One of the Labors of Hercules was to clean out the Augean Stables. He did this by rerouting a river to flood the place clean. This is a good metaphor for the SPS superintendent search.
We need someone to come in from outside the district to clean this place up, clear out the ranks of top administration, and replace them with people who will make a major change in the direction of the district.
We must turn away from top-down management that sees parents, teachers, and students as the enemy. We must reject the push for standardization in which our children are seen as widgets who are the same, learn the same, think the same, and have the same needs. We must not have cookie cutter schools that teach the same thing in the same way. Instead we need to embrace difference, diversity, and innovation.
We must restore to the central office a spirit of public service, in which bureaucrats carry out the public’s will, rather than tell us what to do. We need leaders who will rally the public together to reinvest, literally and figuratively, in SPS, and welcome families back with the promise of a high quality education that recognizes the individual brilliance of every child — that all our children are great precisely because they are not the same.
This is not possible by elevating or retaining anyone currently in SPS leadership, and this includes the ranks of executive directors, a position that should be eliminated. While I’m sure many people have specific grievances against individuals in top SPS leadership, I think the problem is even larger.
It’s very hard to expect someone who has spent many years carrying out a specific agenda, working within a certain worldview (standardization and the central office are always right, difference and parents/teachers/students are always wrong), to suddenly turn away from all of that and pursue a new course. People understandably get invested in initiatives and policies and proposals they’ve worked hard to implement. No, you need to clean the entire place out. Hit the reset button. Start fresh with new leaders.
This does not mean *any* new leader from outside is the right person. We need to make sure that whoever we hire shares our community’s core values (including being anti-Trump). They need to have demonstrated their ability to provide strong leadership and effect real change. They need to be committed to treating parents, teachers, and students as genuine partners, rather than a hostile enemy to be defeated. They must reject the push for standardization and not see our kids as widgets. They need to support all our schools, including the option and alternative schools, and be willing to find ways to protect and expand them equitably. They need to help restore democratic control and oversight over the district, its policies and its operations and its budget.
I’m sure there are other things we can add to this, my list is by no means meant to be exhaustive. That’s the point. Cleaning out the Augean Stables that is the central office is not easy work. There’s a lot of crap that’s built up there over time. It’s not going to get cleaned out by handing someone a shovel. We need to divert entire rivers. Our kids urgently need this. Let’s make sure that’s what happens.