Bill de Blasio considering Jushua Starr or Andrés Alonso for NY chancellor

[Anonymous]

Two education leaders in the greater Washington region — which for the purposes of this post includes Baltimore — are believed to be among those under considering to become the next chancellor of the largest school district in the country, New York City.
Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio has said he will hire someone who has been an educator to run the school system, unlike the three people who were picked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run the district during his three terms.
According to people familiar with the thinking in the de Blasio camp, those expected to be considered for chancellor are Joshua Starr, superintendent of the high-achieving Montgomery County Public School system in Maryland, and Andrés Alonso, the former chief executive officer of Baltimore City schools, who resigned last summer after six years.

[Anonymous]

Please take Starr. Please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please take Starr. Please.

Do you honestly think MCPS will be any different if Starr weren't here?

[Anonymous]

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes.

Really? In what way? 2.0 was started under Weast. It isn't like it was never going to happen but then Starr was hired and said "hey, let's completely revamp the curriculum!"

And do you really believe that if Starr were to leave and they hire someone else, that 2.0 will go away? To automatically be replaced by a curriculum that will make everyone happy?

[Anonymous]

Starr is just a jerk- cocky, full of himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Starr is just a jerk- cocky, full of himself.

Yep, perfect description.

[Anonymous]

The better question is probably whether the Board thinks Starr is doing a good job. If so, presumably the next superintendent who gets hired can be expected to share similar priorities and give us more PR. If the Board thinks Starr is messing things up, then maybe they'll at least to try to find someone who does things differently. Be careful what you wish for, right? Anyone who had the pleasure of watching last night's CIP hearing knows that MCPS is in a bad place right now. Did you see all those kids from Poolesville??? The piece of the tennis court that accompanied the testimony of a Damascus High student? It strikes me that the Division of Long Range Planning has done a very bad job of anticipating the needs of our students and many of the short sighted decisions belong more to DLRP and Starr's predecessor. I don't fault Starr for the situation we're in, but shouldn't he be trying to bring some new talent into DLRP? He relies heavily on the conclusions arrived at by DLRP, and if he's going to do that, I think it's fair to fault him for not doing a better job of cleaning house....

[Anonymous]

Absolutely pp. He should have cleaned house, and gotten rid of those staffers who have been in the system for too many decades and whose job description consists primarily of playing with teachers' job locations and jerking them around as if they are marionettes.

[Anonymous]

Starr rose to the level of his incompetence many positions ago - each of his new positions have come about because people wanted him to be gone. Maybe we will be lucky and he will go to NY next. Fingers crossed.

[Anonymous]

Do you seriously think de Blasio will pick someone from a backwater like MCPS to run NYC? You people live in a bubble. If he does, it will be the first sign that he will return the city to the NYC of the 1980s.

[Anonymous]

I'm definitely rooting for Starr to get this job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you seriously think de Blasio will pick someone from a backwater like MCPS to run NYC? You people live in a bubble. If he does, it will be the first sign that he will return the city to the NYC of the 1980s.

It is you who lives in a bubble if you honestly believe MCPS is a backwater.

[Anonymous]

MCPS has a twenty year reputation that won't die. No MCPS is not backwater.

[Anonymous]

Did you attend the CIP hearing? It may just be really bad timing for Starr, but if NY gets a glimpse of what's really happening in MCPS, he may think twice. We may not be backwater, but we're in serious trouble thanks in no small part to the short-sighted planning of the division of long range planning. It's like they never see the little or the big picture, they just produce memos and go to meetings or who knows what. And now it's coming into focus that many of our schools are falling down, they aren't big enough to house the kids, the system is ill equipped to meet the diverse needs of a huge student population, everything is bogged down by painfully slow and needlessly complicated bureaucracy etc. etc. it's a train wreck.