June 1, 2018 - Director of Schools Weekly Update - P a g e 1 Shawn Joseph, Ed.D. Director of Schools Dear Members of the Board, We have had a great week. We continue to hire principals for principal vacancies. A number of the positions had Acting Principals. We convened principal panels, and I am happy to report that I have been pleased with the caliber of our principal hires. Most of the principal candidates participated in our principal pipeline program, and I have also been pleased to fill some of our most challenging principal vacancies by recruiting and selecting sitting principals from MNPS and other school districts. Six of the vacancies are a result of a principal moving from one job within the district to another job. Four vacancies were filled by the current acting principal or former principal of a consolidated school. Twelve vacancies were a result of a retirement or us accepting a principal’s resignation. My goal is to have all principal vacancies filled by July 1, 2018. If a position is vacant after July 1, I will appoint an acting principal in the job and we will convene a principal interview panel in the Spring of 2019. To date, here are the principal vacancies that have been filled: 1. Antioch HS – Ms. Clarissa Zellars 2. Apollo MS – Mrs. Stephanie Adams 3. Bellshire ES – Dr. Donald Black (external) 4. Buena Vista ES Mrs. Myra Taylor (Served as Acting Principal) 5. Caldwell/Glenn ES – Mr. Dexter Adams (Served as principal of Glenn ES) 6. Carter Lawrence ES – Dr. Sherleta Sanders 7. Eagle View ES – Mr. Shawn Lawrence 8. Eakin ES – Mr. Eric Hartfelder 9. East MS – Advertised and expected to be filled 10. Glengarry ES – Mrs. Leslie Gordon (external) 11. Haynes MS – Dr. Robin Allen 12. Haywood ES – Mrs. Megan Galloway (Served as Acting Principal) 13. Hillwood HS – Dr. Stephen Sheaffer 14. Jere Baxter MS – Advertised and expected to be filled 15. John Early MS - Dr. Darwin Mason 16. Lakeview ES – Dr. Shantrell Pirtle 17. Maxwell ES - Advertised and expected to be filled 18. Neely’s Bend ES – Advertised and expected to be filled 19. Oliver MS – Dr. Erin Anderson 20. Pearl Cohn HS - Mrs. Mariam Harrington 21. Rose Park MS - Mr. Rommie Vasser (Served as Acting Principal) 22. Paragon Mills ES – Advertised and expected to be filled I have attached the resumes of the principals hired to date. June 1, 2018 - Director of Schools Weekly Update - P a g e 2 One of the areas I’d like us to focus on as a district is strengthening our succession planning. It is a conversation I continue to have with our Chiefs. I convened a meeting with Dr. Narcisse, Chief of Schools, Mrs. Deborah Story, Chief Human Resources Officer, Dr. SingerGabella, Chief of Staff, and our Community Superintendents to look at the strengths of our school based administrative teams. We identified assistant principals that we feel have the capacity to be principals within our school district in the future but who may need a different experience to further develop their capacity. We also discussed our school system’s need to ensure that assistant principals who have been cut from their school budgets due to reduced enrollment are placed in open assistant principal vacancies within our school district instead of being forced to find a job and potentially lose compensation. Community Superintendents identified vacancies in schools and also identified potential assistant principal reassignments that would provide assistant principals with new opportunities under new leadership to further develop their leadership capacity. Community Superintendents and Executive Directors of School Support and Improvement will be meeting with affected principals and assistant principals to discuss possible assistant principal assignment changes and placements in the coming week. I have charged Dr. Sonia Stewart, Executive Officer for Organizational Development, to begin working on more systematic plans for principal development and to continue to strengthen our principal pipeline work. We are fortunate to be collaborating with the Wallace Foundation and the Council of the Great City Schools to strengthen our practices. We will continue in the EESA Leadership Learning Community in the coming year. I am finalizing my evaluation support materials. I will submit it to Dr. Gentry and Mr. Pinkston by June 15, 2018. This should give the board time to complete my final evaluation by early July. We are also finalizing our school district KPI data dashboard. It should be ready by early July to be uploaded to our website. Dr. Marcy Singer-Gabella started today. She will be reaching out to board members and government officials to have one-on-one meetings to learn more about you to strengthen our collaboration and support of our strategic plan. Lastly, we continue to get lots of FOI requests from Channel 5 Investigative Reports. The current series of inquiries, I believe, are a result of an employee who was given the option to resign instead of being non-renewed due to consistent errors and underperformance in the Human Resources Department. The former employee has shared information pertaining to investigations and other information, and this information is being requested. Many of the investigations that have been requested were incidents that occurred years ago. One recent investigation inquiry pertains to Mo Carrasco. As you are aware, Mr. Carrasco resigned while an investigation was being conducted on him regarding allegations of sexual harassment of multiple staff members. An employee shared that he/she was being harassed with a board of education member. The board of education member communicated with me, but she did not disclose who shared the information with her. I communicated that I could not act upon an anonymous allegation, and I encouraged the board member to have the employee communicate with June 1, 2018 - Director of Schools Weekly Update - P a g e 3 human resources or the board member could communicate with human resources since I was not privy to who was involved. I did communicate with Mr. Carrasco as soon as I could schedule a meeting with him to let him know that these allegations were brought to my attention by a board member, and I communicated that if he had done anything inappropriate, he should communicate his actions. I also told him that I instructed the board member to have the individual report the issue to HR. I also told him that if such an allegation was reported to HR, HR would need to conduct an investigation. He denied any wrongdoing. In case it is helpful, I have attached our district procedure for handling communications with staff. Channel 5 Investigative Reports has historically been reckless with their coverage, only communicating narrow perspectives of stories and significantly slanting stories to present a negative portrayal of our school district. This has a negative effect on the perceptions of families and the community about our school district. Let’s work to continue to build public confidence in our school district by employing practices that allow us to effectively work and focus on teaching and learning. I plan on calling Channel 5 to speak with a manager to ask them to be factual in their stories and provide a balanced voice to their stories that do not unnecessarily destroy people’s reputations. I am concerned about the victims of these cases, and I am concerned that the reporter has asked for investigative files and will report on information that was “alleged”. The individuals whose files have been requested have been notified. I plan on working with Mark North to try to address the issue of confidentiality regarding human resources files in the next legislative agenda. I will be at the Academies of Nashville Retreat in Chattanooga on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I will be on leave on Wed-Friday of next week. Melissa will be reaching out to you to schedule one on one time this month for us. Please call or text me if you need me. CALENDAR (current week activities)  Executive Leadership Team Meeting  PELP Conference Call  Meeting with Art Bodenhammer II  Lunch with Teachers and Principals of the Year  Meeting with Mark North and David Sevier  Principal Interviews  Meeting to Discuss Assistant Principal Placements  Schedule Planning Meeting  Planning Meetings with Marcy Singer-Gabella  One-on-One with Deborah Story