top DC schools and in two years the board and head of school have undone all her work.

If she was a strong head of school, it wouldn’t be easy to ‘undo all of her work’. Which goes to show she wasn’t a great head of school after all.

Well, the current head is so bad that he actually managed to destroy the reputation of the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Conspiracy theories aside, it doesn’t really matter whether the current head was fired or chose to leave.

The real issue here is that Marjo brought the school from relative mediocrity to one competitive with other top DC schools and in two years the board and head of school have undone all her work.

If she was a strong head of school, it wouldn’t be easy to ‘undo all of her work’. Which goes to show she wasn’t a great head of school after all.

Geez that’s absurd.

[Anonymous]

I think the biggest problem with the board is their general arrogance

[Anonymous]

The incoming head is on the board...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the biggest problem with the board is their general arrogance

At a $50k/yr school!?! Shocking!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the biggest problem with the board is their general arrogance

Agree. According to them the source of the problem is somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

God, this was exhausting (and unenlightening) to read.

1. My child is at the school. I am not on the board. I am not invested in the board. I am not invested in Dennis, either way.
2. Half the people on this thread are trolls or have personal scores to settle. (Give it a rest, Whittle person. You are not relevant.)
3. The school is not coming apart. Parents are not at one another's throats, and the teachers are pretty good. The financial side seems competently managed in general.
4. There is an issue to talk about. The Dennis hire was a pretty serious failure. Objectively. Nobody wanted this to be a 3-year gig. Personalizing that is not the answer, but neither is not talking about it. If an organization has a major failure, figuring out what went wrong and how to do it better next time is important.
5. It is also important that the process be transparent enough to get broad buy-in from the community. The board is not the constituency here, and saying "we can't talk about it and we'll get back to you" is not the answer. My concern is that the board seems to be circling the wagons instead of saying "ok, what can we learn?"

It's not that deep.