Parents seek to delay shift in personnel

FAYETTEVILLE -- More than 450 people have signed an online petition requesting School District administrators delay a decision to move most middle and elementary assistant principals to different campuses.

A core group of about six concerned parents started the petition to press school officials to respond to their concerns or delay the decision, said Miriam Smith, one of the parents. She has a third-grader at Vandergriff Elementary and a fifth-grader at McNair Middle School.

Supporters of the petition plan to attend Thursday's School Board meeting, though they are not on the agenda, Smith said.

"It's not about me or about my family," Smith said, acknowledging the decision will move Assistant Principal Ted Whitehead from McNair. "It's about the impact this wide-sweeping move makes on all students and all parents at every single one of these schools."

The petition asks Superintendent Paul Hewitt and the School Board to hold off shifting the assistant principals until after incoming Superintendent Matthew Wendt starts, according to the petition on change.org. Wendt's contract begins July 1.

Hewitt is happy to see so many parents want their assistant principals to stay, but he said the decision is not about an individual school or an individual principal. The goal is to prepare future leaders.

The principals of those schools will remain in place, he said.

Discussions about moving the assistant principals began in February because of a concern about having a pipeline of highly qualified principals, Hewitt said. The job of the assistant principal is preparation for being a principal.

The district can't afford to have people in assistant principal positions as a career because those positions are needed to train new principals, Hewitt said.

"Great leaders in the principalship must always be our focus," Hewitt said. "We do not believe that remaining in one school and observing one principal gives an assistant principal the depth of understanding needed to be a great principal."

Parent reaction

Assistant principals often are the face of their schools, Smith said. They handle discipline. They monitor students at lunch. Parents see them in the car pickup line.

Smith said she understands the move was meant to develop leadership skills in the assistant principals but had concerns and questions about the research, about a major personnel change being made by an outgoing superintendent, about how the decision was communicated to the assistant principals and about how children and schools would be impacted.

She put her concerns and questions into eight points in a letter she sent to Fayetteville School Board members. While a couple of them responded, they have not answered her concerns and questions, she said. The petition was posted May 15.

"Parents believe change can be good, if done at the right time, using valid research, using the right process of communication and for the good of all our students and valued assistant principals," Smith said.

The plan to move assistant principals comes on the heels of significant changes implemented this school year, said Chris Foley, who has children at Vandergriff Elementary and McNair Middle School.

A grade level transition moved ninth grade to Fayetteville High School, seventh grade from middle school to junior high and fifth grade from elementary to middle school. Teachers had to decide whether to stay at the same campus or move with their grade level, Foley said.

The school administrators remained a constant amid so many changes, he said.

"We're less than a year from that fruit basket turnover," Foley said. "They've taken out that one bit of consistency they had."

Parent Jennifer Smith, no relation to Miriam Smith, was upset about Holcomb Assistant Principal Allison Houston being moved to Butterfield Trail Elementary School, she said. Houston is the one Smith goes to when she has a problem. She likes that Houston's personality is happy, open and receptive.

"If you have a great relationship with your faculty and your students, shaking that up is not going to turn out well for anybody," she said.

Houston has said while she thinks of Butterfield Trail as a good school and is happy to be going there, but leaving Holcomb is hard because of the relationships she has with teachers, parents and students there. Whitehead, who has been at McNair, declined to comment.

Parent Justin Minkel, who has a child at Leverett Elementary, teaches in Springdale and writes a monthly column for Education Week Teacher, respects Hewitt and the Fayetteville administration. The decision to move assistant principals concerns him because of the way it was communicated.

"It doesn't seem like there's been a lot of communication with parents about this really huge and disruptive change," Minkel said.

The list of petition signers include parents, relatives of students, and current and former Fayetteville School District employees or their family members. April Maranto, the wife of School Board member Bob Maranto, also signed.

April Maranto did not respond to a request for comment. Bob Maranto posted on his Facebook page, Bob Maranto for Fayetteville School Board Zone 2, that School Board members leave personnel to the superintendent to manage, while also having a duty to be responsive to the public, Maranto wrote.

He thinks moving the assistant principals would give them a broader perspective and encourages everyone to see themselves as being part of the school district and not just one school, he wrote.

"Clearly it's proved to be more controversial than people thought," Maranto said. "All sides in this are well-intentioned. There's some legitimate debates about it."

On not waiting

Hewitt said he makes decisions every day, guided by what is best for the district. He can't stop making decisions and wait for the new superintendent, he said.

The decision to reassign assistant principals involved the district's two associate superintendents and other district-level administrators. He apprised Wendt of all major decisions, he said.

The timing of the announcement came in April because an earlier decision would have been too disruptive, with assistant principals being put in the position of being a "lame duck." They weren't asked about moving because very few would want to leave their schools, Hewitt said.

"Sometimes you must push people out of their comfort zones so they can grow and be prepared to be successful at the next level," he said.

Brenda Bernet can be reached by email at bbernet@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWABrenda.

NW News on 05/22/2016