Patrick

In checking out about School Mergers in Victoria, I came a cross an interesting paper that was looking back on the experiences of participants in a “Master in School Leadership” course that was developed at Monash and Melbourne University. The program was described basically about helping kick start Educators in the area of leadership:

In 2004 the Department embarked on an exciting and ambitious venture, engaging Monash University and the University of Melbourne to design a Master in School Leadership (MSL) program.

This high quality development opportunity, which leads to an accredited master qualification, was designed to enhance the leadership capacity of current and future leaders and provide an opportunity for teacher leaders to share professional learning with fellow educators from all over Victoria.

(Source: Willing to Lead – http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/staffdev/schlead/Willing_to_Lead/Willing_to_Lead_-_Master_in_School_Leadership.pdf)

To my surprise, Mary Verwey (right) had written a Case Study about her experiences at “Gumleaf Primary School”, a school that had went through a messy school merger. Interestingly enough, Mrs Verwey had been the Acting Principal at Oakwood Park Primary School, the school that my son had gone to for his first two years until it closed in a messy school merger process.

The leader of the program had the following to say about Mary’s case study:

Mary Verwey tells of being placed in a very difficult situation, having been parachuted in as the new principal in a small school that was teetering on the brink of becoming totally unviable. With the community up in arms at the thought of its closure and misinformation running rampant, she hunkered down and applied her many skills and wisdom of experience along with some of her MSL learnings in a way that would help to clarify the situation, keep everyone safe, including herself and provide a solid set of learning opportunities for her students.

Now I want to put in here I liked Mary and a lot of her leadership style. I also often commented too her that I understood that she was just doing the job asked of her and that I never took any of her decisions/process personally, and that I understood it was part of her job. With that said, I have no doubt that part of the charter she had given too her was to make sure that the Department/Governments will to have this school closed/merged went smoothly and that this upstart school didn’t give them hiccups.

So on to the Case study of Gumleaf PS! The first thing that I found interesting, was that the title of the piece was “This is not about a school closure” and started like this:

My introduction to the school staff and school council as their new principal was made by the senior education officer, who prefaced his introduction with, ‘This is not about a school closure’.

Now if you haven’t already worked it out, the statement by the “senior education officer” should be interpreted as “This is to smooth over the school closure”. Why would you say something like that? At that point in time when this happened at Oakwood Park Gumleaf (chuckle), the school was coming off back-to-back National Literacy Awards, the school had the early years literacy program that was the envy of other schools, had a steady enrolment for years and had a ton of money in the bank (to a fault really). So the comment in the intro about the school “teetering on the brink of becoming totally unviable” is completely silly (before the Building Futures Sabotage Process started) and totally untrue (without pressure).

So Mary starts of sprouting on about how great MSL is (which it could be but is little interest to this post) and about the decision to leave her old school for this challenge. She mentions about how the Leading teacher thought they would be asked to lead the school while a new principal was found (a reasonable assumption I would have thought) and about how lots of STAFF and parents question if she was sent to Gumleaf to close the school (there was a smart group of teachers at the school and the parents were on the ball!).

On she goes to mention about the outgoing of staff at the end of 2007. She makes an interesting point at the end of this:

People in the school community were very disappointed and some felt betrayed that their previous principal had left. By the end of the school year an integration aide and four teaching staff also left to join the outgoing principal at his new school, which was located a kilometre and a half down the road. Four teaching staff from a school of eight teachers represented a huge turnover. However, these teachers could see that there was probably no longterm future for them at Gumleaf and so they had embraced the opportunities that had arisen.

By the end of Term 1, 2008, two other teachers had left, one on maternity leave, the other to their former principal’s school.

“No longterm future”. Interesting comment. Why would you think this? Because what the Govenment/Department want, they have a way of getting! Although the Victorian Government’s policy is that school mergers/Closures are the decision of the School Councils, there is no mention about the pressure that the Government can and does put on schools to close/merge. So teachers moved from the little school that the Government was hell bent on closing down to a much larger school, with a Principal that they knew and trusted and that was intent on bringing the successful programs from Gumleaf to her new school, lets call it LenMount PS. On the teachers leaving at the end of term 1, 2008. One pretty much said it was because the Government was trying to close the school and the other had a baby and is in fact now teaching at the merged school (not much you can do about babies)!

An interesting point comes up next. Talking about what she wanted to do in her time at Gumleaf, she had this to say:

I wanted to raise the standard of teaching and learning and bring the pedagogy into the 21st century, without raising expectations that the school was so good it would be able to continue.

Wow! I want the school to work better but just because it is working fine and I can make it better, don’t get the idea that the school is good (by the way, the school wasn’t good. Not even close to good. It was great!)

Now, Mary is a very cleaver operator, but she lets the cat out of the bag on where the real decision on the schools future came from:

The school community was dismayed, disappointed and angry when they came to realise that the regional regeneration team would be making the decision about the future of their school.

That’s right, with all the BLAMING of parents that Bronwyn Pike and John Brumby like to do to save face and try to avoid scrutiny for the hundreds of schools that they forced shut/merged, Mary lets us know exactly were the real power behind these decisions lies, “the regional regeneration team”! But putting that aside, the real point of this is that Mary could see that there would be anger in the process. Why you might ask? Because the Education department/Government hide behind the lie that the decision is the School Councils when they (those that we either elect or PAY!!!) should be not only making (as they already make the decision) but they should also own the decision!

And now to the part of the Case study that, in the context of this post and my views, is the most important of the whole piece:

Much of the anger was directed at me. Even though many parents were in regular contact with various people in the regional office, venting their anger and frustration, it was I who was there each day, seen to be representing the Department’s interests, and not
theirs. Two school councillors were driving a great deal of the rumours and misinformation and had contacted the local press and given the journalist misleading information. They had also been to other schools in the area and demanded that the principals and school council presidents meet them.

These ‘invitations’ were declined. The school council president was being continually harassed through email, telephone and in person by several parents. More than a few parents stopped speaking to me; some started speaking to me, just to abuse me because I was ‘sent to Gumleaf to close it’. Before long there was a great deal of misinformation circulating around the school.

This to me is the evidence of why the Governments face saving, Scape goat forming policy hurts too many and all to save a few votes for the government. Instead of the anger (which lets face it, is understandable when some you love is ripped away from you) being targeted at the people that have made the decision (Dept/Gov/Regional team) it was aimed at Mary and fellow parents. And in the end, they weren’t the ones making the decision, just having to rubber stamp it! But no, lost friendship (I know that there are parents involved that still barely acknowledge each other if they cross paths), name calling, hurt feelings and as Mary goes on to say “sometimes I just had to ‘tough it out’ and leave my office at 3:30pm and do the after-school walkthrough, smiling brightly,  pretending to be stronger than I was feeling.”

That is what Bronwyn Pike and John Brumby is willing to put there staff though! Putting them into an environment where they are going to not have a rewarding experience! And for what? A bit of face saving and a few votes!

And this environment was just bad for the Principal, but Mary makes another very good point about more victims of this selfish policy:

For the wellbeing of the staff who were at risk of being abused also, and my own safety, as well as the students, who were often witness to parents’ anger directed at school staff, I needed to make a stand.

STUDENTS! Aren’t they the important ones? When asked to make the decision on the schools future, they were the ones we were told by the department to think about. Well maybe its time for Mrs Pike and Mr Brumby to use that same focus and think about the students and the pain and anger they see, with this process being thrown in the laps of the School Councils, when they are decisions that should be made OWNED by the people elected or payed to make OWN them!

So to Mary, (if she reads this) I fell for the situation you were put in, and I hope you, like me are calling for the Government/Department to do the right thing and OWN these decisions. I am not against the merging/closing of small schools or ones with strategic reasons. But it is not the place of Parents with little to no expertise in the area to be Owning these decisions. Its the job of our Elected Officials and the staff the pay good money too.

Feeling good!