Minutes after the news of Interim Superintendent Susan Enfield’s decision to rehire Ingraham High Principal Martin Floe broke, the entire Ingraham community erupted in excitement, tweeting, texting and posting messages on Facebook to share the good news.
“I am stunned and nearly in tears,” says Ingraham PTSA legislative co-chair Deborah Niedermeyer, one of the Ingraham parents who led the campaign to reinstate Floe. “All this work and it worked. What a brave thing for Enfield to do.”
Enfield isn’t giving interviews to the press today and Floe didn’t return calls for comment immediately.
Enfield made the announcement just a few hours before she was scheduled to meet with the Ingraham community to discuss Floe’s firing at 6:30 p.m. today. That meeting has been canceled, but Ingraham PTSA President Cindy Nevins says that the community might still gather at the school to celebrate. “Maybe have a party in the lawn,” she says laughing.
So what made Enfield change her mind suddenly? When she announced her decision to fire Floe a week ago, she said little more than that the school will benefit from new leadership. In her email to the Ingraham community today, Enfield remained unapologetic about her initial statement, explaining that “the work my team completed over many months leading up to my initial decision not to renew Mr. Floe’s contract was, and is, solid.”
But she acknowledged that after listening to the concerns of Ingraham staff, students, and parents and witnessing “the turmoil this situation had created,” she was ready to give Floe another chance. “I think part of the issue was that the entire procedure somehow left out the community factor,” says Niedermeyer.
Both Niedermeyer and Nevins think that the community outrage also contributed to Enfield changing her mind. Not only did the Ingraham community manage to get over 1,100 “friends” for their Friends of Martin Floe Facebook page, they emailed school board members, held rallies, collected signatures for a petition and was set to protest at the school board meeting Wednesday.
Floe had near-unanimous support from Ingraham teachers as well as parents. Other schools were also crafting resolutions to reinstate him. “Once she [Enfield] had all the facts, she made an informed decision,” Nevins says. “I think based on all the data that came out, we still have work to do at Ingraham.”
Enfield spends six figures on “chief communications officer” and this is how she communicates her decisions — he’s out, well wait a minute, my reasons are this, no that, and he’s in…for now, but I’m a good leader who listens. Yeah, right.
Good call by Enfeld.
I’m sure she had adequate grounds for dismissing Floe, but buy-in from parents is a huge deal, and the issues with Floe would have to be pretty extreme to justify alienating them.
Aren’t kids supposed to be shooting spitballs at their principal and chalking his car?
This just shows that there were missing pieces in the initial review that led to the decision. Bree Dusseault, the regional manager that crafted the negative evaluation, has little to no clue about the intangibles of leadership beyond the numbers and the rubrics she is directed to use in these evaluations. She has shown no interest in learning about the history of the school, the improvement over the last ten years under Floe’s leadership, or the passion of the teachers in the building if that passion doesn’t match the latest district-mandated imperatives. It is time for her to be held accountable for her lack of insight. I certainly hope that she will not be responsible for Floe’s evaluation next year. Otherwise, this is just a one-year extension to his contract with no hope to actually show improvement. She will have vengeance if she’s still around.
Kudos to Dr. Enfield for having the guts to reverse this stupid decision. She just earned some brownie points for ACTUALLY listening to her customers and not just talking it up.
I still say she needs to be fired. I would love to do that without doing my research like she did…. Smart move cause the Ingraham Rams would not have stopped the protest. 🙂
By changing her decision I want to believe that Dr. Enfield has shown good leadership qualities by admitting she was mistaken in her initial decision. However I have a gut feeling that there is a distinct lack of sincerity and a hint of arrogance in the message she sent the Ingraham community about her decision to rescind Principal Floe’s firing. Ingraham may not be the best school in the district in terms of what ever metrics the district uses but it certainly isn’t the worst. Consequently one must ask what about the principals in the schools with lower performance metrics that Ingraham? Makes me wonder, was it about metrics? Was it about personalities? What was it all about? Maybe it is finally time for the administrators down in Fort Stanford to get their own house in order and figure out just how they are going to evaluate our public school system before they start trying to pillory a well respected and, as far as I can tell, effective principal. There is more to evaluating the effectiveness of a school than test scores, how about humanity, respect, and empathy.
This whole debacle just sealed Enfield’s fate: there is no way she can be hired as the new full superintendent (if that was her goal, which I assume it was). I also don’t see the qualities we need in a superintendent in her.
This event also illustrates a couple key problems with our school district. First, it is too big and unwieldy for a central administration to competently run. The people in central administration just have no clue about “conditions on the ground” at umpteen schools, and they have no clue about the the concerns of the thousands of parents of kids at each school. How can they, after all? This criticism applies as much to the superintendent as to the evaluators and other bean counters. We ought to consider some out-of-the-box ideas how to reorganize the district to address this administrative disconnect problem caused by the district’s large size. Maybe the district needs to be divided into three or four subdistricts, or maybe principals need to be made more powerful than the superintendent. Other will have better ideas than I.
Second, even if we had effective central administration, and we don’t, and effective teachers in every classroom, and we don’t, no administrator or teacher has much leeway to do his or her job because you risk incurring the wrath of thousands of pitchfork-wielding parents marching upon the school. Fear of helicopter parents and pitchfork parents means that teaching professionals cannot practice their profession, and mob rule also silences the voices of quieter or more polite parents and kids. There needs to be more insulation from mob rule in how the district is administered. We’ve had mobs rise up about everything from mathematics textbooks to Principal Floe at Ingraham. It’s not a way to run a school district.
“Fear of helicopter parents and pitchfork parents means that teaching professionals cannot practice their profession, and mob rule also silences the voices of quieter or more polite parents and kids. “
That statement shows you know nothing about SPS. This district virtually NEVER listens to parents. One reason this decision is so startling is because it means Dr. Enfield actually listened. Mob rule has NEVER worked in SPS. I was on the Closure and Consolidation committee several years back and it didn’t work then.
The episode has revealed the deficiencies in Ms Duesseault’s work.
She is the person who needs to be on a performance improvement plan.
It’s fascinating that people demand performance and increased test scores and accountability — until it’s someone they like, and then all that stuff goes out the window because he’s a good guy.
If you want improved performance you’ve got to make tough decisions. Enfield made one, but unfortunately backed down.