Reply to Call to discuss the state of Hardy 05/15/23

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Good news for Hardy that a few parents were able to bully their way to get someone removed? Did he need to get removed? Absolutely Yes. Was it done in the right way? No. It was done in secret. It is the secrecy that's alarming especially for your children who were as blindsided as everyone else. Kids hold onto things like this. Our kids will need support on Monday to understand what happened and why it happened. The zealot PTO parent kids may be fine, but for the remaining 85% of our kids, they will need time and support in processing this sudden change. I hope PTO parents that you can also bully and get some extra counselors at the school on Monday to support our kids. The fighting needs to stop. We really do need to work together to do what is right for kids. They deserve it. They all deserve it. [/quote]

This is quite misinformed. I don't blame you for it though.

This was not sudden at all. DCPS become involved in earnest in January and spent months investigating. They eventually came to the inevitable conclusion that the situation was unsalvageable. Do you know why the IS was at the school like 20-30 days over the last few months? Maybe you didn't see him, but that was the point. He was seeing for himself what was going on. The Council has known about these issues for many months and had been inquiring too.

And what the IS saw matched what he heard, and what he read.

The six parent liaisons had been bringing issue after issue to Principal Johnson based upon parents emails to them. This went on bi-weekly for months, since the start of the year. When you have six working people trying to coordinate meeting plans, a lot gets committed to written records.

Then you have the PTO meeting regularly with Principal Johnson about issue after issue. Records here too.

Finally, you have literally dozens upon dozens of parents emailing directly with Principal Johnson -- and meeting with him -- all with attendant records.

It didn't start this way. The parents worked for months to prop up and build up the administration. He was a new principal, and he seemed eager. But this all never worked. It merely served to paper over the problems and hide from the broader community the very real problems already taking hold.

Then DCPS took a more active role in mentoring him and propping him up. Remember the initiative to have all teachers input grades into Aspen? That was a DCPS-imposed plan for Principal Johnson to obtain a small win as a proof-of-concept. It was not implemented at all with any fidelity. Then remember the behavior contracts that were sent out in Advisory to be signed and returned? A second DCPS-imposed plan that fizzled. Finally, remember the teachers being supposed to call each and every student to check on them during then PD day? Yeah, that didn't happen either. (At this point, some teachers ought to be feeling awfully guilty...)

The point is: this was not sudden. It was not private. It was not without excessive amounts of support being provided first. And, it was not without copious amounts of evidence. [b]Those who are shocked that DCPS took such sudden, decisive action, knowing that that doesn't match their understanding of how DCPS does anything, ought to re-examine their assumptions about how sudden the action actually was.[/b] [/quote][/quote]

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