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Palm Beach County parents, teachers mounted a fervent rebellion over 'dictatorial' classroom controls
Ohanian Comment: These are quite amazing events in the leadership of Palm Beach County schools. I have covered Heffrey Hernandez's plans for change in Palm Beach County. He was an advocate of platooning.
Has anyone asked the people at the Gates Foundation if this shift will affect the big money Palm Beach had its hand out for?
By Laura Green
The new chief academic officer expected a hostile crowd. So Jeffrey Hernandez carried ammunition: graphs and charts he thought proved that his ideas were right for Palm Beach County schools.
Slide after slide, Hernandez drifted into education jargon, dissecting the state's 800-point school grading formula and detailing why the district needed major change. His facts were indisputable: Even the best schools were slipping.
Still, parents at this A-rated school grumbled that Hernandez was dodging their questions. Frustrated, one yelled from the back of the room: "Try experiments on a failing school!"
It was June, one month after Hernandez started his new job, and before he unveiled even more sweeping academic changes that would centralize power and snatch autonomy from 180-plus principals. Yet that outburst at Del Prado Elementary near Boca Raton crystallized what would become a fierce outcry, culminated in an embarrassing retreat by Hernandez and his boss, Superintendent Art Johnson.
"I remember saying to my wife that we need to gear up for a fight for our children," said parent Frank Petosa, who attended the meeting.
Eventually, that spark grew into the ugliest fight the school board had seen in nearly two decades - an intense and emotional grass-roots revolt fueled by frustration and Facebook.
For months, though, Johnson and Hernandez pressed on.
"They pushed on as if nobody was saying anything," said Frank Barbieri, the first school board member to sound the alarm. "You could see it was spreading."
Teachers union President Robert Dow knew something big was developing when principals - not always allies with his members - began calling for his help. They warned "that a train wreck was coming," Dow said.
"They said: 'We really can't do anything because we serve at the pleasure of the superintendent and the superintendent is 100 percent behind anything Jeffrey Hernandez wants to do. ... Now it's up to you.'"
Young and on fast track
Art Johnson is not easily impressed. But he was instantly taken with Hernandez, 35, who in August 2008 became the state administrator tasked with turning around failing schools in three counties, including Palm Beach.
Hernandez earned a bachelor's degree at age 19 and then soared through the ranks at the Miami-Dade school district, receiving near-perfect evaluations as a teacher, school administrator and district director.
"I wasn't with him 10 minutes, and I knew he was a very special person when it came to education," Johnson said.
From memory, Hernandez rattled off statistics about schools he supervised - things like how many students were weak on the computation section of the math FCAT. He also told Johnson exactly what needed to be done to improve those scores.
"The thing that's so impressive about Jeffrey is his ability to bring things to scale," said Johnson, a former principal and school board member who has been superintendent since 2001.
"We have a lot of people who can move a classroom, move a school. But in his case, when he was in Miami-Dade, he moved 93 schools. Twenty-plus were D and F (schools). He moved every one of those."
Johnson began eyeing those statistics with the notion of hiring Hernandez.
The district already had an enviable record. It was the state's only A-rated urban school district for five consecutive years. Among similar, large school districts, it produced the highest test scores across every category. But the rules were changing and Johnson worried.
The state had adopted a tougher school grading formula for high school for 2010. For the first time, all schools had to meet federal standards or face sanctions. And the standards were set to increase again. Meanwhile, as Hernandez would later lecture parents, more than 90 percent of the district's failing students sat in schools rated A, B or C.
"I just felt like we needed new ideas and a new energy," Johnson said.
In May, Hernandez replaced the chief academic officer. He got her title, but the job he inherited was much more powerful - even taking on much of Johnson's role as the district's public face.
Hernandez expanded his focus beyond chronically struggling schools. For every school, he demanded frequent testing, a unified and mandatory curriculum, and a team of classroom monitors.
Soon, it seemed, Hernandez was taking over other decisions previously left to principals, such as dictating how they could spend their budgets. Just a week or two before school started, he forced some principals to reschedule classes at entire schools.
At an August meeting with Johnson, principals said they'd never felt so stressed. One principal broke into tears, according to a person in the room.
Soon afterward, parents opposed to the changes began organizing on Facebook. A Wellington mother looking for a few like-minded souls founded a page called Testing Is Not Teaching, whose members ballooned to roughly 7,000 in five weeks, expressing their outrage and posting plans of action.
At protests, the parents adopted the color orange as a symbol of their cause.
But Hernandez also had supporters who believed the district was finally on the right track.
"I have found that for the first time in my career, in my lifetime, that I see a true focus and feel great about what's happening for children," Boca Raton Middle School Principal Jack Thompson, a 38-year veteran of the district, told the school board.
Hernandez also found allies in groups that believed their children had not been receiving an equal education.
"I don't know that what he's doing will have any results," said Chuck Ridley, chairman of the Coalition of Black Student Achievement. "I do know that he's forcing the children who I advocate for to stop being ignored."
But some viewed Hernandez's single-mindedness as arrogant and unbending. He had infuriated so many parents with his professorial routine and computer presentations that Barbieri asked the superintendent not to send him out as the spokesman.
"They view you as dictatorial, as someone who doesn't listen to them," Barbieri told Hernandez.
Petosa, the Boca parent who sat through two of the presentations, said Hernandez's communication style got in the way of any good ideas he might have shared.
"The red flags started with the messenger," he said. "Someone can be brilliant, but they may have a complete inability to communicate the incredible vision they have between their ears."
In an interview last month, Hernandez was asked about the perception that he was arrogant.
"Am I going to tell you that I have high expectations? Absolutely," he said. "Am I flexible? Absolutely, until it becomes a child's life."
The 'noise' got louder
For months, Johnson chalked up the controversy, which he sometimes referred to as "noise," to teachers and administrators who resisted change, or to an isolated group of parents from high-performing schools in affluent neighborhoods. Many were in "denial" about how much their schools needed to improve, he said.
But as the "noise" got louder, Johnson and Hernandez made concessions.
First, they exempted high school students taking college-level courses from the every-three-to-four-weeks testing regimen. Then, principals were allowed to stop using district tests altogether, with one giant caveat: They had to be trained to create their own tests, or they had to use questions provided by the district.
Next, teachers of gifted students no longer had to follow the same pace as other teachers or use district exams.
But the parents weren't quieted.
At a marathon school board meeting Oct. 21, orange-clad teachers and parents by the hundreds packed the chambers threatening to unseat uncooperative board members. They testified for five and a half hours about the rushed rollout of the program, the communication blunders, the damage to teacher morale and stress placed on students.
Several speakers spared no blame for Johnson.
Some teachers, previously afraid to speak out, said they'd outgrown their fear. One called the turnout a "vote of no confidence" for Johnson and Hernandez. Another called the new requirements "dehumanizing," akin to George Orwell's 1984.
It was not the kind of reception the superintendent was used to. His annual evaluations are gushing displays in which board members practically compete to praise him.
As the meeting closed, Johnson appeared defiant as he launched into an explanation of the constitutional role of the superintendent. He explained that legally, the board could not simply vote down his plan on the spot.
"The board does not give direction to the superintendent," he said.
'I have to fix this fast'
But Johnson could count the votes.
He said he left the meeting, which had stretched almost to midnight, thinking: "I have to fix this fast."
Two days later, Johnson stunned his critics by returning power to the principals. The program Hernandez had pitched as a mandate in response to state and federal law was suddenly optional.
Hernandez will remain at his $180,000-a-year post, working with schools that stick with his plan, although Johnson said he's not keeping a count of those schools. So far, few principals have come forward to say they are scrapping it.
But Hernandez is no longer the district's pitchman. When reporters try to reach him for comment, Johnson now returns the calls.
Johnson is doing what he's used to doing: taking charge of the message.
"I know what I got into when I signed up for this job," he said. "Public education is not for the faint of heart."
He also knows the parents still have Facebook, and a power that's impossible to ignore.
Many of those parents are still skeptical. They worry that Johnson's latest concession is like earlier ones that principals rarely acted on, which some believe was because of fear of retribution. Parents are organizing to attend the school board's Nov. 17 meeting.
"I don't want the public to think that we have won," said Theresa Andrus, a teacher at Discovery Key Elementary. "We have won nothing."
Timeline
April 8: The Palm Beach County School Board approves hiring Jeffrey Hernandez as chief academic officer after Superintendent Art Johnson promises to cut four jobs to provide Hernandez his $180,000-a-year salary.
May 4: Hernandez starts work.
June: Boca Raton-area parents begin protesting a new program that requires elementary school students to switch teachers and classes for different subjects. In many cases, this requires the students to move from classroom to classroom.
June 4: During a meeting intended to calm concerned parents at Del Prado Elementary, one parent shouts to Hernandez: 'Try experiments on a failing school!’
July-August: Hernandez runs training sessions on his new academic plan for principals, coaches and some teachers.
July 31:The school district calls 70 percent of teachers ineffective in a grant application to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This angers many teachers. Ultimately, the district does not receive the grant.
Aug. 11: Principals warn Johnson that the new requirements are too much, too fast. Some say they have never been so stressed in their entire careers.
August: Parents and teachers learn about the new testing and curriculum requirements as schools open.
September: Hundreds of letters from angry parents flood the school board office, asking for relief from Hernandez’s program.
Sept. 18: Lisa Goldman, a fed-up mother in Wellington, hosts a Facebook page called Testing Is Not Teaching to air objections to the changes. Within weeks, more than 7,000 people have joined her opposition campaign.
Sept. 21: The school district releases a six-page letter full of technical language telling parents the new program is the result of state and federal mandates. But critics soon point out that many details of the district’s program are not spelled out in any mandate.
Sept. 22: Hernandez faces angry teachers at union headquarters who say they are overworked and demoralized by his micromanaging style. He lectures some of them on their decorum.
Sept. 29: The district backpedals for the first time, eliminating testing for some advanced high school students.
Sept. 30: Parents at Spanish River High in Boca Raton demand that Hernandez provide research that shows his program works. Some scream at him; others accuse him of evading their questions.
October: More concessions come from the school district.
Oct. 15: During an interview with The Palm Beach Post, Johnson defends the program and says parents face a choice between stressed-out kids or 'happy morons.’ But he apologizes for errors in communicating about the changes.
Oct. 21: About 1,000 parents and teachers pack a marathon school board meeting, at which it becomes clear that a majority of the board does not support the plan.
Oct. 23:Johnson backs down, saying individual principals can decide whether to follow the program. Hernandez is silent during the meeting in which Johnson retreats.
— Laura Green
Palm Beach Post
2008-10-31
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/education/content/local_news/epaper/2009/10/31/a1a_school_flop_1101.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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