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Of Cats and Kids

A school's a school, no matter how ...

Posted by: Carol Lombardi

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:28 AM

Watching Unit 4 select a new principal for my daughter's elementary school reminds me of "Horton Hears A Who" - the part where the Whos are yelling, "We're here, we're here!" and no one except Horton is listening carefully enough to hear them.

Unfortunately, in this situation, Horton hasn't shown up yet, so the Whos are yelling in vain.

It's a great school, but a challenging one. Some 40% of the kids do not speak English as their first language (and many parents do not speak English at all) and there is an extraordinarily high rate of poverty among students. Amid these formidable issues, the school has outstanding visual and performing arts programs, foreign language for all students and a gifted program.

The Unit 4 administration insisted that 6 weeks was plenty of time to do a thorough search for the right person to lead this school. (And I admit that six weeks is certainly better than the three weeks they had originally allocated for the search/interview/hiring process.)

The incredible faculty and staff (and these people have made a first-rate school out of a near-impossible situation) petitioned to have an internal interim appointed for next year while a real search for a suitable candidate could be conducted. The PTA submitted a petition in support of that. So the people who spend all day, every day in the actual school, and the parents of the kids who go there, made a reasonable, well thought out recommendation, with justifications, as to what would be best for this unique institution.

"We are here," they yelled.

But the administration can't seem to hear them. Even the Unit 4 representative who showed up late for the parent meeting to record "parent input" couldn't seem to hear. It was never explained, at least to the parents, why this request was ignored. At this point if they are merely going through the motions in order to justify giving some important person's second cousin's great-nephew's boss's best friend's son a job, I wish they'd just say so.

I'm curious if the hastily selected finalists will realize that this school is alive and even, sometimes, thriving, because of the very people who are not being heard. I'm curious about how they feel about being flung onto this obscure speck of dust, never to be heard again.

And I'm curious if the administration ever made it to the end of the book, where the kangaroos and the monkeys finally realized they were wrong.