It took half a year, but McKinley Elementary finally has certified principal

When the 2013-2014 school year started, McKinley Elementary School faced numerous challenges.

The school had an almost entirely new faculty, many of them younger, inexperienced teachers, in need of a veteran guiding hand.

What Joplin R-8 Administration provided was Terri Hart...a principal who was not even certified to be a principal.

With all of the certified principals available, many of whom would love an opportunity to work in one of the largest school districts in southwest Missouri, no one ever explained why Ms. Hart, who had been working in Administration office at 32nd and Duquesne, was the best choice.

The fall semester was a rocky one at McKinley Elementary, but one thing changed when students returned for classes in January.

For the first time since last May, they had a certified principal. Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) records indicate that Terri Hart was certified as a principal on December 18, 2013, four months after the school year began and a half year after she was named to the position.

The story of how Ms. Hart became McKinley principal was told in a Turner Report post from November 18,  a full month before Mrs. Hart was certified:

Things were not going well at Joplin's McKinley Elementary School during the 2012-2013 school year.

 Younger teachers were having a hard time dealing with Principal Jennifer Doshier's somewhat mercurial demands. They talked with a veteran teacher, who agreed they had reason to be concerned. The things she was hearing were serious enough that the veteran teacher called Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer, who suggested that the veteran teacher bring the younger teachers over to the administration building at 32nd and Duquesne to discuss the problems.

After the meeting started, the veteran teacher reassured Dr. Besendorfer that the teachers were not blowing the situation out of proportion.

Dr. Besendorfer offered a sympathetic ear, nodding as the teachers spoke, every once in a while commenting, "This is unbelievable," or "this should not be happening."

As the meeting closed, Dr. Besendorfer told the teachers not to worry. "I will take care of this."

As the veteran teacher and the younger ones left Dr. Besendorfer's office, for the first time in a long time they had a feeling that their jobs might just become a little more bearable.

Dr. Besendorfer, true to her word, took care of the situation. By the time her solution had been implemented, the younger teachers, none of whom had tenure, did not have their contracts renewed, and the veteran teacher, a woman well respected in the community, was escorted out of McKinley Elementary and placed on a paid leave of absence. Later, she was transferred to another job in the district. Probably the only thing that saved her position was that she had tenure and the district was already in the process of being embarrassed as it made efforts to fire another tenured teacher.

By the time, the year ended, nearly every teacher in McKinley Elementary had either been non-renewed or had resigned.

Angie Besendorfer did not forget about Principal Jennifer Doshier. Ms. Doshier was promoted to upper administration, in the recently created post of director of elementary education.

Meanwhile, Ms. Doshier's replacement, the principal who would have to deal with a completely new, highly inexperienced young faculty- is Terri Hart, who was moved from an upper administration ;position as curriculum coordinator...and who, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website, does not have a principal's certificate.

Parents of McKinley Elementary students should not worry about having such an inexperienced principal at the helm- she won't be here for long. She has told some people that her plan is to get a job at Pittsburg State University and others that she hopes to become a superintendent at a small school.

The one thing she makes sure everyone knows- McKinley Elementary is just a steppingstone.

Weapons, abuse, student rampages: Are things really this bad at McKinley Elementary School?

Are things really this bad?

 When I wrote my novel No Child Left Alive, part of the reason was the concern that the lack of discipline in the schools, particularly at the high school and middle school levels, could have schools, in Joplin and across the nation headed for horrible consequences, as well as hurting the quality of the education we can provide.

In the Turner Report post from last night about the promotion of Joplin R-8 HR Director Tina Smith to the newly-created position of chief operations officer, I noted that several people had been promoted beyond their qualifications.

One of those was first-year McKinley Elementary Principal Terri Hart, whose ascension to the position was described in my post Angie Besendorfer and the Massacre at McKinley Elementary.

A reader wrote the following comment:

Here's a prime example of how promoting within helps the schools.

McKinley Elementary is a a very dangerous place this year. No one from admin. ever comes to help since they promoted one of their own to principal. Teachers are told to just reward the bad behavior and when that doesn't work, reward some more.

 Students are bringing guns, threats to kill /hurt teachers and students are made on a daily basis, teachers and staff are verbally abused everyday, students are afraid to go to class and yet they still have to go, classrooms are being destroyed, students aren't learning except how to escape the room when someone wants to go on a rampage.

 They tear smart-boards off the walls and hang from the projectors in the ceiling. They jump on tables, scream, cuss, and spit on teachers. And these are just a few things that are happening.

 The principal is Terri Hart, who is one of Besendorfer's buddies and worked in the admin building prior to being a principal. If you were to ask her and the admin building they would tell you there is no problem at McKinley. So let's keep on promoting everyone to every position they are not qualified for in the R-8 system.

I would be interested in hearing your comments.

2013 in Review: Angie Besendorfer and the massacre at McKinley

(From November 2013)

Things were not going well at Joplin's McKinley Elementary School during the 2012-2013 school year.

 Younger teachers were having a hard time dealing with Principal Jennifer Doshier's somewhat mercurial demands. They talked with a veteran teacher, who agreed they had reason to be concerned. The things she was hearing were serious enough that the veteran teacher called Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer, who suggested that the veteran teacher bring the younger teachers over to the administration building at 32nd and Duquesne to discuss the problems.

After the meeting started, the veteran teacher reassured Dr. Besendorfer that the teachers were not blowing the situation out of proportion.

Dr. Besendorfer offered a sympathetic ear, nodding as the teachers spoke, every once in a while commenting, "This is unbelievable," or "this should not be happening."

As the meeting closed, Dr. Besendorfer told the teachers not to worry. "I will take care of this."

The damaging effect of Joplin's high teacher turnover

I imagine there are Turner Report readers who are tired of hearing that more than 200 teachers left the Joplin R-8 School District over the past two years.

That is especially true when the situation has been explained by Superintendent C. J. Huff and others with these three scenarios:

-The teachers were suffering from the traumatic effects of the tornado

-Their spouses landed jobs in other towns.

-And the most recent one, which was posed by an anonymous commenter on this blog- The teachers left because they are afraid of technology.

Anyone who is close to the situation knows you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of teachers who left because their spouses were hired for out-of-town jobs.

I still have not heard the name of one teacher who left because of the tornado. On the contrary, I know many who resolved to stay because they wanted to help the students get through the recovery process.

As for the technology nonsense, teachers have always adapted to the technology, even when the addition of such technology and the requirements for implementing it do not make any sense.

You are always going to have some turnover in education. It is a stressful job and there are people who realize they are not equipped to handle the stress or who find that their interests lie in other directions.

With that being said, the biggest problem with high teacher turnover is the effect it has on the students.

When that many teachers are leaving, whether it be by choice or coercion, with them goes experience that cannot be replaced. There will always be teachers retiring and beginning teachers being added to schools. It is when veteran teachers who are nowhere near retirement age are leaving that you have a serious problem.

The Joplin R-8 School District has a serious problem.

The district is running through principals at an unheard-of pace and when you have lost more than 100 teachers in each of the past two years, you are talking about a crisis situation.

Where there has not been high turnover in the past few years are two areas- the top two administrators in the district, which has remained the same for six years until Angie Besendorfer's resignation takes effect next month, and the board of education.

If Ashley Micklethwaite had not taken a job out of town, we would have the same board members during that entire time. It is almost unheard of for a board of education to stay together for that long.

One way that has been accomplished is through public relations machinery that has convinced the public there are no problems in the school district. It looks as if that public relations machinery has had a breakdown. For the first time, other than two previous candidacies by David Guilford, who was close enough to the situation to know the problems that exist, there are challenges to the incumbents, including former Irving Elementary Principal Debbie Fort, Jeff Koch, and Guilford.

One major issue will be the spending spree that has put the district on the brink of financial chaos.

The biggest issue, however, is the incredible amount of turnover in the district. When McKinley Elementary has only a couple of teachers remaining from the 2012-2013 school year and the principal is rewarded with a job in upper-level administration, you have a serious problem.

When that principal is replaced, in a school that now has an entirely new faculty, including many young teachers, with a leader who not only is taking her first principal's position, but who is not qualified for that position, you have a serious problem.

When you have a board of education that has rubber-stamped the bloodbath that the Joplin R-8 School District has seen the past couple of years (always by 7-0 votes), you have a crisis.

And the ones who are paying the most for that crisis are the children.

***

WWNO, the public radio station in New Orleans, has a revealing report on the effects of high teacher turnover, which includes this passage:

The changeovers impact students and families in that there is less continuity. There's less of a chance for teachers and administrative staff to get to know students and their families well, and so families may not have someone at the school they know they can talk to if there's a problem. Instead they're dealing with new people all the time.