Principal blamed for school’s decline

Miller Photography

Chapter Leader Cynthia Dinkins and District 22 Representative Alan Abrams, who are leading the fight against the principal, stand outside the school.

In 2003, PS 139 in Flatbush, under a previous principal, was one of 100 high-performing schools in the city that the Department of Education exempted from its new core curriculum.

The Title I school was well-run, organized and very effective, veteran teachers recall. Few students were suspended because problems were nipped in the bud. The school piloted performance-driven budgeting, innovative math programs and balanced literacy.

Then came a new principal, Mary McDonald, and eight years later, the large pre-K-5 school is a shadow of its former self.

“McDonald opened the window and threw out every program that made it a top-100 school,” said one veteran teacher. The principal even tossed awards won by previous administrators, the teacher said.

Only 38 of the more than 100 staff working at the school when McDonald took over remain — a stunning turnover rate that reflects McDonald’s unpopularity. Twenty-seven staff members left after the 2008-2009 school year alone.

“McDonald rules through fear and intimidation,” said Chapter Leader Cynthia Dinkins.

One former staff member — now happily teaching elsewhere — said McDonald “categorizes staff in three ways: loved, ignored and hated. I went from being loved to being hated, all because teachers would come to me with their problems. McDonald would say the problems were our fault and we were being ‘negative.’”

Miller PhotographyPrincipal Mary McDonald (left) always has her office door closed, staff say.

Supporting instruction is not McDonald’s strong suit, say staff who have worked for her.

“McDonald and her administrative staff won’t model good instructional practices but still write us up as unsatisfactory,” said one teacher. When asked to be approved for professional development so that she could become “satisfactory,” McDonald refused to sign off on the request, the teacher said.

During the 2007-2008 school year, the school’s five cluster coaches garnered the kudos in that year’s quality review. Despite the accolades, McDonald dissolved the programs in which the coaches participated, and four of the coaches either left or were pushed out, according to one of the former coaches.

“McDonald doesn’t know what goes on in the classroom, and she definitely didn’t like that the coaches were more respected than her,” said the former coach.

The authors of that year’s quality review even acknowledged that McDonald and the assistant principals were not the school’s instructional leaders.

McDonald’s skills as an administrator also leave a lot to be desired, according to the school’s teachers.

Even routine matters get bungled. This year, student Individualized Education Programs weren’t distributed until January 2011, said a current staffer.

A former staff member said McDonald had “a very keen eye for supporting her programs, but was terrible at administrative support” for those same programs. “When we complained, we were the bad guys,” she said.

In effect, the former staffer said, yesterday’s star teacher becomes today’s scapegoat after McDonald’s inattention to detail and the roadblocks she herself puts down lead to difficulties in her programs.

UFT District 22 Representative Alan Abrams accused McDonald of reporting inflated class-size numbers to the DOE (though not high enough to trigger a union grievance) in order to keep over-the-counter enrollment in check. She managed this by creating supplemental classes early in the school year, but then leaving the students still officially registered in their former classes, Abrams said. The students in the supplemental classes were known as “The Pinks” because of the pink highlighter used to identify them, Dinkins said.

That finagling with numbers and class lists means the school’s teacher data reports and attendance records are invalid, Abrams said.

McDonald is no fan of the UFT either.

Shortly after Abrams was named district representative in 2009, McDonald moved to ban him from the school after falsely accusing him of making an unauthorized visit.

“That told me a lot about McDonald,” Abrams said, “because at the time of that so-called visit, I was teaching at my home school.”

Abrams noted how “teachers call me and ask my advice on whether they should transfer or look to move. I usually told them to move on. It’s not a healthy environment.”

Now Abrams and Dinkins, with the staff’s support, are fighting back.