| Interesting article about the admirabe leadershp of my principle.....
On Education: Principal’s War Leads to a Teacher Exodus
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> January 28, 2004
> By MICHAEL WINERIP
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THE formal process for firing bad teachers who have union protection
has long been criticized as slow and cumbersome. It is also true,
however, that a determined principal has many ways to force out
teachers - even if they have stellar records.
Dr. Lee D. McCaskill, principal of Brooklyn Technical, one of the city's
elite high schools, has been at war with many of his teachers. As
reported in this column a year ago, the school was plagued by management
problems that repeatedly resulted in the canceling of popular student
activities, including one of the city's finer Shakespeare programs and
trips to state and national competitions for the debating, chess and
robotics teams. To recall briefly two examples: Teachers and students
complained that the principal heavily censored the student paper; it had
six advisers in six years, came out only twice a year, and in June 2002,
so upset Dr. McCaskill that he ordered all 4,000 copies destroyed. And
then there was the robotics club, which spent months building a robot,
raised money to compete at a national meet in Florida and an hour before
boarding the plane, had the trip canceled by Dr. McCaskill.
In the case of the student paper, Dr. McCaskill had said the newspapers
were destroyed because the adviser sent a "preliminary" draft full of
grammatical errors to the printer; others said he was upset by a story
about "disrespectful students" who "spit on the floors" and "urinate in
the fountains." In the case of the robotics meet, Dr. McCaskill had said
"it was revealed" to him that an assistant principal "without the
knowledge of the principal" had arranged the trip; the assistant was
"appropriately disciplined" as a result. Others said that the
principal's autocratic and disorganized management style was the real
problem.
What is not in dispute is the animosity. At most city schools, it is
rare for faculty members to request one union conciliation hearing a
year with the principal to resolve education issues like book selection;
Brooklyn Tech had four in 18 months. In the last few years, about a
quarter of the 30-member English department has left, and seven reached
for interviews faulted Dr. McCaskill.
Louise Maher-Johnson received years of positive or excellent classroom
observations, served on several school committees and was the
environmental club adviser. In 33 years, she never had an unsatisfactory
rating. Then, after criticizing Dr. McCaskill in the press, Ms. Johnson
received six unsatisfactory observations and five letters of misconduct
in six months. She loved supplementing lessons with her collection of
educational videos, using a documentary on post-Civil War Reconstruction
when she taught August Wilson's play "Fences." Suddenly, she was barred
by the principal from using a VCR. She always had her own classroom;
suddenly she had to share two classrooms on two floors. "At 60 years
old, I became a floating teacher," she said. "He wore me down; it
affected my health." Last summer, she gave up and retired.
City officials, as well as Dr. McCaskill, and his regional
superintendent, Reyes Irizarry, declined to comment. "We will not
respond publicly to questions about personnel matters," Eileen Murphy, a
spokeswoman, said. "We do not respond to teacher ratings."
Todd Friedman, a 15-year veteran, received many good ratings, served as
a mentor for new teachers and wrote curriculum for the Academy of
American Poets. But as a critic of the principal he was vulnerable, and
in June 2002, a parent who was friends with Dr. McCaskill complained
that Mr. Friedman had assigned a "pornographic" book, "Continental
Drift" by Russell Banks.
It didn't seem to matter to Dr. McCaskill that "Continental Drift" was a
finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, written by one of America's most
respected novelists. Or that the school's summer reading list, which
went out under Dr. McCaskill's signature that very week, included
"Secrets" by Nuruddin Farah, a novel that in the first 17 pages
describes group masturbation and a man having intercourse with a cow.
Dr. McCaskill put a warning letter in Mr. Friedman's file, calling
"Continental Drift" "inappropriate" and "sexually explicit" and
threatening possible dismissal.
Mr. Friedman appealed. Under the city grievance procedure, the first
hearing is conducted by the principal, who, not surprisingly, ruled that
his reprimand of Mr. Friedman was entirely correct.
The second-level grievance was heard on March 19, 2003, by the office of
the regional superintendent, Mr. Irizarry, a close ally of Dr.
McCaskill. Mr. Irizarry didn't seem too familiar with the book; he kept
referring to it as "Continental Draft." Nor did his hearing officer, who
called the author "Russell Brooks." But others knew it and several
groups, including the American Library Association and the National
Council of Teachers of English, wrote angry letters testifying to how
highly regarded the novel is. Stuyvesant High teachers wrote that the
book is in their school library and that Mr. Banks's works are proudly
taught there.
By then, Dr. McCaskill and Mr. Irizarry were contradicting each other.
Dr. McCaskill called the novel "inappropriate." Mr. Irizarry wrote, the
"issue is not related to the appropriateness of the novel," but to "Mr.
Friedman's failure to follow established procedures."
To make the case go away, they offered Mr. Friedman a deal. They'd
remove the reprimand if he cleared his reading choices with one of Dr.
McCaskill's assistants. Mr. Friedman refused. His file was several
inches thick by now, but his most basic question was still unanswered.
Could he teach "Continental Drift"?
In May, school officials surrendered. They removed the reprimand without
any concessions by Mr. Friedman. He'd won, but he lost. He had
embarrassed the principal publicly. "If I stayed at Brooklyn Tech, my
life would be miserable," he said. He joined the exodus, transferring to
Midwood High. To this day, no one has said whether it's O.K. to teach
"Continental Drift."
Alice Alcala is one of the most respected Shakespeare teachers in the
city. At Brooklyn Tech, she won a $10,000 grant, bringing the Royal
National Theater of Britain to do student workshops and spending
Saturdays preparing her classes to do their own performances. But she
spoke out against the principal. When he tried killing her Shakespeare
program, she went over his head to the central administration and got it
reinstated.
The day after she was quoted in news articles criticizing Dr. McCaskill,
she received an unsatisfactory classroom observation rating for the
first time in 28 years of teaching. She was repeatedly denied access to
the auditorium and in June, got an unsatisfactory for the year. "At 53,
I almost lost my livelihood," she says.
But she got a break. The principal at Murry Bergtraum High in Manhattan
knew what a gifted teacher she was and gave her a position.
"I'd been so beaten down," Ms. Alcala said. "When I requested the
auditorium, I couldn't believe the next day I got permission. I kept
thanking them. They said, 'Relax, this is not like Brooklyn Tech.' I
felt like I'd come out of a nightmare."
Wayne Gagnon, the Bergtraum assistant principal who supervises Ms.
Alcala, says they are "absolutely thrilled" with her work.
Ms. Alcala has won $1,800 in grants, had a local Shakespeare company
come to work with her students, and in December put on several student
performances of "Macbeth," featuring the witches in a step dance that
brought down the house.
Great teachers inspire, and after seeing Ms. Alcala's witches dance,
another teacher, Wil Hallgren, plans to do Aristophanes' "Frogs" with
his class, featuring a rap-style debate between Euripides and Aeschylus.
As for Brooklyn Tech, there's no course solely devoted to Shakespeare
anymore.
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