GOTHAMIST DOES IN DEPTH LOOK AT REMOVAL OF LISA MARS AS LAGUARDIA HS PRINCIPAL

Thanks to Pat Dobosz for sending out a detailed article from Gothamist on Lisa Mars being reassigned from LaGuardia High School where she is no longer the principal. The Gothamist story is very detailed.

Let's get the basics first:

On June 24th, shortly after she sent an email to students saying she’d be skipping this year’s graduation, it was reported that Dr. Lisa Mars, the embattled principal of the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, was finally stepping down after six years.

Mars cited “personal reasons” for her absence at graduation, and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Mark Cannizzaro told The Wall Street Journal that she had already been considering a new position. But her departure as principal came after years of protests by LaGuardia students, parents, and teachers, including an hours-long sit-in hundreds of students staged on May 31st.

Okay, so now let's dig a little deeper:

“A lot of news sources are turning this into, ‘We don’t want to learn or take advanced classes,’” says Cali Greenbaum, who served as tech theater rep in LaGuardia’s student government before graduating last month. “That’s not true. We want a good education; we just want an even focus on academics and the arts.”

Unlike at other specialized high schools in New York City, LaGuardia—which evolved from the High School of Performing Arts, the inspiration for the movie and TV series Fame, and which has produced dozens of well-known graduates, including actor Timothée Chalamet, comedian Michael Che, and rapper/actor Awkwafina—does not use standardized test scores as its basis for admission. Instead, prospective students are assessed based on an audition or art portfolio and their middle-school academic record.

But since Mars's arrival in 2013, according to a report by NBC New York, any student who fails to get an 80 or better in any core academic subject (English, math, science, or social studies) in middle school is summarily rejected, regardless of artistic talent.

It's a requirement that Mars's opponents say only ends up penalizing students who failed to attend middle schools with strong academic support systems. “Who are any of us in middle school?” asks Lauren Kinhan, whose daughter recently graduated from LaGuardia. “I would like to think that at 13 and 14 years old, you still have a chance to go to LaGuardia, regardless of what zip code you live in.”

In fact, complaints about the admissions process becoming less arts-focused surfaced years before Mars's arrival. Joseph Cassidy, then the principal of a middle school that sent many students to LaGuardia, lamented such changes in a 2000 New York Times article. “Fifteen years ago [in 1985], it seemed LaGuardia would take the brilliant graffiti artist who didn't have good grades,” he said. “In the last five to ten years, they're also taking into account grades and attendance.”

At the same time, LaGuardia’s black population dropped and its Asian population increased dramatically. In 1989, the student body was about 37 percent white, 34 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent Asian; by 1999, it was roughly 37 percent white, 25 percent black, 21 percent Hispanic, and 16 percent Asian. Today, it is around 46 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Asian, 7 percent multiracial—and only 10 percent black, in a city that is 24 percent black.

LaGuardia’s decreasing diversity is particularly distressing to those who graduated in the 1990s, when the school was more racially mixed. Natalie DeVito, who graduated from LaGuardia in 1992, recalls being friends with Alexis Cruz, “a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx” who has acted professionally since age 9.

Let's hear the teacher angle on the "sociopathic" principal:
At the same time, parents, students, and graduates have complained that Mars' administration instilled what [recent graduate Christina] Lok calls “a sense of fear” and DeVito describes as “threats and bullying.” Many teachers left the school during Mars’ tenure, DeVito says, and others would only voice complaints anonymously because they “feared retribution.”

Dr. Paula Washington, an alumna, LaGuardia parent, LaGuardia teacher, and union chapter leader who will retire in January 2020, describes Mars as “charming, beautiful, and sociopathic.” She says the former principal had threatened parents and teachers who challenged her, including by convincing one teacher that she had the power to withhold her pension.

LaGuardia, Washington says, should foster different kinds of intelligence. So what if a child shows great artistic promise but has weak grades in certain academic subjects, she asks: “We’re teachers; we can help them.”

Shortly before the May sit-in, Washington organized a vote in which 119 LaGuardia teachers cast a vote of “no confidence” in Mars’ commitment to support and foster the school’s dual mission. (Only 15 supported the principal.) In 2017, the music teachers had revolted against cutbacks imposed by Mars, issuing a blistering joint statement that read, in part, “If your intention is to further erode morale, accelerate faculty turnover, and sabotage our dual mission by phasing out music, then your actions make sense.”

The good news is that the Vote of No Confidence succeeded at LaGuardia just as it did at Forest Hills High School where the Principal was also reassigned. United UFT Chapters have power. This is proven over and over. The struggle within each UFT Chapter is to not let administrators successfully divide and conquer the staff but instead to work as a unified force to the maximum extent possible. It doesn't have to be 100% support for the Chapter but a strong majority needs to work to oppose the principal's policies if they are not seen as beneficial to the school community.

Finally, these principals who are removed from their buildings are not losing their jobs. They end up with administrative jobs in the Department of Education and do quite well. We are not calling for  termination hearings except for the most egregious cases. The disciplinary process, including termination, should be used judiciously for all titles and not to settle personal or political scores. Do you hear that principal apologists?