As you read just some of the allegations made against the ACPS Superintendent's Office, and the evidence, think for yourselves, ask yourselves, "What do I believe?"
ALLEGATION: Longer Days. A longer day (thirty minutes, in fact) was implemented last year for a major portion of the school year (as a result of Snowmageddon) and almost every school in the system still failed to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP).
EVIDENCE: The school division as a whole did not make AYP, again. How about it, teachers...did your school make AYP? Please comment.
ALLEGATION: Failed Standards. This is the second year that the school system has failed to meet its “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
EVIDENCE: The school division as a whole did not make AYP. Did your school make AYP?
ALLEGATION: Data Manipulated. The two middle schools were split into five ‘schools' in order to ensure that the population in the subgroups will not be large enough to be included in AYP data.
EVIDENCE: The middle schools were divided into five schools. It will have the effect alleged. ACPS denies this was the rationale for the change. What do you think? Why the change in structure?
ALLEGATION: Costly Initiatives - Failed. Here are some of the initiatives put into place by the Superintendent since coming to ACPS: Columbia Teachers College Writer Project, Skillful Teacher program, Skillful Leader program, Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, International Baccalaureate Program, Habits of the Mind, Mind Up Individualized Achievement Plan, Open AP Enrollment, Increased Algebra I Enrollment..
What do all of the above initiatives and many other initiatives within ACPS have in common? Not a single one of them has been repeatedly and continually assessed to determine their effectiveness on student achievement in Alexandria. So naturally, in the course of gathering good scientific data, Alexandria’s Superintendent wants to add yet another variable into the equation of public school student achievement. Acknowledging that “time is a variable,” the Superintendent wants to increase the school year and day before first assessing the effectiveness of the initiatives already in place in ACPS. This notion is one that even the youngest of Alexandria’s public school students would immediately recognize as foolish and scientifically flawed. There has to be at least a few controls to the Superintendent’s experiment. Time should be one of those controls. The school day should not increase nor should the length of the school year increase until the already implemented initiatives can be evaluated. Why the rush to make dramatic changes to the school schedule which will impact the amount and quality of family time, local business staffing and revenue, teacher compensation and workload, facility maintenance and operating costs, transportation and scheduling logistics, specialized services to students, extracurricular activities, school athletics, tutoring, sports camps, vacations, childcare, and many other important community concerns ignored by the Superintendent?
EVIDENCE: This is a partial list representing some of the initiatives that have been put in place. We have seen little research demonstrating their efficacy in ACPS. To date, the teachers (affiliated with our blog site) being asked to implement these initiatives have seen no routine method for assessing the effectiveness.
ALLEGATION: Insufficient Data. Lacking was a draft calendar of the proposed 2011-2012 school year so parents, students, and teachers could plan accordingly. Lacking was a clear timeline outlining the increase in school days and hours from one academic year to the next (the community was led to believe the plan just called for two additional days and 30 extra minutes to be added). Lacking was an economic impact analysis showing how the increased time proposals would affect local businesses reliant on high school student employees. Lacking was a clear plan outlining how the extra time would be utilized within the schools. Lacking was a fiscal impact analysis of how the increase in hours and days would affect Alexandria’s cash-strapped budget. Lacking was information about how the increase in time would impact students’ intellectual, cognitive, neural, social, or moral development. Lacking was a legal analysis of the impact to federally mandated IEP services. Lacking was information as to the impact of the longer school days on Alexandria’s special education students (Alexandria has over 1,660 special education students). Lacking was a means of assessing the effectiveness of the proposals. Lacking was survey data from parents, students, and teachers (the community was led to believe that teachers were in favor of the added time). Lacking was research from a multitude of sources supporting either the lengthening of the school year proposal or the addition of 30 minutes to the school day proposal. Thursday night’s debacle was just another notch in the Backpedaling Superintendent’s belt of poor planning, haphazard implementation, and utter lack of collaboration. Over the past two and a half years Alexandria has watched the Superintendent backpedal or attempt to explain hastily laid out initiatives such as: T.C. Leadership New Middle School Model Jefferson Houston Public-Private Endeavor Math and Literacy Coaching Models Early Childhood Program Extended School Day Extended School Year.
EVIDENCE: Unlike years, and administrations past, there was no draft calendar presented. No economic impact analysis nor outline of the nature described was/has been provided. Lacking was any legal study..ok, point well-taken. Everything, as mentioned in this allegation as lacking was, in fact, lacking.
ALLEGATION: Compulsive Spending on Consultant. Are the citizens of Alexandria asleep at the wheel when it comes to the public education of their children and the spending of their tax dollars? What is the Alexandria City Public School system doing spending $12,000 a month to hire a litigation communications consultant whom The Los Angeles Times deemed "a first call for those who find themselves in difficult high-risk crises?"
EVIDENCE: The Los Angeles Times is accurately quoted. We leave it to you to judge the need for this, and the other consultants.
ALLEGATION: The School Board is pleased with the Superintendent. The Emperor has no clothes... All talk, all ego, all self promotion, no substance. How naive can the school board be? The Key Bridge is for sale. Perhaps they will buy this since they buy all the fluff and stuff being sold by Sherman.
EVIDENCE: We checked, the
ALLEGATION: No Work Life Balance. On election day when the schools traditionally open 2 hours late and teachers are given this time to vote, teachers were told to report ON TIME!
EVIDENCE: Forcing this change that required teachers to report on Election Day at a time when no students were present did, in fact, happen. Many teachers report that it worked a hardship on them and their families.Teachers are incredibly stressed and unsupported. See comments concerning morale at Cora Kelly...
ALLEGATION: Poor Infrastructure Impacting Productivity. How about all the time lost due to technical glitches, lack of planning, last minute change, and poor communication to parents, students, and staff? For example, report cards were not available to parents at conferences tonight due to another 'computer glitch'.
EVIDENCE: A survey of the number of emails alone concerning this topic reveals an inordinate number of ‘glitches’ with new and costly software/computer use, resulting in thousands of lost teacher man hours.
ALLEGATION: Top Down Decisions, Command and Control Management. Today was the start of the Compensation Reform Committee and today is a School Board Meeting, which is OPEN for public comments. Note: today is also the parent conference night for secondary school teachers, and so no teacher from a secondary school was physically able to be at either of these events.
EVIDENCE: Both meetings were scheduled so as to coincide/conflict with the secondary school parent teacher conferences.
ALLEGATION: Blows to Employee Morale. GW2 & FCH 2 both had their APs quit. GW2's AP did not come back after winter break and FCH 2's AP has her last day this Friday
EVIDENCE: Human Resources confirms that neither is employed by ACPS at this time.
ALLEGATION: The School Board rewarded the Superintendent. In late 2010, the ACPS School Board voted to raise the annual contribution to Dr. Sherman's retirement plan by $17,000 with little fan fare and no public discussion amongst themselves or city constituents. Agenda topic proposed, money amount stated, vote taken, gavel fell.
EVIDENCE: At a time when salaries (real salaries) for ACPS teachers were falling, School Board minutes reveal that Sherman’s compensation package was increased as alleged.
ALLEGATION: Superintendent rewards a selected few. Mort is not the only person getting great benefits and perks. He has directly approved, for certain executive staff, the payout of health insurance premiums. For those who have no need for health insurance with ACPS, because they have health insurance provided by a spouse or the military. Therefore, the premiums that ACPS would have paid for insurance, is paid to the employee in their annual salary.
EVIDENCE: This, if true, is disturbing and flies in the face of what teachers are being asked to sacrifice and what President Obama is asking from the American public. How about it, you Undergrounders in Finance?
ALLEGATION: Pay increase or Pay Reduction? All the data he is sending out to the public is spun to fit his agenda and make it look like he is doing his teachers a favor. It doesn't say that all the money we have received from our 1/2 step raises was taken right back by health-care and pension funds.
EVIDENCE: A survey of teacher’s W-2’s from last year to this year does, in fact, reveal a decrease in teacher take home pay of many of our colleagues after increased contributions to health/dental and retirement are taken into account.
ALLEGATION: Hell, Sherman's raise could rent a Lear jet out of town.
EVIDENCE: Learjet 45 Series Charter Price Range: From $2500.00 - $3500.00 per hr.
ALLEGATION: False Open Communication. Where are the results of the survey taken by the teachers and parents of the ACPS system in Nov/Dec? Interesting that we have never seen the results of that. Participants were told results would be available about 48 hours later but nothing has surfaced. Have it on good authority that the comments about Dr. Sherman were almost breathtakingly negative. Seems as if this is yet another thing paid for by the taxpayers but buried because it did not go his way. I guess the truth hurts.
EVIDENCE: Results from Fall ’10 survey were never made public.
ALLEGATION: Wasn’t Mort Sherman given extremely low evaluations by those ranking his performance as an administrator in New Jersey, just prior to being hired by the school board here?
EVIDENCE: http://www.ratemyteachers.com/mort-sherman/568623-t
EVIDENCE: Results from Fall ’10 survey were never made public.
ALLEGATION: Wasn’t Mort Sherman given extremely low evaluations by those ranking his performance as an administrator in New Jersey, just prior to being hired by the school board here?
EVIDENCE: http://www.ratemyteachers.com/mort-sherman/568623-t
"Lacking" is, in fact, the perfect word to describe our superintendent's leadership of ACPS schools. What I see lacking here is any query into what the community itself would prefer; Sherman is jumping on the bandwagon of 'school reform' without asking what the parents, students and teachers in Alexandria want or need to make our schools better. Let's face it, the superintendent is riding the current wave of 'blame the teacher' espoused by Harvard elitist Secretary of Ed. Arne Duncan, former DC chancellor Michelle Rhee, and others who see a chance to make a name for themselves (and lots of money) by placing the blame for all social ills on public education. I hate to sound so cynical, but Morton Sherman is just an opportunist, taking advantage of the current political climate for his own profit. He's no leader for those of us who have been here long before he arrived, and shall remain here long after he leaves. Hopefully there won't be too much destruction in his wake.
ReplyDeleteThe PTAs participated in those Discovery Bridge surveys. Contact the PTA at each school and have them ask where the survey results are and when they are to be released.
ReplyDeleteInstead of simply complaining about the state of affairs, give some thought to what SHOULD be done. There is a huge achievement gap throughout ACPS, at all levels. How can we address it?
ReplyDeleteThe posts, articles, and comments here indicate what SHOULDN'T be done. They highlight the abuse, mismanagement, deception, and wastefulness taking place within ACPS. That is the point.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the existence of an achievement gap within ACPS or anywhere else, what does that have to do with student LEARNING? Nothing. It is all a numbers game. So when subgroup X (that is how children are now referred to within our schools by the way) is inline with subgroup Y on the chart, what does that demonstrate? Does it show that one group has gone down, one group has gone up, the quality of teaching has increased, student interest has increased, learning is taking place, or numbers have been manipulated? How does this numbers shuffling actually improve student LEARNING (big difference between achievement and learning)?
Also, in order to ask and answer the question, "how can we address it," one has to assume that we (schools) have control over the many, many, many, many, again, many variables which impact students, thus impacting our wonderful achievement numbers. ACPS, nor any other school district, has control over these variables. Yet part of the new myth of public education is that regardless of the fact that numerous variables are out of the control of the schools, we can still somehow address and fix those issues beyond the schoolhouse door, if we only raise expectations, lengthen out the school day and year, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on recycled programs.
The focus on the pages of this blog concerns student LEARNING, exactly where our focus should be. Let's throw out this notion of worrying about whether student A has reached an arbitrary number of 400 on some SOL and then racing to compare them to student B who only reached 399. It doesn't create better schools, it doesn't encourage true learning, and it is far worse than any teacher or blogger complaining about the state of affairs of a school district.
READ ALL ABOUT IT!
ReplyDeleteHow the US DOE's Strategic Plan/2007-12 to increase student achievement will, (Goal 2:Objective 3:), Increase proficiency in critical-need foreign languages defined as Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and Russian but not Spanish, the first language of the majority of students attending US public schools.
How the US Department's Institute of Education Sciences has a "What Works Clearinghouse" (WWC) that alone predetermines from evidence-based scientific research the educational programs and practices that improve reading, writing, math, science, and teacher quality in American public schools.
How the WWC has predetermined that the EARLY READING FIRST pre-K program is the program to be funded by the ARRA Act of 2009 (P.L.111-5), $2billion Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG).
How one would have to question how this particular predetermination be based on evidence from scientific research when there have never been public school pre-K programs in America before?
I agree with you completely, 'Truth hurts', that learning is far more, and far more important, than a single test score on English and another on Math. But that is where our administration's focus is so firmly centered. We are told to address 'higher order thinking' and to 'think outside the box', but are then also told, rather menacingly, 'Our real focus is the test scores, and the students have to pass those tests. That's what this is all about.' Doesn't that narrow outlook, in fact, limit student learning and growth? Whatever happened to Science, History, Art, Foreign Language, and the chance to explore Career Tech classes? I'm incensed at the way teachers are being treated all over the system, but the students lose when we are told that a couple of select test scores are the bottom line. When did our free thinking society become enslaved to test scores?
ReplyDeleteHow should we address the issues?
ReplyDeleteLet's start by staffing ALL schools properly. Every school should have enough SPED and ELL teachers to cover the children so the inclusion model works the way it should. Realize that inclusion may not be right for all children and have an alternative placement choice available.
There should be enough reading teachers in EVERY school to help scaffold and support all identified struggling readers not just the ones who fail testing. Being able to read is the key to all learning. If a child cannot read grade level texts (math, science, history, language arts) they will not be as successful as they could be. These children spend so much extra time and energy just trying to decode,understand and learn by just listening that they quickly fall behind and check out.
How about a discipline plan. There are no consequences for behavior. Let's face it, even though we reward and praise students that model positive behavior we still have children who act out and as their bad behavior escalates, and with no real consequences available, this child's behavior impacts the learning of those around them. Stop at home suspension. There should be a facility where all children who have been suspended (regardless of age) should go so they don't get behind in learning. Suspension should not be viewed as a get out of jail free card.
Let's treat schools like schools. A place of business, the business of educating children. Respect teachers and their education. Teachers are professionals just like any doctor, dentist, lawyer, engineer, etc. Do you constantly check up on, question or berate any of these people during the course of the services you have hired them for? Do you wander in to any of these other professionals offices whenever you feel like it, without an appointment and tell them what they should or should not be doing even though you don't have any expertise or a degree in that area? Complain to their boss or their boss's boss? Trust that the teacher is there to teach and help all of the children. Teachers don't teach because they want to fail children. Teachers are not the children's parents and shouldn't be expected to act in that capacity. A child's first teacher is his/her parent and key to a child's success in school. We need to embrace that fact and work from there. Respect and trust are two way streets.
Spend money on classroom resources. Look at the curriculum (despite what Mort is spouting now, we do have curriculum that we follow) and supply every school, every teacher with the resources to teach it where it should be taught and across the curriculum. Don't just give a list of suggested supplies or texts to use. SUPPLY IT FOR THE TEACHER. Stop relying on the teachers to spend their own money to get the supplies, books, programs to teach what they need to teach.
Look at the schools in the ACPS that have been and are successful. Analyze what they are doing right and then put that in place in the other schools. Stop spending money on and throwing new programs at everyone when there are some things that are being done well already in the system. Stop spending money on programs, like Habits of Mind, that don't directly effect or support the curriculum. Was that really a program that should have been put in place first and at such a hugh expense??
Require a system wide dress code? That would take a lot of the outside stimuli out of the environment and help kids be more available for learning. If every child had on the same thing there would be an innate sense of order in existence. Behavior would follow. Why do you think private schools, parochial schools and charter schools do it?
These are just some of that things that could be a help in closing the achievement gap. There are more and I'm sure better ones but just wanted to kick off the suggestions.
http://www.alexandrianews.org/2010/2010/11/30/acps-seeks-identity/
ReplyDeleteParents and teachers, remember filling out this survey, the Discovery Bridge survey from ACPS? Where are the results? What did they discover? Demand that ACPS release what WE THE PEOPLE said about what is taking place. Write Alexandria News, Alexandria Times, the Alexandria Gazette Packet, the Wasington Post, and the Washington Times and make them aware that the voice of the people is being silenced. Write the School Board, write the City Council, and write your PTAs. Parents and teachers took their time to give their feedback. A Communication Director has been hired by ACPS, so the results of this survey should be communicated to the citizens of Alexandria. (Write=email. I guess I have dated myself here).
As to the survey taken by the PTAs and teachers. Mort is now blaming the mismanagement and mistakes that lead to letting Mr. Hilburg go on the missing survey. Really?? He let Mr. Hilburg go within 2 days of the survey being taken??? A highly successful, high powered man like Mr. Hiburg mishandled a survey and its results. He screwed up a small time job like ACPS. I think not. Compare Mr. Hilburg's resume and reviews against Mort's and see what conclusion you come to. Even if what Sherman says is true, ACPS paid the survey company. I'm sure the results could somehow be made available upon request. There is more to this than we are being told. What a surprise.
ReplyDeleteA common thread running through the comments on the ACPS Underground is the depth of understanding of the relevant crisis coupled with a sincere desire to do right by our students. One cannot read the comments and fail to glean from them the sense of moral outrage that we, as educators, feel. How manifestly unfair to treat professionals this way. As one commenter put it, 'It's about the message, not the messenger.' The articulate, sincere and well-informed contributors to this blog are proof that teachers understand that.
ReplyDeleteA portion of Hoover Institute review of Lucy's Calkins material:
ReplyDeleteSo Do Her Methods Work?
Calkins is shaping the education of millions of children, yet no independent research backs the efficacy of her programs. Aside from grumblings from the New York City teachers required to work under her system, there has been remarkably little open debate about the basic premises behind Calkins’s approach, or even feedback on how the programs are faring in the classroom.
What controversy exists generally centers around two concerns: First, her programs do not explicitly teach phonics—which she calls “drill and kill.” She favors a “whole language” approach to literacy, which builds on the premise that reading and writing develop naturally in children. Her detractors argue that this lack of direct instruction leaves many children, especially those who already struggle, at a disadvantage.
The other argument, perhaps resonating with a larger audience, is that her methodology lacks real content, has no reference to any knowledge that should be learned. In The Art of Teaching Reading, she explains that she doesn’t want “all reading and writing to be in the service of thematic studies” but instead seeks to “spotlight reading and writing in and of themselves.” Calkins’s insistence that students should focus mostly on writing about their lives rankles the many educators who believe that curriculum should be focused on content-rich material, and that students should read and write about information outside of their own personal lives. Broadening one’s knowledge base strengthens reading comprehension, builds vocabulary, and deepens knowledge of the world, all of which help students understand the text, but also, as E. D. Hirsch writes, “what the text implies but doesn’t say.”
What has not been openly questioned is the assumption that Calkins has retained her ordinal stance, that it is the teacher’s job to midwife a child’s own, often richly imaginative voice, rather than impose her own. Calkins’s program originally gained its popularity, at least in part, because of its mission to help children make their distinct voices heard. She was known as a champion for flexible, creative teaching, uniquely attuned to children. “If we adults listen and watch closely,” she wrote in 1986, “our children will invite us to share their worlds and their ways of living in the world.” And while this impulse continues to inform aspects of her approach, she has tended over time to become increasingly focused on enforcing her own methodology; many of her techniques limit children’s genuine engagement with reading and writing. This insistence on only one way to do things, not surprisingly, has translated into a demand that teachers quiet their own impulses, gifts, and experiences, and speak in one, mandated voice.
Calkins review continued
ReplyDeleteRecently, Common Good, a bipartisan organization committed to “restoring common sense to American law” asked New York City public school teachers to keep a diary for 10 days and consider specifically “how bureaucracy impacts everyday teaching.” The results were presented in a town hall–style meeting attended by more than a hundred educators and union representatives. One of the topics was “mandated teaching,” which referred specifically to the required presence of Calkins and Teachers College in city schools. The responses were almost universally negative.
This entry from a teacher’s diary is typical: “Administrators expect all our reading and writing workshops to adhere to an unvarying and strict script.…For example: ‘Writers, today and everyday you should remember to revise your writing by adding personal comments about the facts.’ Sometimes I feel like I’m a robot regurgitating the scripted dialogue that’s expected of us day in and day out.”
A kindergarten teacher reported how she was instructed to ask her students, on the third day of class, “to reflect on how they’d grown as writers.” She explained that the children were still preoccupied with missing their mothers and felt the assignment was “ridiculous.”
The truth is there isn’t one way to teach writing, or a limited number of ways to have conversations with children about their imaginative work and their lives. Calkins would have done well to heed the counsel of Donald Murray, whose prescient caution she quotes in The Art of Teaching Reading: “Watch out lest we suffer hardening of the ideologies. Watch out lest we lose the pioneer spirit which has made this field a great one.”
Arise, Educators! Boycott the Parent Conference and storm the School Board meeting! A massive sick-out on Wednesday would get the point across.
ReplyDeleteI have invited a number of ACPS PTA Presidents, VP's and representatives to participate in the dialogue on this blog and have received major push-back from many of them. They've emailed me objecting to the blog's purpose and stance on Mort Sherman and the Board. I wonder if the PTA reps are too close to the administration and will not stand behind the teachers.
ReplyDeleteIf any School Board members, or other members of the public, have any doubt as to degree to which this blog reflects the feelings and frustrations of ACPS teachers and employees, they have only to ask those people directly. It is quite likely that many, if not most, will refuse to comment due to fear of retaliation or dismissal. That refusal, in and of itself, should speak volumes. This blog is providing a forum, at last, for honest discussion.
ReplyDeleteWhile I would love to storm the school board meeting, I have already promised several students that I will be there to meet with their parents on Wednesday night, and I won't go back on that. To those of you who are able to attend the school board meeting, I wish you Godspeed. What sort of superintendent schedules an important school board meeting during parent/teacher conferences? One who knows that public opinion is turning against him, I'd wager!
ReplyDeleteFor those of us required to attend bogus meetings to give our 'ideas and input' regarding the additional 30 minutes added to the school day, please don't let them take it for granted that the added time is a done deal. The union is in the fight of its life trying to negotiate for us--at the very least we deserve just compensation for our time. When asked how you want to spend the thirty minutes, say first of all that we deserve equal pay for time on the job, and that 2 percent more pay for a minimum of 8-10 percent more work is unacceptable.
As is the case with many of you, I come to school early and often leave late, but I do that to help students, not because Mort orders me to, and I refuse to spend that valuable time in yet more useless meetings and expensive staff development sessions with his cronies. When there is another time consuming, needless, insulting meeting, wear black to show your disapproval. Don't give the admin ammunition with your own great ideas on how to spend extra time we won't be paid for. Refuse to collaborate in this constant devaluation of teachers. If the unpaid 30 minutes goes through, work to the contract and show them how much we already give. I don't get mad easily, but I am fed up with Shermanism, and it is time to fight back.
Invite the PTA Presidents and officers to attend a faculty meeting or two. They will quickly get the tense, stressed out, fed up vibe which permeates throughout the room. They are buttered up at their brown bag lunches with Mort, but I think they are starting to get wise to the deception. They found out the hard way when they were left in the dark about extending the student day and year. More teachers need to be active in their PTAs to ensure that their feelings are known and voiced.
ReplyDeleteThe comment about Alan Hillburg being let go is interesting. Do explain if you have facts and details. I know that his contract was only for four months, but was he exited well before that?
ReplyDeleteAs an active parent I will soon participate in a discussion about Skillful Teacher/Skillful Leader which will be summarized and shared with the School Board and Dr. Sherman. I would love to hear thoughts from anyone who has participated in the program.
ReplyDeleteFinally, someone has opened the jar and looked inside ACPS. This Sherman march has been going on for the past 3 years. The parents and community allowed this incompetent school board and Mort destroy ACPS from support staff upward. His words to all ACPS employees if you don't like get the next bus to FCPS. He started out email mailing Admin staff all night long and expecting a speedy response. He does not sleep at night. Sounds like a vampire to me and he along with his assist supt. Margaret Byess who came from FCPS to ACPS as supervisor in the budget department and moved up the ladder in 3 years to reach the asst.supt. of Budget dept. The Bonnie and Clyde couple are and have sucked the blood/money from the ACPS their staff who came to work for the good of students, parents and community of Alexandria. The fun bunch school board members are on board with the Sherman march and agree with whatever he decides. He has a gift for gab! He and Margaret B. are robbing ACPS blind.
ReplyDelete1. Separating two middle schools into 2 and 3 schools in one who heard of such (Mort Sherman)! AYP not accredited!
2. RIF competent Administrators, Support staff.
3. Purchasing these fly by night programs.
Just to name a few of his bright 2 a.m. ideas.
If the community and city govt. look close all of these new people are somehow connect the King Mort as he thinks he is. He is only here for his own agenda, he has NO regards nor respect for the students, schools staff, close community involvement, ACPS once had and neither does anyone he has marching to his drum.
ACPS has become a plantation and you do what he says and he has spread his ignorance to the principles disrespecting staff etc.
How can teachers teach when the have an supt., administrators and school staff who are unorganized and clueless to education or educating. All the teachers and support staff can and will do is what they are told by the Mort and his force.
If you speak out you are OUT! He he or his flock do not like you your OUT as well! This is the Mort way! You will not get anyone to say anything because they know they will be eliminated. You do what they say and no talk back if you want your job.
ACPS needs to clean out from the top and all new school board members.
Do a survey and you will see ACPS has gone down hill rapidly since 2008 to present!
All the money is in Mort Sherman and Margaret Byess' pocket! He cut the fat has he said he would do, however the fat he cut were competent hard working employees with extensive experience. While he and Margaret B. put the money in thier pockets (consultants, friends and family).
Get rid of Mort, Margaret B, and all they hired including but not limited too, Stephen Wilkins, Besty Shays, John Brown, John Cena, David Temple, (Stephanie in budget dpt.), Director of Technology Services, Director of Student Services, Director of Finance, all consultants,and the school board members.They and many others have the Morton mentality and no experience other than what they have learned in there current positions.
Hire NEW staff and school board members with experience in education and have excellent track records that can be verified. Making sure they establish a community base relationship with Alexandria and the students, parents, teachers, support staff.
If you look back at the mess Mort did in New Jersey and how the school(s) he was in authority over all had to clean out what he hired, eliminate the programs he implemented that did not work etc and this board "the fun bunch" hired him. This speaks a lot for the school board as well. Mr. Gift for Gab and all his flock need to GO!
Alexandria Take back your school system, it is under water!
Remember Rebecca Perry the parents and community had her on the radar and she was good!
How could you allow this jerk come in and destroy ACPS like he has?
GET STRONG AND STEP UP ALEXANDRIA your children need YOU!