We all have strong emotions about elements of school that we have to deal with on a day to day basis. Erratically working escalators, wonderful teachers and security guards stationed around the school are examples of occurrences that all Stuyvesant students have to deal with. Many such issues, and other daily happenings, either positive or negative, are affected by those with high organizational positions within our school.
For over two years, the process of choosing principals and assistant principals for high schools has remained an erratic process, fostering indecisiveness and inefficiency in the choosing of these candidates. Is it really fair to choose the most important educators in a student’s academic career through an erratic system? Decisive reform needs to be made to ensure that the right people are being put in the high seats of educational power in New York City schools.
Under regulation C-30, a complex system set forward by the Bloomberg administration for choosing candidates as principals or assistant principals, the execution of the hiring of assistant principals is still being debated, and an official system is not yet in place. The hiring of principals, although done on an official level, still neglects a consultation with certain parties that have extensive interests in the school community.
The hiring of principals is a highly complex process in which two levels of review occur. Level 1 committees interview the five most senior candidates of the district and all other applicants, who then send their reporting to a Level 2 committee designated to choose the principal. The Level 1 committee is comprised of a principal, two members of the United Teachers Federation, a member of the “school support” staff and four to seven parents.
To understand who has the ultimate say in the hiring of principals, one must also understand the system of hiring assistant principals. In this system, the principal of the school has the final say in who is hired. In either system, the decision of a hiring can be repealed, by a complaint from anyone, in which the chancellor leads a further investigation of the candidate. A written agreement would be due in 20 days. Later on, teachers and administrators can file grievances that can repeal a hiring after an extended period of time.
With these guidelines set in place, we see who has the real power within the C-30 regulations. In the end, although other parties have some say in the hiring process, it is really the administrators of a school, and certain teachers from the Federation, who make the ultimate decision of who gets hired. The lengthy period of filing grievances only extends the inefficiency of this system through bureaucratic means. Despite the use of parents in this system, by way of the grievances, the administration of the school is the only party that has a powerful say in the hiring process. This forces the candidates to be mainly approved by those they will be either replacing or become colleagues with. Extraneous motives from such overseers may keep qualified candidates from reaching positions of importance. By sidelining the parents in this very important process, parents are thus unable to ensure that their children are given the highest quality education, and that those meant to support this cause are the right ones.
In addition, the system of choosing candidates is another headache in itself. The five most senior candidates in the district must be considered, while all other applications are optional. Applications from other districts make the process messier by bringing labor contracts into the fold. It is vital for this system as well to be reformed, so that principals are chosen for talent and experience rather than for where they live or work.
In education today, the job of a principal has become increasingly important. As students at Stuyvesant know, many privileges which we are given the freedom to exercise, and certain liberties which are suppressed, come from the administration of the principal. It is thus of the utmost importance that principals are hired in the most transparent, skill-based process possible. The process that the state gives us today only pushes less skilled candidates into these positions. Thus, reform is direly needed. Educational reform starts from the top down.
