Having worked for Landa in her role as president of the Board at Advocates for Children and Youth, I can not think of a better choice to lead efforts to help school principals be the best instructional leaders they can be.

Wasn't she forced out of Western by the prior CEO for that big blow-up about closing the school? And wasn't Western the weak link in the citywide high school network when it was under her control? Or..is it recycle day (again)?

She has always been able to discern which reputation building organizations to join, who to “promote” in order to curry favor, to think on her feet and seemingly speak with voice of experience. Is that the extent of her skill? Time will tell. Western’s reputation declined precipitously under her tenure, reportedly guided by highly paid former principal of Southwestern. As for her success with New Leaders, how many of those “principals” have been released/demoted or require on-going “life support” to remain afloat. Timing is another of her assets, the keen sense to “get out” while smelling like a rose. And now, the City Schools “cheerleader/apologist/budding politician” may take the stage…….

(Same Old Same Old Status Quo Social Promotions for City Schools PR)

It continues to concern me about some of the selections AAA makes to his executive cabinet positions for the lack of practical matching together experience and expertise ability. Especially this one!!!!! She was a very subjective choice in the prior position she was serving the program NLNS. Having crossed paths with a quote from a few good men John McCain “That One” as a principal @ WHS I was exposed to as a parent organization supporting member to her some times odd and misguided academic program model/teacher staff member handling systemic limited abilities in good decision making talents displayed. And questionable that’s why she was reassigned in the first place to the puzzle factory site on North Avenue among other reasons which are confidential due to being HR related.

“Confused Don’t Be”. I’m sure those who will trail with a ridiculous InSide Ed post comment in following will show there lack of practical/actual experience. Perhaps, yes she is a nice person. But is that the criteria to be qualified to perform in the AAA cabinet? Maybe it is, think about it for a minute.

Interested/Engaged tries expects us to believe that he/she is an expert-- frankly, most of the time I have a hard time understanding what is being said due to the atrociously bad grammar and lack of proper punctuation. Obloviation...

McLaurin, on the other hand, is very experienced and highly qualified. She may not have been the best principal (I know, I worked for her), but she will work well with others. Western's decline is due to many many factors-- besides, too many people think in terms of some sort of "glory days"-- we don't have the same culture or kids as there were 20 years ago. There are a lot of reasons to admire and be proud of what Western students are achieving now. Just look at the trophy case for sports, academics and other clubs such as Debate, Robotics, etc. Many positive things going on, sometimes drowned out by a few things...

@ D/D - "is very experienced and highly qualified. She may not have been the best principal (I know, I worked for her), but she will work well with others"

If she is in a position to train and advise other principals, shouldn't she be the "best"? And is it a few positive things that are used to cover up the questionable...

Western's decline is due to its inability to attract the upper eschelon of girls that now attend Poly's Ingeniuty, City's IB or the BSoA's programs. It is also due to its reputation as the recruiting ground for LUGS.

Linux User Groups at Western? Please say it's not so. Honestly, I have no idea what LUGS stands for and a quick internet search didn't bring up anything that was too obvious.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to have an opinion about this type of stuff - when you City School employees start this type of snippy badmouthing I feel a strong urge to get out of the fray. It does make me feel sad that you all as a group can't be a little more united, but whatever. I'll stick my nose in a little (probably ill-advised). In my experience I'm not sure that the best director of a group of people, say engineers, needs to be the best engineer (in this case). They need to be leaders who are willing to listen and not think that they understand everything better than the people who are actually doing the work.

Just my 2 cents.

@ a parent: LUGS=lesbian until graduation, issue for those with closed minds who believe it’s the primary social activity going on at Western, guess what?, girls have been discovered “experimenting” in most of the high/middle schools and includes City, BPI, and BSA. In reality, Western is rather “boring” when it comes sexual activity, but that isn’t well reported, “transparency” is selective in City Schools.
@ a parent: not too sure about “engineer” analogy, hope LM exhibits more skill than say the Army Core of Engineers in New Orleans. She is a skilled survivor (obviously, not a bad thing); however, based upon reliance of friends, legal stipend /activity fund paid support in the past; along with demonstrated failure of many “new” principals under her mentorship, is this the most qualified appointee?
@ a parent: there is a beauty of contrasts to Sara’s “blog”, disparity/connection of voices, puzzle/clarity of words, truth/supposition of circumstances, hope/despair for the future. Believe unification of voices is much like storm tides, a coming together in a surge of angry outrage or unfettered faith. It’s through the diversity of words and our discerning reflection reality is revealed. You are not simply “allowed”, but entitled to enrich the blog and bloggers with your opinion.

@just_an_observation -
Guess the engineering analogy was a little cloudy, so let me try again. In my field I have worked with some brilliant engineers - they come up with clever solutions, they see the meat of the problem in the midst of chaos, etc. These people are often terrible leaders. They have too much fun doing engineering to do a good job mentoring and directing and often are the worst kind of micro-managers. With this experience I don't agree with your idea that we should get the best principal out there to lead the new network organization. The goal should be to find the person who is best at leading an organization through a big change in direction. I'm not sure exactly what the qualifications are for that job, but I think it's very different from being an excellent principal. And while we're at it, in my experience there are so few excellent principals we shouldn't lose any of them to upper echelon bureaucracy.

@ AP - I also think your comparison is off. A principal, by the very nature of the job, should be a good leader. I don't think that is a requirement of an engineer.
I believe that being the "best" teacher does not always guarantee that person will make a good principal. But once one has risen through the ranks and vetted to become a principal, one should be a somewhat proven leader. So if one is to a leader of leaders, shouldn't that person best be one of the "best"?

I don't know that much about this

My main concern with this appointment is a question of philosophy. On the one end of the spectrum is trusting people (in this case the members of the small teams or what I refer to as the "pod people" as well as school leaders) and ensuring that your staff supports them and on the other end is the idea that compliance is what is needed since most people can't be trusted. From the rumor mill that I am tapped into AAA seems to be placing a number of people in positions of power and authority who fall on the 2nd end of the spectrum which scares the hell out of me. The move that had marked the first part of AAA's term was one of trusting the people you put in place and making sure that those who work at 200 E North Ave understand that their job is to support the front line folk to provide high quality instruction. Much as good principals should take road blocks out of the way of teachers (including the teachers own lack of knowledge about instruction), the people at North Ave. should see themselves as freeing up the road so that school leaders can focus on that job. When we get people on the 4th floor who don't trust school leaders and who believe that they know best and that the answer is to make everyone fall in lock step we are in trouble.

So, what are we to do? For now we wait and see what these changes bring. I think that once we begin to get a whiff of the compliance paradigm in action we start to protest and work together.

At my school as we hire new staff we tend to run them through a gauntlet during the hiring process. Once we hire them we trust them and try to work with them to get their practice to where it should be. It doesn't always work, but it works more often then not.

I hope this appointment doesn't spell the end of the promise that AAA brought with him, For those who both to read my postings this is the first one where I truly wonder if he is engaged enough to do what needs to be done. AAA where are you?

@IO: "[T]he people at North Ave. should see themselves as freeing up the road so that school leaders can focus on that job." - Yes, exactly! . I don't think there's a better mission statement out there for the role of a central office (although there is something to be said for government relations, legal, technology infrastructure, citywide budgeting and communications, State negotiations, facilities etc. - but they all probably fall into that original bucket if schools & achievement are at the center of attention).

I am so hopeful about the Networks, and I genuinely hope that they serve the philosophy you're described above.

In my very limited interactions with Ms. McLaurin, I have been highly, highly impressed. She's seemed engaging, motivating, and extremely willing to take on the task of shaping this new non-traditional reorganization with a non-traditional approach. One statement she made thoroughly raised my enthusiasm: "Network team members should never expect their 'central' day to start before 4pm on weekdays. They need to be out in schools, supporting principals and teachers, and offering innovative options for schools. They need to do work at central only after the last bells ring."

At my school,the last bell rings at about 8:00 PM. Later for my principal.That is when many folks go home and begin again. It is after the last kid bell that I actually have time to spend with adults. Unless of course, they want to come on in a co-teach! Please! Respect the children's instructional time!

"Network team members should never expect their 'central' day to start before 4pm on weekdays..."

Oh yeah, that's real impressive. She expects network team members to spend most of their time working with schools. How profound. Sounds like another high ranking BCPSS blowhard.

Hmmm....

Landa will have to adjust her schedule. She typically worked very late while principal at Western, but seldom was in the school before 9:00am....

Ha! I was going to respond at length to a few comments but realized that I just can't handle the ever-flowing negativity. Literally, there's almost no way to make a positive statement. So, I'll just have written it and let it be!

Good luck, Sara! Have fun on your new journey!

So Bill, you should ask yourself the question, how can so many obviously well educated,hard working, people become so negative? People who have been recognized, awarded, and praised here and elsewhere for their energy and committment to children and education. As an experienced educator who has moved about quite a bit,I can tell you that I have never worked in such a negative environment. The size of the system is part of the problem but the utter disrespect and total lack of acknowledgement of teachers by the hierarcy is at the heart of the failure of the system. Read teh commnets by Brandon regarding the teacher appreciation evening very carefully. He is so very right!

@WE, no question, more can be done! Developing and maintaining a leadership pipeline that values our best educators will be critical for the future.

@WE: I just read the post you mentioned. I agree (except for the whole "drone" thing - there really are good people at central as hard as it may be to believe!). Also, CONGRATULATIONS! on your selection for your school. I mean that sincerely & genuinely! Teachers deserve the best treatment in the system, without high quality teaching, the rest is chaff in the wind.

@ Bill - I'm very sorry that you feel all the negativity around here really sucks. In my neck of the woods, they call it "critical thinking." A lamentable product of too much education. In the court of science, you are guilty until proven innocent, and I see no reason to excuse BCPSS administrators from that test. Not given their past record. Yet rest assured I most earnestly hope to be pleasantly surprised.