Hello, I am Monica Caldicott, president of the D128 Federation of Teachers. Thank you for listening to me tonight. I am very pleased to be followed at this podium by our partner, the D128 ESP Union.
It has been one month since our Union declared we have no confidence in Superintendent Dr. Denise Herrmanmn. For the good of our school community, we had to speak up and say how her poor leadership has harmed the excellent schools that our students, their families, and the taxpayers of District 128 deserve.
It has been about (check watch) 10 minutes since the School Board met in closed session to complete their annual evaluation of their one employee, the superintendent, Dr. Herrmann. We appreciate how the Board members allowed our input into this year’s evaluation. More in a minute about our evaluation of Dr. Herrmann.
It was one year ago at the May 2023 School Board committee meetings that marked an important point in Dr. Herrmann’s relationship with our educators. Ultimately, that time helps paint a picture of her lack of leadership and her inability to accomplish the goals she sets.
In May 2023, Dr. Herrmann started by saying that people are exhausted (accompanied by a picture scale of different sloths), and then proceeded to show a passage from Superintendent magazine that said morale everywhere is at an all time low and, then she said, “Despite our best efforts, we are kind of at a loss.” Her point was to paint a picture of the staff morale problem in District 128 as common with other districts, while also giving the feeling that it would be hard to solve.
Dr. Herrmann then shared some of the greatest areas of need from a 2023 staff Panorama survey. The biggest areas of need our educators identified were school leadership, feedback/coaching, school climate, as well as staff leadership. When sharing the codes for free responses, the top responses shared were:
- “ask and listen to our feedback”
- “trust us as professionals”
- “understand my role”
- “staff well being”
- “stop making large changes”
- “more time”
In May 2023, Dr. Herrmann listed what she was going to do to address low teacher morale. She said she would:
- Continue Labor Management Committee
- #Celebrate128
- Include staff wellness activities at Institute Days
- Increase administrator classroom visits
- Establish a Staff Wellness/Morale Team
- Align admin goals with climate
We feel that many of the “goals” laid out to address the morale issue were ultimately forgotten.
Labor Management Committee already existed before these goals were laid out. So it is hard to evaluate a goal that continues something provided in our Collective Bargaining Agreement. However, I feel our Union’s recent overwhelming vote of no confidence gives all the evidence needed about how that all worked out.
#Celebrate128 was abandoned. However, this was per the recommendation of an outside communications auditor the district paid to advise them, so I guess this ending is understandable.
Regarding wellness activities at staff Institute Days, we had nothing at the disastrous October 2023 Institute Day planned and led by admin. At our February 2024 EdX day, which was planned and executed by educators, our Union educators and others were allowed to offer wellness activities. But the wellness sessions were all booked at the same time slot, limiting the impact of the wellness outreach. Also, any staff presenting a wellness session did not get to be an attendee at any other wellness session. This equates to about 45 minutes of staff wellness activity for the school year. Is one 45-minute session, not for all, across all professional learning days adequate? Our answer is no.
Increase Administrator classroom visits: This was also formalized as a 2023-24 superintendent goal. All D128 staff members were assigned to meet with a representative of the District Leadership Team. The plan was for educators to meet for about a half hour with their departments’ assigned DLT representative either on a one-on-one basis or with colleagues. DLT reps also offered to come and observe a class. However, many educators assigned to Dr. Yesenia Sanchez and Dr. Iman Ellis Bowen, two district administrators who left the district during the course of the school year, never got this promised connection. We witnessed Mr. Kelly meeting with educators during finals week in May; such a delay negates any progress toward this goal. Union members reported the conversations felt inauthentic since some administrators are rarely seen in schools otherwise. Dr. Herrmann’s “Connection and Collaboration Plan” also called for job shadow days, which never occurred.
Staff Wellness/Morale Team established. (Look around and shrug) The fact that I am shrugging my shoulders may show that if this ever happened, I surely can’t explain its impact, if any.
Admin goals aligned with climate: This might be the biggest failure. Our Union’s Vote of No Confidence Resolution covered this thoroughly. But simply put, the goal was to improve the relationship between the labor unions of District 128 and administration. Not only did things not improve, they got worse.
By our count, of the 6 staff morale goals Dr. Herrmann set for herself and the district in May 2023, we don’t see any of these worthy of a passing grade.
Furthermore, it is worth noting, the District asked about staff morale as part of the Continuous Improvement surgery given in December 2023. This data was not shared with anyone. We were only aware of how poor the results were because community members shared with us the results received through Freedom of Information Act requests.
We feel that the teacher morale problem is a great example of how Dr. Herrmann lacks any effective accomplishment of goals. We concede that schools don’t exist so teachers are happy. Ultimately, we are here to make sure that our students have the very best learning opportunities and support provided to them, but I think any employer knows the importance of making sure employees feel valued and are proud of where they work.
In D128, we have been looking to accomplish this via our Strategic Plan. So let’s focus on the follow-through of those initiatives and if they have fared better than the staff morale goals we just reviewed.
In January 2023, there was a presentation to the School Board about the action plans for the various strands of the Strategic Plan. A lot of the initiatives we are rolling out for the 24-25 school year that have raised so much discourse in our District were a part of these plans. Before launching into each strand, the following slide was shown: (show print)
This leads to what we feel is potentially the largest danger of Dr. Herrmann’s leadership – the execution of the numerous initiatives for the 2024-25 school year. Please ask yourself if our own strategic boundaries outlined here were followed.
Here are our answers:
Were these new initiatives accompanied by staff development needed to implement effectively? No. And it seems like the District’s strategy to make up for this is a combination of summer work and professional development occurring while next school year has already started.
Are these new initiatives accompanied by the means to assess their effectiveness? I feel like this question is asked a lot by you, the Board. The answer seems to be No, or “in progress,” but certainly not “yes.”
Are these new initiatives staffed and funded sufficiently? Our Union gives a loud NO to this one. The district administration made staffing decisions in March 2024, months before the latest version of the MTSS plan was ready. Dr. Herrmann let go certified teachers while at the same time creating non-teaching positions to do teaching jobs with our struggling students. Our educators are qualified and positioned to be more effective in intervention roles than a former elementary school principal trying to help 9th graders with young adult literature or an engineer trying to help 9th graders with biology.
Dr. Gulliaume made an argument during the May 2024 Board Meeting that a lot of the “work” preparing for next school year is normally done over the summer. We want to push back on that argument. The boundaries Dr. Herrmann established for these strategic plan initiatives (wave paper) were that admin would not remove or replace programs unless all of these conditions were met. As I sit here now, it looks like we removed programs without any of those conditions being met yet for the replacements, only a hope that they will be replaced. One of the simplest ways we make programs happen is via staffing, and admin made all of the staffing decisions before finalizing plans. That is quite a gamble – and Dr. Herrmann is gambling with the learning experience of our students.
Dr. Herrmann is willing to take these risks, without the track record for actually following through on her goals. Dr. Herrmann lacks the humility to understand when she is putting our students at risk of failure. She benefits from having a fantastic staff to execute the plan, and if I am being honest, I think we may be able to pull this all off. But the perceived success of the 2024-2025 school year will not be due to Dr. Herrmann’s leadership; it will be in spite of it.