First, an explanation of the title. Last spring a friend from my previous job told me about a teacher there who had shoved a kid, lied about it, got caught on camera and yet nothing was done. My friend also found out that the same teacher had flunked most of her ninth grade English students the last quarter. I had already talked to the national leader of KIPP, Richard Barth, on facebook and he had given me the phone number of the regional director over that school. John Alford. I contacted Alford and told him about the issue. He seemed disturbed and said he would address it the next day in a regional team meeting.
I assumed that he would do the right thing. The next month my friend suddenly stopped talking to me. When I finally got her to answer me, I discovered that the principal, Damien Myers, had figured out that she told me about the situation and had “blasted” her in front of the other teachers. Instead of dealing with the teacher who did the shoving, who is a cousin of his, he was trying to cover it up and bullying others into doing so. My other friends there stopped talking around the same time (Go figure!) and I was unaware that Alford had not dealt with the issue. I did hear that the superintendent had been fired. Alford had told me that there was a national search on for a replacement.
As school started last August, I saw on the school website that they were short a geometry teacher again. (The replacement they hired the year before left in the middle of the year after he needed time off for dental surgery and the administration, mostly Damien Myers I was told, complained harshly about him taking off. Interestingly, Myers himself had a kidney stone shortly after and had to take about 2 weeks off.) I contacted Alford again and complained that it was not good that they started short of teachers. He said that he had hired a new person to run the school there and I should contact her as he did not have the staffing to deal with local issues. She did not answer phone calls or voice mails.
About nine weeks into the semester, kids from the school (teachers still not talking to me) told me that not only was the teacher who shoved the kid the year before still there, but she was being allowed to come in late every day, which really aggravated teachers there I still counted as friends even though they stopped talking to me. I was livid. So I sent Barth a message on facebook, which I still have as evidence, and composed an email to Barth, Alford, the new local leader, and the members of the local public school board. In that email I informed the public school people about the shoving incident and reminded Barth and Alford, that they had not dealt with what I considered a serious situation. I thought it might shame them into action if there were other, non-KIPP, local witnesses. I threatened further action if they chose to ignore the e-mail. Which they did.
Time went by. Late yesterday evening (March 10, 2020), kids contacted me and told me that the teacher who shoved the kid had finally been fired because she attacked a kid who was in lunch detention in her room. I know the kid she attacked because I taught him too and frequently had to deal with his efforts to start trouble. None of that called for an attack. I blame the national leaders, Barth and Alford, for not dealing with her when they were warned about her, before she had the opportunity to attack this child. Needless to say, local leaders, like the bully principal Damien Myers, should also be held accountable.
In a separate diary I will write more about my time with KIPP and issues I have discovered about the entire organization.
