Clairemont Principal Not Returning Next Year
Decatur Metro | April 11, 2010From an April 1st letter from Superintendent Edwards written to the parents, teachers and staff of the Clairemont community…
I am writing this letter to inform you that Dr. Graneze Scott will not be returning as principal for the upcoming school year.
In the next week or so, I will be advertising to fill the position. As has been our custom over the years, I will ask the members of the School Leadership Team and some faculty members to serve on the interview committee.
Naturally, it is important that we keep to a rater stringent timeline. The first step will be the development of a list of desired criteria and qualities. I will ask the School Leadership Team and faculty to assist in the development of these criteria.
Two years ago, when we went through this process, I asked the interview team to provide me the top two candidates to interview. We will follow this practice with the final decision for the choice of principal resting with the Superintendent of Schools.
Ms. Caroline Wood, Director of Human Resources, will be lead person from the Central Office. See will keep you posted from this point forward.
Over the next few months, please let Dr. Scott know your well wishes for her as she moves forward in new endeavors.
Sincerely,
Dr. Phyllis Edwards
Superintendent
Thanks to Diane for pointing this out. There was a mention of this in the Superintendent’s letter to the school board for this coming week’s meeting, but I never followed up on it.
For all the criticism Dr. E has endured, you must give her credit for taking action to replace ineffective leaders. She hired Bruce Roaden and she’s apparently taken the step of replacing this principal. I think it’s no secret that Clairemont parents have been unhappy and dissatisfied with the school this year. Hiring a new principal might set the school on a new course.
Hope the candiate, internal or external, is someone with a proven record, observed in action by the interview team and decision maker(s). Interviews, applications, and letters of reference can hide mediocre performance.
No matter who becomes Clairemont principal next year, temporarily or permanently, all four elementary schools need sufficient paraprofessional and specialist support. Adequate paraprofessional and specialist support allows the teachers to do the everyday differentiated instruction needed by the wide range of children in the classrooms, many with special needs, e.g. those with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, accelerated learning needs (aka “gifted”), speech disorders, and intellectual challenges, and all sorts of combinations of the above, in various stages of the RTI (Response To Intervention) process, with or without an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan), not to mention just the ordinary range of delightful personalities and strengths and weaknesses possessed by a classroom of children. Hopefully, the dire predictions of class size rising will not happen in CSD; larger class sizes would be disastrous for a school in flux.
“Accelerated learning needs” is the new PC term for gifted?
The same way “Enhanced Interrogation” is a new term for torture. Not PC–euphemism.
Heh! Good’un, Gibbets…
“Accelerated learning needs” sounds like a cram session (or summer to pass a class and graduate on time).
May I suggest, “I’m not gifted, I just have a high intellectual metabolism.”
And in the other direction, “I’m not stupid, I just have a low intellectual metabolism.”
I like “high intellectual metabolism” because it describes the situation well. “Gifted” makes it sound like some kids got lucky when the Gift Fairy came around the Newborn Nursery and others did not. Gifted programs are not some kind of reward that kids earn. Some kids truly need special accelerated learning because they otherwise would be bored or frustrated or ostracized and would not learn well without special services. They need special services to reach their academic potential just like children with dyslexia or hearing deficits do.
““Gifted” makes it sound like some kids got lucky when the Gift Fairy came around the Newborn Nursery and others did not.”
Well, that’s pretty much the deal. Some people have higher aptitudes, IQ’s, abilities etc. than others. “Gifted” works fine for me.
Problem is that it’s not just a gift, it’s a need too. At least that’s the argument as to why we have to spend more money on services for gifted children–otherwise they won’t reach their academic potential. Bottom line is that the classroom teacher has an awful lot of special needs groups to deal with in their classroom. It’s not just a simple “Now it’s math time everyone” like in the classrooms of yore. The amount of differentiation in instruction that a teacher is supposed to achieve in their classroom and still maintain classroom order and a positive environment is mindboggling. Without some extra hands, e.g. specialists and paraprofessionals, differentiated instruction is just rhetoric, not something that students actually receive.
I recommend that all parents and interested community members find a way to help out IN a classroom on a regular basis to see what actually happens. It’s hard to understand otherwise.
Problem is that it’s not just a gift, it’s a need too.
And having super-sized cognitive brain function and intellectual aptitude isn’t quite the same as having an amazing jump shot, pitching arm, or kicking foot. If a child displayed virtuoso-type talent for music or sports, that child’s abilities would be attentively nurtured and cultivated.
How quickly and eagerly a child can and wants to learn concepts, facts and figures, and ways of thinking and communicating is certainly a need as much as it is a “talent,” but it isn’t always given adequate attention?
Having a photographic memory or a substantially larger vocabulary might get someone in the most advanced classes available. Any third-grader that can spell and use the word “verisimilitude” in a sentence deserves a chance to do a book report on a Kafka story.
I recall some teacher saying when I was in high school that mixing high and low intellectual metabolic students in one class is ultimately more beneficial because over time, their aptitudes would balance each other out or something to that effect. So, what does that become? Reverting back to the mean for some and going up and beyond the bare minimum in terms of effort (class participation) and productivity (gpa)?
Gifted fairy my foot. My son works his little back-end off for the grades he gets. (Yes, he’s in the “gifted program.”) The only kids i think are gifted are the ones taking calculus in elementary school or playing Brahms at age 6. And i don’t think CSD has that many of those. (Aren’t something like 25% of the CSD kids ‘gifted”?) It has always reminded me of lake wobegan (where they are all above average.)