Kudos goes out to Sue O’Reilly-McRae

My Turn/O’Reilly-McRae: PVRS parents should voice their concerns

 

 

By Sue O’Reilly-McRae

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

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• my turn
• pioneer valley regional school
• administration

Since just before the December holiday break, I have been a heartbroken Pioneer Valley Regional School parent.
As a 30-year educator, mother of two successful PVRS students, and an advocate for public education, I was stunned and deeply saddened to learn of the unexpected resignation of our long-time principal, Bill Wehrli.
Bill had been the principal of PVRS since my oldest son, now a sophomore in college, began attending as a seventh-grader. Over the eight years that I have observed and interacted with PVRS as a parent and fellow educator, I’ve watched our school grow and evolve, hire new and dynamic staff, and sustain its commitment to the arts and athletics. I observed and experienced an unmistakable investment and pride in the administrative team that supported PVRS: Bill Wehrli as principal, Mike Duprey as assistant principal, and Cathy Hawkins-Harrison as dean of students.
When I learned of Wehrli’s resignation, I was grief-stricken. Not just for the loss of this one administrator from our school, but for what this type of resignation signaled about what was suddenly happening at a school I care deeply about. I knew how dedicated to our school community Bill Wehrli was, and I believe that he would have never left midyear without speaking with students unless something professionally intolerable was happening to him.

Now several other key administrators have felt the need to leave our district. Mike Duprey has resigned from PVRS. I am confident that like Wehrli, he would not step away from the school he is devoted to unless his professional experience there had likewise become intolerable.
I believe that what we had in the leadership team at PVRS was a model of sustainable leadership. Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink in their 2006 scholarly article — based on 15 years of work investigating school change — suggest that, “sustainable leadership respects and builds on the past in its quest to create a better future ... it doesn’t treat people’s knowledge, experience, and careers as disposable waste but as valuable, renewable, and recombinable resources.”
I believe that every devoted educator takes their work personally. We pour our creative energy into our relationships, the curriculum experiences we devise, and the academic support systems we create. Teaching and supervising teachers is very personal work; the best educators put their hearts, their whole person on the line in an effort to reach every student, every staff member, and to support growth, development and learning for all.
Throughout this stressful year, the teachers at PVRS have continued to love, care for, and teach our children. Thank you. In spite of the ongoing administrative turmoil you have sustained, you focus on and are committed to our children. I am so grateful for each one of you.
Hargreaves and Fink suggest that “the greatest source of trust in an organization … is communication trust, meaning that there is clear, frequent, open, high-level and reciprocal communication. Without communication, trust ... feelings and attributions of suspicion and betrayal infect an organization like a plague.” Since Wehrli’s resignation in December, parents, teachers, students, and community members have been asking for communication that would somehow restore the trust we had in our former superintendents — trust that has been further broken by the subsequent resignations of additional valued administrators.
I and others across the four towns in our district have contacted our School Committee members requesting information that might help us make sense of what is happening. Not only has this information not been forthcoming but at the May committee meeting citizen concerns like those I’ve stated here were eloquently and passionately voiced by former administrators, parents, students and teachers. These concerns were not addressed by the committee and were later discussed, after most of the concerned community members had left.
At the May and June PVRS School Committee meetings, former Pioneer district administrator Scott Lyman and other concerned parents and community members requested that the committee refuse to accept any additional administrator resignations until exit interviews were conducted by the School Committee to determine why we are suddenly losing so many valued administrators. Did you refuse to accept Mr. Duprey’s resignation, as Lyman and many others requested and, signaled by enthusiastic applause from around the room, the larger community seconded? Have you conducted exit interviews with other administrators?
At the May meeting we were listened to and not responded to. At the June meeting, the School Committee chair and other members referenced Massachusetts general law as the reason why they would not/could not respond to our concerns. I would love for the School Committee to cite exactly where in Massachusetts general law it says that a school committee may not respond to parent, staff, and community concerns.
District residents: please make every effort to call and/or write to your School Committee members if you share my concerns. The current PVRS website can be accessed at www.pvrsdk12.org/ and contact information for each School Committee member is listed under the School Committee tab at the top of the web page. Please attend the upcoming school committee meeting at PVRS on Thursday, Aug. 25. The PVRS community has been seeking understanding for too long.
Sue O’Reilly-McRae is a PVRS parent and an educator.


Start flooding the recorder  its the only way to get the school committees attention  and sharing this blog.