Graham & Parks council parents write in defense of principal Kathleen Smith and her reform work (corrected)
(Note from Feb. 12, 2024: This letter submitted by Christian Henry of the Graham & Parks School Council was presented Jan. 31 as being from the full council and signed as such with the understanding that the names of the signers were available on the council’s webpage. The post was updated Feb. 1 to show that it came from only a portion of the Graham & Parks School Council: the parents. A request was made Feb. 6 that either the website be updated or the actual signers be identified, and the request was made again Feb. 11. Because there has been no response, it is no longer clear that the letter came from anyone except Henry.)
As parent representatives on the Graham & Parks School Council, we want to provide information regarding our school leadership and plans to improve our school. We are aware of recent accusations and ongoing investigation regarding the leadership at Graham & Parks. We predict that the district’s investigation will find that our school has adhered to district mandates, and our principal has diligently enforced policies regarding curriculum, scheduling, budget and staffing.
It is important to know that our school has been underperforming for some time. Multiple data sources indicate student performance issues at our school, and we are deeply concerned that approximately 40 percent of the Graham & Parks students are not reading at grade level. Furthermore, data reveals that when it comes to supporting learning among African American students, our school ranks last in the district.
Over the past 18 months, our principal, Kathleen Smith, has openly communicated our collective long-term underperformance and the necessity of reallocating resources to address our highest areas of need. Smith has shown immense fortitude by refusing to let us look away from the stark reality we face as a school.
Changes in our school need to happen. The transition and school improvement plan that our principal, along with the school leadership team, is leading is designed to address these performance issues. The changes are based on evidence, and they will improve the ability of all students to learn. The plan includes new tools and training for our teachers to do that job. Furthermore, a broader cross-section of teachers is already collaborating to track student learning in real time and make quick adjustments when it’s not happening.
This transition was always expected to be very uncomfortable. The Graham & Parks that some argue we should return to never did exist. There is a large majority of teachers and parents who are supportive of the principal, her leadership role and above all the need for changes in outcomes for students. The unified goal is that the student learning that happens here isn’t unfairly distributed, the way it is now.
While some may not appreciate the changes, it is important to understand that the district prioritizes ensuring all students can read and achieve grade-level math proficiency. To break the cycle in which only high-performing students thrive while those struggling continue to struggle, we must take collective action. Changing leadership will not solve the underlying issues; the next administration will face the same challenges. Instead, we need to foster self-awareness as a community and come together to make a difference where it truly matters.
Some see these changes as a threat and have been vocal in trying to divert the conversation onto other topics. Recently, there have been attempts to discredit Smith’s efforts, and those attempts have begun to occur in front of our school children. Along with our schoolchildren, we witnessed a parent openly protest outside our school holding signs to have our principal fired. This caused distress among our elementary-age children.
Upon seeing the signs, many of us have been fielding questions from our children as to why people don’t like their principal; they say they are scared. These are the same children who previously have shared positive comments about their principal. In one example, earlier in the year when Smith sat in on a class, a student from that class later expressed that they wanted to be a principal. Smith is making a positive impact on our students. She greets our children with a beaming smile at the school door regularly, and knows many by name. She also seeks input from us and works closely with us, your parent representatives, on School Council. Along with Smith, we are focused on the well-being of our students and hold their success at the forefront of our school initiatives. We urge parents to collaborate with us.
We cannot afford to turn a blind eye to our school’s underperformance any longer. Our esteemed principal has confronted this issue head-on, despite facing resistance from some caregivers. Along with Smith, we are focused on improving the learning happening for all children in our school.
This challenging moment requires respectful and open communication. Let us show our children the power of constructive, collaborative relationships even in times of disagreement. We believe that if we unite and act with integrity, we can make our school a better place for everyone.
Please show up at our School Council meetings, please contact us individually and please don’t take one perspective or story to guide your judgment of the situation. The simplest answer here is that we all need to reinvest, connect, build relationships and work together for our school. Other, more simplistic answers will work against that shared goal.
Let us all reflect on our role in creating the change we seek.
In related news on c day cut backs are coming. Great timing. Sigh 😔
What are the allegations? What kind of reforms have they been driving?
The scandal that they’re referring to is that Kathleen Smith was previously created a hostile workplace in a Newton school. After the investigation, she was no longer at that school. The vetting by CPS didn’t find this.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/23/cambridge-schools-toxicity-allegations/
This letter mischaracterizes the legitimate complaints of many parents (roughly 130 parents signed petition calling for a change in Principal Smith’s leadership style) and many teachers. The claim that a majority support her is dubious.
Throughout this conflict, Principal Smith has attempted to sidestep all criticism by portraying her detractors as enemies of racial equity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Notably, this letter does not mention a single reform ushered in by Principal Smith, nor does it address the actual complaints of parents and teachers. These complaints have principally been about Principal Smith’s lack of transparency, leadership style and poor treatment of parents and teachers alike. This has nothing to do with resisting whatever unspecified reforms the writer is alluding to. Rather, this is largely about the same issues that were confirmed by the Newton public school’s investigation of principal Smith a few years ago. As that investigation concluded, (but not mentioned above) Ms. Smith has a well documented pattern of creating a toxic workplace through mistreatment of staff. The CPS hiring process was not thorough and did not uncover this. It is the rare principal that manages to so alienate parents and teachers that petitions circulate and parents protest outside of the school. This has nothing to do with changes meant to increase equity, parents and teachers would welcome such changes. The writers of this record hide behind “equity” to defend Principal Smith from legitimate concerns which she has ignored and are ignored here.
While enforcing ”policies regarding curriculum, scheduling, budget and staffing” are certainly in the role of a principal, fostering community, welcoming caregiver feedback, and broadly communicating school plans and staff changes should also be considered as bare minimum requirements for leadership.
I fully agree with the authors comment that ”This challenging moment requires respectful and open communication.” Sadly, this has not been forthcoming from the district or the school.
It is disingenuous to mention that 40% of G and P students are reading below grade level without also mentioning that G and P houses the districts program for students who do not speak English. The school seems to do a good job bringing these kids up to speed quickly and placing them into mainstream classes when they are ready. However, kids who are just learning English for the first time are going to be behind their peers. G and P should do everything possible to ensure that all students achieve on grade levers and beyond, but it is unfair to compare G and P’s numbers to schools who do not teach English language learners.
This letter left me with several concerns. First, I wonder why the author(s) thought it appropriate to speak on behalf of the whole school council (and I wonder if this is an appropriate role for the council even if all were ostensibly in support/of the same mind). I wonder what basis the author has for the assertion that “a large majority of teachers and parents” are supportive of the principal. I notice that I am uncomfortable that they would speak on behalf of the community in this way. I wonder why the authors feel justified in suggesting that parents raising legitimate concerns about a principal don’t care about equity or addressing achievement gaps, and that they don’t care about the experience of all children at the school. These suggestions are false and harmful. And they are divisive to our community. They are not in line with the author’s call for acting “with integrity.” As for the author’s suggestion that caregivers attend school council meetings, when I have attended in the past, I noticed each time that there was no opportunity for meaningful dialogue. The principal and school council have the power to change that and make space for productive conversation but have chosen not to do so.
“The Graham & Parks that some argue we should return to never did exist.”
Didn’t it?
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Extraordinary-School-Ordinary-People/dp/160813606X
https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Testimonials/v10n2.pdf
It really did exist. And it did well for all kids (including, and especially, ones from historically-disadvantaged groups — it even pioneered concepts like the current socioeconomic balancing for the district).
That happened through parents and teacher collaborating. It didn’t come from “The transition and school improvement plan that our principal, along with the school leadership team, … leading.” It came from everyone leading. It didn’t come from “adher[ing] to district mandates” or “diligently enforced policies regarding curriculum, scheduling, budget and staffing.” It came from creative, collaborative problem-solving, and adapting to the individuals in the schools.
This editorial describes exactly why “data reveals that when it comes to supporting learning among African American students, our school ranks last in the district.” The slogan for Building Equity Bridges, the district anti-racist framework, is “nothing about us without us.” Leadership should come from parents, students, and teachers — those who know most about the learning process and who represent the student body. The principal isn’t a school leader, but a school administrator. The goal is to create an environment where everyone can lead. Only that can bring in leadership representative of the diversity of families in the school.
This op ed is an afront to the entire G&P community, and the idea that a large majority of parents support Smith is simply false. The complaints about Kathleen Smith’s conduct at G&P have nothing to do with being “threatened” by a reform agenda. They have to do with the fact that she lost her job after Newton Public Schools found that she had created a toxic working environment for teachers and staff – and has imported her toxic leadership style to our school. And, because CPS leadership somehow failed to discover the facts (or, perhaps worse, knew about them but hired her anyway), the School District itself is conducting an outside investigation not only about the faulty hiring process but also how Smith is treating her staff now. Smith has frozen out parents and staff who are not personally loyal to her and refused to engage with parents directly. The full picture of Smith’s conduct will emerge eventually. This article summarily ignores the tangible pain, fear, and harm that our community is feeling from Smith’s conduct. To chalk all of that pain up to feeling threatened by Smith’s claim to a reform agenda is tone deaf at best – and at worst, an additional contribution to the existing pain in the community.
What the authors and Dr. Smith neglect to mention is that Graham and Parks is one of only two Cambridge elementary schools (K-Lo) to host the Sheltered English Immersion program for English language learners, which accounts for 40% of the G&P population. In fact, 60% of the G&P student body speak English as their second language, which is almost double the district average. So it shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise that reading levels are behind other schools. Furthermore, G&P’s race and ethnicity data fails to control for English language learners when compared to other schools. Nevertheless, to suggest, as the authors do, that those who oppose Dr. Smith stand against equity in any way is deeply pernicious and shameful. We should absolutely be doing everything in our power to meet the needs of our most disadvantaged students.
The authors of this letter fail to recognize that two things can be true at once. One can support equity at G&P and speak out against toxicity in the learning environment. One can support equity and oppose authoritarianism, intimidation, and silencing of discourse in an elementary school setting. One can support equity and question Dr. Smith as to how removing paraprofessionals from the classroom and leaving teachers and students unsupported helps to close the achievement gap between black and white students. One can support equity and resist the dismantling of a community that has been over 40 years in the making, since the school was founded in the name of the civil rights activist, Rosa Parks, and local activist for social, racial, and economic justice, Saundra Graham. Make no mistake, we all need to do better to uphold the Graham and Parks School community and carry on the legacy of its namesakes
While Dr. Smith may not have technically violated any state or federal laws with their enforcement tactics, this is a low bar to clear for a principal of a K-5 public school. Dr. Smith was not fit to lead a school in Newton, and they are not fit to lead our community at Graham and Parks.
I recommend learning Graham & Parks’s history. Conceived by parents and educators and voted into life 1971 as a K-8 CPSD alternative by School Committee as Cambridge Alternative Public School Program School/CAPS, it opened 1972 in the vacant East Cambridge Putnam School building at the intersection of Sciarappa and Otis Streets with multi-level classrooms for grades K-4, adding a higher grade each year. After a 1974 move into Essex Street’s St. Mary’s Grammar School, CAPS merges with the small K-8 Webster School and its 1853 building on 15 Upton Street, became fully K-8, and is renamed, dedicated in 1982 as K-8 Graham & Parks Alternative Public School with a little over 100 students. The 1982 event was attended by its honorees, Cambridge civil rights activist, City Councillor, MA Representative Saundra Graham and civil rights activist Rosa Parks. In 2003, due to massive CPSD K-8 school consolidations, Graham and Parks is “enlarged” to over 350 students and moved to its current location, 44 Linnaean Street, a 1960s building, while that building’s Peabody School community was shuffled into the Rindge Avenue school next to the O’Neill library branch. There are 2 histories of Graham & Parks school by original principal Len Solo, Ed. D. Harvard Grad Sch of Ed/HGSE, who served as G&P principal 1974-2001: Solo’s 2010 book THE MAKING OF AN EXTRORDINARY SCHOOL: THE WORK OF ORDINARY PEOPLE (public library, AmazonDOTcom) and his 2014 article in “Nonpartisan Education Review/Testimonials” titled THE UN-MAKING OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SCHOOL (link at bottom). Some context for your reading: • G&P K-8 was founded by parents and teachers and lived 1972-2012. • G&P was open to all Cambridge families and students when CPSD was neighborhood-school based until early 1980s’ Cambridge Controlled Choice school-assignment program to address race, socio-economic inequities, post-Boston Public Schools’ racial anti-busing riots. 1993 MA Education Reform Act brought in the mandated Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System/MCAS and gr. 3-10 teaching to this test. • 2002-15 Geo. W. Bush federal No Child Left Behind/NCLB introduced federal dollars for testing and curricular demands, as did Obama’s 2009-2015 Race to the Top/RTT. • Two massive CPSD upheavals were 2003’s K-8 school-community consolidations and 2012’s fracturing K-8 communities into K-5s with assigned gr. 6-8 Middle Schools. Len Solo’s 2014 G&P history, PDF article to download, here: https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Testimonials/v10n2.htm). — Parent of 2 CRLS grads 2012, 2018 & active in Camb Public Schools from K-12.
Here is a 5-minute interview with actor Matt Damon [G&P grad] in the 2009 7th/8th Humanities Graham & Parks Linnaean Street classroom talking about what the “Facing History and Ourselves” G&P 2-year curriculum meant to his life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLDL566f_20
The district hired a principal to lead G&P who the Newton School District found had created a toxic working environment at Underwood Elementary during her tenure there as principal (~2011-2019). The district did not talk to the Newton district during the G&P principal search or reference checks. (This is known as a result of a FOIA request submitted by a G&P caregiver.) The practices described in the Underwood complaint mirror descriptions from G&P staff of Dr. Smith’s toxic leadership at G&P. The misimpression by some caregivers that other caregivers don’t care about all students at the school is the result of an environment where the principal actively prevents any meaningful community dialogue through an impressive array of tactics including: strictly controlled meeting protocols, cutting off caregivers from speaking and fanning the flames of misunderstanding that result from that, letting district leadership or school leadership speak for her rather than making herself available for community discussion, filibustering, and structuring the latest school council meeting by having a session for questions but not answers (caregivers were told questions might be answered at a later date). Further, meeting notes are highly curated to reflect a certain (ingroup) narrative. Her unwillingness or inability to lead in a healthy manner has created an environment of mistrust and misunderstandings. The suggestion that some parents don’t care about all students at the school is both false AND deeply harmful to the community. Every day she remains principal further erodes our community and our trust in the ability or willingness of the district to take care of our students, teachers, and the community. The district, or the city (which is overseeing the investigation), needs to communicate clearly to the community (1) that an investigation is occurring, (2) the investigation’s scope (presumably district hiring practices and G&P environment), (3) the timing of the investigation and (4) that, presumably, teachers can outreach to the City Solicitor’s office and ask to speak with the firm conducting the investigation without fear of retaliation (this would be the case based on standard practice, but the city should proactively communicate to teachers and confirm this). The community must receive support and/or at a minimum space, to come together and restore healthy dialogue and the community must be involved in hiring a principal who can indeed hold us accountable to ensuring the school meets the needs of all students AND who can be a community builder willing to foster collaboration, conversation, and hear all voices at the school, especially those of our teachers, and who allows for questions, challenges, or requests for more information without silencing the questioner or suggesting they have selfish motives, and who does not create ingroups and outgroups. We further deserve a principal who does not call or threaten to call the police on students or parents as an intimidation tactic. We are not creating a healthy environment for learning when this is how a school leader operates. The students and teachers at G&P deserve better. The district needs to step up to make this right, quickly, and transparently, to begin to restore trust, and to support or give space to positively rebuild the G&P community. Reflecting on the signs of the lone protester standing outside G&P lately: we must not become the next Underwood, which saw extreme teacher attrition and dissolution of the community that took years to rebuild.
The role of a School Council is defined by state law at MGL c 71 §59C as follows:
“The school council, including the school principal, shall meet regularly and shall assist in the identification of the educational needs of the students attending the school, make recommendations to the principal for the development, implementation and assessment of the curriculum accommodation plan required pursuant to section 38Q1/2, shall assist in the review of the annual school budget and in the formulation of a school improvement plan, as provided below. Parent advisory councils, established under section 6A of chapter 71A, may, at their request, meet at least once annually with the school council.”
This letter is clearly well outside the scope of the council’s role and is a questionable use, if not abuse, of their authority. It is particularly concerning given that it comes in the course of an ongoing investigation and could be reasonably interpreted as an effort to dissuade critics of the principal from expressing their concerns openly to investigators.
By writing in their capacity as council members, these parents suggest that they speak as the chosen representatives of the community, and that their opinions should be given special consideration. In fact, to the extent that they were selected to represent parents, it was for the specific role described in the statute.
Any parent with an opinion on this matter should be encouraged to express it, anonymously or otherwise. However, they should do so in their personal capacity, and not in their roles as council members, particularly while an investigation is underway.
I am shocked, hurt, and dismayed to see our School Council Parent representatives, who are by law, public officials, publish this letter disparaging the very people they were “elected” to represent. The truth is, however, school leadership completely ignored the state and city mandated rules for how to conduct School Council elections, and this letter makes me wonder what exactly these parent “representatives” think their job is, and if anyone actually explained it to them. According to the District School Council Handbook, linked below, each February and May the school council is to conduct a self assessment and the school is to facilitate a community-wide survey on how the School Council is doing. In my book, they are failing, and the entire G&P community deserves real representation. Christian Henry as the co-chair of our Council, who is in fact no longer eligible to serve because he is now in his 5th year on the Council, should know better. Christian, it is time you step down. You and this letter have caused enough harm to our school community. For the rest of the parent representatives, I urge you to read the Handbook and strongly consider issuing an apology and retraction of this letter. As public officials, this is wildly inappropriate conduct. If you are not up to the job, you too should step down.
https://cdnsm5-ss5.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_3042785/File/departments/administration/equity/cps_school_council_handbook.pdf
Finally, the letter asks caregivers to write directly to the School Council reps who signed this letter. Yet their emails are nowhere to be found online because our School Council webpage is out of date. I want to know how to reach these “representatives.”
Do please compare the version of the story here with the reported article on the matter: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/02/07/graham-parks-principal-draws-an-investigation-when-parents-see-echoes-of-problems-in-newton/
Wow. Mr. Henry not only misrepresented the letter as coming from the full School Council, including teachers and staff members, but it seems he also misrepresented the other parent representatives as signers of this harmful and divisive letter. Mr. Henry should step down from the G&P School Council and issue an apology to the entire community for his blatant misconduct and abuse of power. The person who should oversee his removal from the School Council, I would think, is our principal. But she has made it clear that she will do whatever harm it takes to maintain her own power while silencing any and all criticism, so it is unlikely she will do the right thing here. How about the district? Where is the accountability?
If it’s true as stated above that Mr. Henry is on his 5th year, he should definitely step down ASAP. The handbook clearly states that council members serve 2 year terms and may run for reelection once [4 years max]. Futhermore, the elections are to be run by a parent group [Friends of/PTO or equivalent] in accordance with district guidelines and the staff has no say in the selection of caregiver reps.
I’m not a G&P parent, but I’m pretty skeptical of people who claim they’re the ones in the right while they blatantly ignore established rules.
Was this principal hired by the same by the same Superintendent and School Committee that abolished 8th grade Algebra? It’s not just the school that needs new leadership