Letter from Cancellor re moving schools - opps - I got caught moving my kid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He resigned, or the mayor asked for his resignation.

that's just code for fired. He serves at her discretion in addition to being subject to termination due to cause.

Does he get any severance pay?

[Anonymous]

Just received an email from DCPS addressed from the Mayor and I'm puzzled by the one line:

"Over the last decade, DCPS has made historic strides, as we become one of the leaders in education reform in the nation".

How are the strides shes implying worth reporting as they're all plagued by scandals?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just received an email from DCPS addressed from the Mayor and I'm puzzled by the one line:

"Over the last decade, DCPS has made historic strides, as we become one of the leaders in education reform in the nation".

How are the strides shes implying worth reporting as they're all plagued by scandals?

History is written by the winners...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He resigned, or the mayor asked for his resignation.

that's just code for fired. He serves at her discretion in addition to being subject to termination due to cause.

Does he get any severance pay?

Depends on the contract.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He resigned, or the mayor asked for his resignation.

that's just code for fired. He serves at her discretion in addition to being subject to termination due to cause.

Does he get any severance pay?

Depends on the contract.

WAMU/Austermuhle reported on Twitter than his departure would be 'negotiated.' Details have not been worked out yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He resigned, or the mayor asked for his resignation.

that's just code for fired. He serves at her discretion in addition to being subject to termination due to cause.

Does he get any severance pay?

Depends on the contract.

WAMU/Austermuhle reported on Twitter than his departure would be 'negotiated.' Details have not been worked out yet.

https://twitter.com/maustermuhle/status/966079410972581889

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interim replacement for Wilson will be Amanda Alexander, chief of DCPS elementary schools

https://twitter.com/PeteJamison/status/966059982448885760

Does anyone know anything about her?

https://dcps.dc.gov/biography/dr-amanda-alexander

Dr. Amanda Alexander is the Chief of the Office of Elementary Schools for the District of Columbia Public Schools. She provides leadership and vision for the district’s elementary schools and supervises a team of instructional superintendents. She also oversees early childhood programs (Pre-K3 and Pre-K4) and the federal Head Start program.

Dr. Alexander began her career with DCPS in 1998 as a kindergarten teacher at Walker-Jones Elementary School. She later joined New Leaders for New Schools and served as an assistant principal at PS 40 and PS 2 in New York City’s highly acclaimed District 2. With a refined understanding of progressive pedagogies in reading and writing and approaches to teacher professional development, she returned to DCPS to serve as the principal at Bunker Hill Elementary School and later Ross Elementary School. Under her leadership, both schools saw double digit gains in literacy and mathematics. The successes at these diverse schools led then Chancellor Michelle Rhee to charge Dr. Alexander with the redesign of the structure for principal supervision and the management of a cluster of elementary schools as an instructional superintendent. As evidenced by student achievement outcomes, attendance and teacher quality, her cluster of schools significantly outperformed other clusters in the district.

2013, she was asked by Chancellor Kaya Henderson to serve as the Deputy Chief of Schools and focus solely on the recruitment, development, and supervision of the K-12 instructional superintendent team. By leveraging a generous grant from the Wallace Foundation, she provided extensive professional learning opportunities for instructional superintendents focused on the knowledge and skills necessary to support principals in an era of new rigorous standards for student learning. For the pioneering work in the field of principal supervision, DCPS was featured in a documentary and publication of the foundation. Over the course of her time as a central office administrator, Dr. Alexander has also led literacy initiatives and a district-wide taskforce to identify and implement evidenced-based practices to improve student performance. Her efforts in this area have been recognized by the Reading Recovery Council of North America as she is the organization’s 2018 recipient of the Excellence in Literacy Leadership Award.

Dr. Alexander has a B.A. in English and a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Howard University, a M.S.Ed. in educational leadership from Baruch College, and a Ph.D. in education from American University.

Nice to see someone who has taken a solid upward trajectory without skipping steps. Always frustrated that Rhee only taught for 3 years and never served in an administrative role in a school system before becoming chancellor. You need that organizational and institutional experience to understand the impacts of your policies.

Good to see someone with solid educational credentials.

Wow, she sounds actually qualified.

Team Alexander!!

so why was she passed over just a year ago?

Because the likes of Kamras, John Davis, etc. wanted the job and had more seniority etc... so picking her would have been difficult to justify vs. an outside candidate. Kamras and Davis have both gone elsewhere, thankfully. They passed over her a year ago because they’d never actually pick someone with recent, sustained school based experience and a background heavier in actual teaching and pedagogy than policy / management. Now they couldn’t get someone outside DC within their right mind to touch this job so they somewhat accidentally landed on someone with some actual school experience. I’m hopeful for her but not at all surprised she was never a top choice to begin with. If you’ve never heard of her it’s probably because she doesn’t spend her time posturing and spinning PR... and cheating. Refreshing. Signed, A DCPS Teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I asked in another thread and it sounds like one of his kids is at Wilson, but not sure where the rest are.

what other school would his kid have been at if it is HS. Did he move from Wilson to SWW? Or are we talking middle school. Hardy to deal?

Ellington to Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He resigned, or the mayor asked for his resignation.

that's just code for fired. He serves at her discretion in addition to being subject to termination due to cause.

Does he get any severance pay?

With cause $70K without case double

[Anonymous]

I'm a DCPS teacher and I thought Chancellor Wilson had good ideas and was open to change. But I 100% think he had to resign over this. And I don't feel bad for him, ignoring your own policy is just dumb. There was no excuse whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

Amanda has climbed her way up the ladder slow and steady. It will be interesting to see what she does and how long they keep her as the interim. Timing was right.
She is one of the few that held on.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interim replacement for Wilson will be Amanda Alexander, chief of DCPS elementary schools

https://twitter.com/PeteJamison/status/966059982448885760

Does anyone know anything about her?

https://dcps.dc.gov/biography/dr-amanda-alexander

Dr. Amanda Alexander is the Chief of the Office of Elementary Schools for the District of Columbia Public Schools. She provides leadership and vision for the district’s elementary schools and supervises a team of instructional superintendents. She also oversees early childhood programs (Pre-K3 and Pre-K4) and the federal Head Start program.

Dr. Alexander began her career with DCPS in 1998 as a kindergarten teacher at Walker-Jones Elementary School. She later joined New Leaders for New Schools and served as an assistant principal at PS 40 and PS 2 in New York City’s highly acclaimed District 2. With a refined understanding of progressive pedagogies in reading and writing and approaches to teacher professional development, she returned to DCPS to serve as the principal at Bunker Hill Elementary School and later Ross Elementary School. Under her leadership, both schools saw double digit gains in literacy and mathematics. The successes at these diverse schools led then Chancellor Michelle Rhee to charge Dr. Alexander with the redesign of the structure for principal supervision and the management of a cluster of elementary schools as an instructional superintendent. As evidenced by student achievement outcomes, attendance and teacher quality, her cluster of schools significantly outperformed other clusters in the district.

2013, she was asked by Chancellor Kaya Henderson to serve as the Deputy Chief of Schools and focus solely on the recruitment, development, and supervision of the K-12 instructional superintendent team. By leveraging a generous grant from the Wallace Foundation, she provided extensive professional learning opportunities for instructional superintendents focused on the knowledge and skills necessary to support principals in an era of new rigorous standards for student learning. For the pioneering work in the field of principal supervision, DCPS was featured in a documentary and publication of the foundation. Over the course of her time as a central office administrator, Dr. Alexander has also led literacy initiatives and a district-wide taskforce to identify and implement evidenced-based practices to improve student performance. Her efforts in this area have been recognized by the Reading Recovery Council of North America as she is the organization’s 2018 recipient of the Excellence in Literacy Leadership Award.

Dr. Alexander has a B.A. in English and a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Howard University, a M.S.Ed. in educational leadership from Baruch College, and a Ph.D. in education from American University.

Nice to see someone who has taken a solid upward trajectory without skipping steps. Always frustrated that Rhee only taught for 3 years and never served in an administrative role in a school system before becoming chancellor. You need that organizational and institutional experience to understand the impacts of your policies.

Good to see someone with solid educational credentials.

Wow, she sounds actually qualified.

Team Alexander!!

so why was she passed over just a year ago?

Because the likes of Kamras, John Davis, etc. wanted the job and had more seniority etc... so picking her would have been difficult to justify vs. an outside candidate. Kamras and Davis have both gone elsewhere, thankfully. They passed over her a year ago because they’d never actually pick someone with recent, sustained school based experience and a background heavier in actual teaching and pedagogy than policy / management. Now they couldn’t get someone outside DC within their right mind to touch this job so they somewhat accidentally landed on someone with some actual school experience. I’m hopeful for her but not at all surprised she was never a top choice to begin with. If you’ve never heard of her it’s probably because she doesn’t spend her time posturing and spinning PR... and cheating. Refreshing. Signed, A DCPS Teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, next up, how do we get this Schoell woman off the Parents Council? He did what any parent would? Um, no, in his situation every other parent’s option is back to the IB school, go private, homeschool or move. Not cherry pick another high school.

And no, chancellors should not get flexibility in placing their children. You are getting paid multitudes over the average DC salary and can afford to live IB for any school in the District. Make that choice. The right choice over special favors and placements.

The parents' council has no power or decision making authority -- it's a window dressing thing. Anyone can apply to be part of it.

I totally disagree with her view, but that's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to be on this committee.

That quote is pretty idiotic. She's advocating that people should break the rules if circumstances justify.

The Chancellor's Parent Cabinet is a joke. I was in the first cohort with Kaya Henderson. We went to (usually) monthly meetings, where the agenda was set by DCPS, and got to hear about how great they were doing with their initiatives. We usually got to ask questions - they were 1/3 good questions, 1/3 too specific to be relevant, and 1/3 focused on upper middle class parents wanting things like more foreign language instruction and more recess for their 5 year olds who did not get the challenges of DCPS (or perhaps didn't care). It is a PR stunt to say "We are engaged!" but these people are not influential. I don't know how Wilson conducted the meetings, but Kaya was overly cheery about progress and unwilling/unable to address the concerns of all (partly because DCPS has such massive gaps and is too complicated of a system to manage well). I also felt like she was kind of dismissive of some parents who tried to talk about harder issues like disparity and inequity among the starkly divided students in some school populations (me included).

I've found that under Bowser any sort of citizen input exercise is deliberately structured to be a meaningless exercise. Ok everybody, put your stickers next to the items that are most important to you!

This was a DCPS Kaya/Henderson problem, not a Mayor Bowser problem. Kaya and her cohorts refused to truly listen to parents; they just wanted parents to show up to make public events look good. Chancellor Wilson's challenge was with removing the legacy of patronizing and sometimes corrupt management and forming management truly interested in approving the system. In the end, the habitual, structural problems were too big and hard-wired for him. Agree with the prior poster that he was served a shit sandwich, though.

The problem I have with Mayor Bowser is that she's not been proactive in responding to big-picture problems. Her personality is to delegate all authority to others lower in the food chain (DME, Chancellors) and blame them whenever something explodes. It's never her fault, and she could never have done anything better, in her eyes.

My primary interactions with the DC government are DCPS and DPR -- both under the DME -- so it may be just there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amanda Alexander should have been chancellor after Henderson (and possibly Davis), not Wilson. She lives here, she breathes DCPS -and has for some time, she knows all the people and places. Glad to see she’s getting her rightful place at the top. She’s as smart and as straight-arrow as they come.

+1. Looks impressive to me.

Yup. Too bad they had to go across the country to find a male before taking a good look around. Look forward to getting to know her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What’s the mortgage on a $1mill home ~8k?

Got my mortgage statement today. With taxes, insurance, and the extra $1500K toward principal, about that much. But he probably had 5/1 ARM interest-only so way less. The loans on the cars likely make up the difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, next up, how do we get this Schoell woman off the Parents Council? He did what any parent would? Um, no, in his situation every other parent’s option is back to the IB school, go private, homeschool or move. Not cherry pick another high school.

And no, chancellors should not get flexibility in placing their children. You are getting paid multitudes over the average DC salary and can afford to live IB for any school in the District. Make that choice. The right choice over special favors and placements.

The parents' council has no power or decision making authority -- it's a window dressing thing. Anyone can apply to be part of it.

I totally disagree with her view, but that's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to be on this committee.

That quote is pretty idiotic. She's advocating that people should break the rules if circumstances justify.

Oddly, she is a Capitol Hill parent who is very vocal that parents should use their assigned neighborhood middle school. She’s a big advocate for Eliot Hine and has done great work there and has a child or two there. Odd that she doesn’t think he Chancellor should have enrolled his daughter at Dunbar instead of line jumping at Wilson. What’s happened to integrity?