At the behest of the board superintendent Vitti did a
self-evaluation where he rated himself highly effective in 47 out of 48
categories. The only place Vitti gave himself less than
an 8 is under parents, staff and students school safety.
Okay, that’s a big one but then again he has only been on the
job 7 months.
Where I do like some of the things the super had done I don’t
think I would be all that generous.
There was his gaff with the teacher’s academy, which was
mandatory before it wasn’t mandatory.
There has been an apparent disconnect with what the
administration is saying and what librarians are hearing. He says everything is
fine where the librarians are hearing the sky is falling.
Quite frankly he has spent too much time promoting corporate
reforms. He has doubled down on Teach for America, which does the exact
opposite of what we know to be best practices, preferring to go with them
instead of trying to put life long educators in our classrooms. And then he has
sped up the march of charters in the county including attending a conference
about how to attract more charter schools. I sometimes wonder does he work for the
people of Jacksonville or does he work for Gary Chartrand
His reorganization is a risky one. Yes we had to many
administrators and yes a lot of them had risen above their ability but he now
runs the risk of putting a lot of pissed off people in our schools, bumping
quality school based administrators and having the whole thing blow up in our
faces. There is a lot of risk reward here.
Then there are his promotions. The creation of area chiefs is
a brilliant idea but many of us in the trenches wish he would have hired
leaders not bullies masquerading as administrators to fill the positions. I
have heard varying degrees of “oh my God, what has he done” about three of
them.
If I were rating him, I would put him at the low end of
effective, which is probably the best we should expect from somebody who has
never run anything nearly as big as DCPS over his first seven months. He has
had some nice ideas but he is not walking on water.
Don't forget about the mistake he made with the budget (not realizing the money for the charter schools should be removed) and he had to back track on putting a reading and math coach in all the schools. Once the school board (was it Becky Couch?) pointed that out to him, he realized he didn't have enough money to put the coaches at all the schools (thank goodness!).
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