Tuesday, April 04, 2017

Pittsburg superintendent: We would have discovered truth about principal without kids' reporting

The students of Pittsburg High School's online newspaper, Booster Redux, uncovered a slipshod vetting of the new high school principal, but if you listen to the superintendent, he and his people were already working on it and the end result, Amy Robertson's resignation, would have been the same.

From an article posted earlier tonight on the Pittsburg Morning Sun website:

“I appreciate that our kids ask questions and don’t just accept something because somebody told them,” (Superintendent Destry) Brown said. “And that would have been the easy thing to do. So I will always support our kids.

“The unfortunate thing is that internal in our office we were already working on a lot of that and eventually the chickens would have come to roost.

They made it very public, which probably speeded that process. Things may have happened differently but maybe had the same result in the end. It would have been later, rather than earlier. I feel like they did a great job with the research they did. They shared that with me. We took some of that and followed up.”


Hopefully, the staff of the Booster Redux won't be contest to rest on their laurels because there is much more investigative reporting to do.

What steps will be taken to make sure that the hunt for a new principal will yield better results?

If the search that ended up getting Amy Robertson the job despite a record that the students were able to easily tear apart was done the same way as has been done with other openings as the superintendent says, and Robertson's credentials were checked, as he insists, who did the checking and how were so many red flags overlooked?

It wasn't just a problem with a newly-hired high school principal that the students discovered, they appear to have uncovered a more serious problem with how the Pittsburg administration hires its employees.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time to man up, Destry. You messed up and the kids probably saved your job in the long run.

Anonymous said...

Bravo to those student reporters!

Anonymous said...

He most likely couldn't really admit that everyone involved in the hiring process had been totally bamboozled by this faker of credentials, whether or not that actually happened.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to hear someone actually say, "We were wrong and it is 100% our fault for being inept." Nobody will trust "someone" who can't admit it when really mess something up.

Great job, Kids, and great job to whoever taught them how to do investigative reporting. Maybe that person should be on the hiring committee?

Anonymous said...

Picked up by washpost!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/05/these-high-school-journalists-investigated-a-new-principals-credentials-days-later-she-resigned/?utm_term=.533c2baad2f1

Steve Holmes said...

"We were already working on a lot of that and eventually the chickens would have come home to roost."

Uhhh, does he mean she was being investigated by the people who had just hired her?

Next, investigate the qualifications of the hiring committee.

Anonymous said...

Should have caught these issues BEFORE the job was offered to her.

Anonymous said...

The chickens just laid eggs on Desrty Brown's face.

Trent said...

Great job kids!!

Stephan said...

Way to belittle your students accomplishments Destry. Instead try "These students did a fantastic job and uncovered flaws in our vetting process."

Anonymous said...

By definition the HMFIC can never fail, they can only be failed by the fall guys who are always responsible for all screw-ups.