Reader questions the appointment of new vice principals at public schools - the appointments were not new - they were re-locations.

News 100 blueBy Pepper Parr

September 10th, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Several days ago we received a letter with no return address. There was a single piece of paper with five paragraphs with which the writer explained that she had learned of 19 new vice principals being appointed at the Halton District School Board.

The full letter went as follows:

As a teacher I am sending this note anonymously for obvious reasons – but you might want to ask some tough questions publicly.

As you are aware, additional spending has been required by the HDSB to prepare schools for re-opening during the pandemic and money is tight.

However, on August 26th, this board announced 19 new vice principal appointments) note these were not replacements – new appointments) to oversee in several schools “Virtual Schools”. Vice principals are not cheap and this money could have been spent further reducing class sizes in some of the more high risk locations, particularly in Oakville.

While I understand that a significant (perhaps up to 20%) of Halton students have chosen to learn from home, this was accomplished in the spring for three months without any bureaucratic oversight. And I didn’t notice any shortcomings that more administrators will solve.

These appointments do underscore a philosophy in the administration on Guelph Line that nothing good happens without Board oversight. Sadly, this is at polar opposites from reality.

grebenc 3

HDSB Trustee Chair Andrea Grebenc

We first communicated with the Chair of the Board of trustees, Andrea Grebenc, who answered our questions. She said there were just two new appointments. We asked for a little clarification at which point Grebenc, correctly we believe, said this was an operations matter.

We then put ourselves in touch with Director of Education Stuart Miller, who got back to us very very quickly saying:

Miller prep at Central

Director of Education Stuart Miller

As you know we created 4 Virtual schools (3 elementary and 1 secondary). They all needed administrators as they are now our biggest schools (16,000 students).

Also because of the number of students who chose distance learning, it meant the number of administrators required for schools in which they lost students to distance learning is not the same. Many schools became smaller and therefore could afford to lose an administrator (P/VP). Those were the ones redeployed.

There was one new appointment and that is because we had a late retirement of a Principal, the rest were not new assignments.

To our anonymous reader – don’t think there is any misbehavior here. The information you refer to does not appear to exist. If you have something that we haven’t managed to dig up – please send it along, and we will follow up.

I think you may have been misled or misinformed.  You did the right thing – you brought the concern forward so that questions could be asked.

At this point it looks to us that the board administration is scrambling to meet a dynamic and very fluid situation.

Our only comment is that 17 administrators for four virtual schools looks a little thick but the administrators are professionals and we have to trust them to do what they think is needed.  Better to have too many than not enough.

They are doing an impossible job in tough times.

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3 comments to Reader questions the appointment of new vice principals at public schools – the appointments were not new – they were re-locations.

  • Howard

    Sounds like sour grapes. Did she even consider a possible onslaught of pending retirements. Succession planning goes along way.

  • Judy christie

    Don’t understand why teacher feels she should have to send this question in anonymously.

    Shouldn’t we all know what is going on in our children’s schools? Certainly there should be no secrecy. We live in a democracy!! Right??

  • david barker

    Great article all around !