Lying to Smart People about Culture and Climate

Did you see our little story on the news? You really can't make this stuff up:

http://www.wbng.com/news/local/Misleading-letter-gives-wrong-impression-to-Harpursville-paretns-292544081.html

Comments referred to below, are located on the District website, http://www.hcs.stier.org/

Things are tense in our little hamlet leading up to Monday's Board of Education meeting. Vague and misleading non-answers to our questions have just further alienated, or in more honest terms, enraged. 

It would seem, that a major reason for the firing of one Principal and removing of the other is a perceived problem with the buildings "Culture" and "Climate".  Not in the you know a lot about fine art and why is it so freakin cold outside way, but in the "feel" and "motivation" of a school environment. Well, we know some things about that too.

Climate in our School District:

The climate in our District isn't one where skies open up and the sun shines down. Teachers and support staff live in constant fear of retribution by their Superintendent. Parents are afraid that by standing up, or by even reading this blog, that their children will lose services. 

Many in the community can recite stories of harassment or retribution. Some on the record some are so ridiculous, you almost wish they were true. Stories of teachers being sent home for wearing the wrong color pants for example. 

Surprisingly, those people are not bound by confidentiality agreements.  That's the Climate being fostered by the current District Admins.   

I suppose their wish for climate in our school, is one where kids are turned into #2 pencil wielding, standardized test taking robots. Teachers could be programmers rather than nurturing human beings.

Oh wait, the district has changed the definition of the word "nurture"  when used in it's mission/vision/goal/hoax, to something more like: to make kids do more better on tests.

Hmm...as much as it might be easier to feed robots, and they probably have less laundry, we’re not on board with that view. We like our Climate just fine, thank you. Our kids are happy, we have open communication with teachers and our admins, our kids are confident and even with all of that, our test scores are increasing.

Culture in our School District:

The Culture in our school is one that's been flipped on it's head. Our culture is like that under a dictatorship, not that of a democratic, openly governed entity focused on the well being of families and children. 

Top down all the way. In our district, the Superintendent hand picked and trained her successor. No interview, no search committee. No public involvement. Our support, our buy in? Who needs it? 

By the way, TWO YEARS is a very long time to exclude your community from dialogue about their school and their children.  Luckily, during this time, while the District Super/Ass. Super were hatching their plans for world domination, we’ve been building ourselves a community!

We’ve been talking to teachers and administrators. We’ve been showing up to concerts and award ceremonies, Moving up Days and classroom parties. We talk on the soccer field and baseball bleachers, we talk to our coaches, we offer respite to our overtaxed foster parents. We facebook and email with teachers. We cry and youtube over Common Core homework together. We have a network of parents, supporting newer parents with the CSE process. We have playdates and Birthday parties. 

We are together, we like our culture and the climate and they have underestimated us.

STOP