Can we afford more of Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals leadership?

The Times Union says we need to give our school leadership more time.

Is it leadership to allow principals to fire hundreds of teachers with satisfactory evaluations and not give them a reason?

Is it leadership to rift about a hundred teachers and then contract with Teach for America to bring in about a hundred more for a 2400-dollar finders fee. If you didn’t know, TFA takes non-education majors, puts them through a two-week crash course and then sticks them in some of our hardest classrooms.

Is it leadership to plead with Tallahassee to give us one more year with our intervene schools and then just days before the year began to give control of those schools and two million dollars to the education management organization Education Directions. By the way at least one executive at Ed Directions has close ties to the district.

Is it leadership to approve the creation of two more KIPP schools after the first one failed spectacularly? The first school had the lowest score in North East Florida. KIPP schools do have a place in education but is it too much to ask that they have some success before they are allowed to expand.

Is it leadership to allow any student to use learning recovery to repeat classes they failed? What if they failed the classes because they skipped, disrupted classes or made no effort at all?

Is it leadership that leads to low teacher morale? One of the school board chair Betty Burney’s three goals for the year is improving teacher morale.

Is it leadership to, with a wink and a nod, have teachers promote kids along without the skills they need to be successful, something the TU itself admits happens when they write about kids not being able to read at grade level.

Is it leadership that led to seven of our schools, including six neighborhood high schools to be on the intervene list? Six out of thirteen neighborhood high schools, let that sink in, and people are worried about Lee and First Coast too.

Is all this leadership? Is this the leadership we want? Is this the leadership our city and kids can afford?

Friends if all this is leadership then we have way too much! With friends like this we don’t need any enemies.