Burlington’s interim superintendent, assistant superintendent and chief administrative officer resigned their positions Friday morning, citing an untenable relationship with the school board.
In a scathing letter to board chair Patrick Halladay, the interim leadership team wrote, “There are board members who regularly make email and public meeting comments that malign central office administrators. This behavior only serves to expand the ‘us against them’ culture which has led to the departure of many directors in the last ten months.”
On November 10, interim superintendent Stephanie Phillips, assistant superintendent Paul Irish and administrative officer Nikki Fuller will return to their former positions — respectively, the directors of curriculum; infrastructure and technology, and human resources and equity affairs. In their letter, they criticized the board for micromanaging and second-guessing their work. “We regularly experience members of this board choosing to disregard our expertise and sound advice, to disrespect us personally and to distrust our every action.”
According to the letter, seven of 14 administrators have departed since last spring. It also cited the fact that the interim leaders have taken on additional duties without any additional pay.
At a hastily organized press conference later in the afternoon, Mayor Miro Weinberger had stern words for school leadership. “I am frustrated and disappointed that the school board and interim schools administration have not been able to come together and move forward during this challenging time. This is unacceptable. Burlingtonians will not tolerate this failure of leadership, which puts our children’s education at risk,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.
The Burlington School District has been struggling to get a grip on its finances since the spring, when significant budgeting errors surfaced. Former superintendent Jeanne Collins left her job in June after reaching a separation agreement that ended her contract early. The district is looking for a new leader.
Weinberger reminded reporters that the school board had rejected his earlier offer to help with the school’s “leadership transition” in part by them lending them his chief financial officer. Weinberger said he was again willing to offer “any reasonable assistance” to help the district find both an interim and a permanent superintendent, including picking up the phone and holding meetings to recruit qualified candidates. The turmoil in the district could make that task more challenging, he acknowledged.
Vermont Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe, who met with the mayor and Halladay, released a statement saying that she was monitoring the situation and willing to provide assistance. “The Burlington School District board needs to put aside any individual agendas and put the focus back on kids and putting in place the people and processes that will enable the schools and students to thrive.”
In a press conference inside Edmunds Elementary School Friday afternoon, the school board’s chairman, Patrick Halladay, and its clerk, Liz Curry, said the board will hold an emergency meeting Sunday night and pledged to have a new temporary leadership team in place by November 10.
“We were surprised and greatly disappointed to learn today of the resignations of our senior administrative team from their interim roles as superintendent and senior directors,” Halladay and Curry said in a prepared statement. “As board leadership, we were attempting as much as possible to make their tenure in these interim roles fully supported. We are chagrined that they felt the situation was otherwise and that they also felt it necessary to take such drastic action.”
Halladay and Curry both strongly hinted that the discord stemmed from dealings between the administrators and a small number of school board members. “Individual board members need to be responsible for their own actions,” Halladay said. “They come to the work from different perspectives … and ways of interacting.”
When pressed, they declined to point to specific board members, but said that disagreements on the board have sharp.
“It has been difficult, in a difficult climate, for the board to come together … in a cooperative way,” Halladay said. “I have been frustrated. I have worked hard to try to change that.”
Despite the news, Halladay said he was still confident the board will be able to hire a quality permanent superintendent.
The pair cut off questions without discussing Weinberger’s renewed offer to have city officials assist.
Reporter Mark Davis contributed to this story.
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good riddance to bad rubbish. Burlington needs a national search team. Halladay is a moron but he is our moron. Im glad my kids are gone the fact that they ever approved Jeanne Collins payout for the mess she left is testament to the incompetence of the leadership of the board.
But it was obvious to a causal observer when Collins demanded an assistant and when pressed for why she needed this assistant she said she couldn’t handle a budget or five union contracts. the in other words the basic job. we need to hire a manager someone who is well versed in running a rather large organization schooled in negotiations with union thugs.
Spend the money on a well vetted educational search company and bring in some competent candidates from outside of the union and school district and the state. Hiring local and from with in is a recipe for disaster we need some one to run the schools not ruin the schools.
I guess the kids who supported the bus driver strike are paying for it now its too bad. Kids commuting on the bus take a forty story carbon building out of the atmosphere every year if parents decide to drive their three kids to school instead of paying the bus tax it will cost us more in road maintenance carbon and teaching the kids to use public transit . I think the policy is a fail.
You seem to know everything – every inside detail, every personal motivation. And you seem to have all the answers. How do do it?
The city needs a new school board. The city council should mandate an emergency election. No national candidates would come into this morass.
Craig you talking to me I asked Jeanne Collins why she needed an assistant when she asked for one that was her answer. Pretty simple if you want to know something ask.
She was a very competent qualified special education teacher, superintendent not so much.
Clean slate! Maybe staff who were part of the problem, or used to the old system where board members were in the dark, are not the best interim leadership team.
Until we can see some transparency between the parties (school board and now the past interim-administration) it’s impossible, at least for me, to assign any blame. But this situation doesn’t meet the “stink test”. All to often have I heard of similar situations where seemingly community minded citizens run for positions on school boards, city, town or county councils, not-for-profit boards, house committees, etc. and within days become “experts” in managing these bodies without a scintilla of experience in, for instance the Burlington City School District. In essence, the “power” these members hold goes to their head. And, why isn’t everything transparent? Are school board or school administrations “private” and not subject to public scrutiny? I’d like to see a concerned citizen of the district or even Seven Days file a “Freedom of Information” action and get everything out in the sunshine. That would include communications between the mayor and/or Holcombe with the school board.
Interesting comments. Burlington, VT puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunction. I only wonder if all the drama-rama points to a deeper issue re. The Burl school system in its current form is simply unmanageable. There are too many vested interests. Under Collins it seems to have tried to be all things to all people and could pay for it b/c of generous and vapid taxpayers as if $$ solves all problems. (Let’s put it in the budget and see if it passes…) Perhaps the recession, debt, and housing costs, etc. have changed that. And the lack of understanding of a school board’s mission–to get the best education and bang for the buck–, and lax scrutiny, and board stacking and credential chasing by the education mafia may also be partially to blame. And what may be needed now is a streamline education process that simply prepares kids for the next stages in their lives to think critically, analytically, creatively. Sometimes I wonder if the BTV school system is more like a year-round summer camp. It’s been my experience that education is not always fun.
Miro didn’t get a comment into the original article? I thought he worked for Seven Days, or is that vice versa?