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Leading the way to disaster
Jan 17, 2008 4:09 PM
Problems start at the top for PS 114 in Brooklyn
It wasn’t the coldest Jan. 3 on record — that was minus 4 degrees in 1879 — but 14-degree weather and a wind-chill factor of minus 5 is cold enough. So when almost all of a school’s professional staff picket their own building for most of an hour in early-morning, sub-freezing weather to brand their principal a ham-handed, incompetent martinet, you know they’re serious. And fired up.
Loudly protesting “a climate of fear” and what one teacher called “our principal from hell” warmed them up a bit, one said, as they listened to UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew make a promise: “Just as we reward principals who work well with their staff, we’re going to punish those who won’t work with us.”
And when the principal, Maria Penaherrera, met with UFT headquarters staff following the demo — quite early for her, given she never gets in on time, teachers say — she was all charm. Nothing was wrong with the school, she said. Not the low morale, not the deficit budget, not her leadership, not the D rating the school received on its progress report in spite of a high-achieving student profile. Not the pitifully low grades she received from teachers on the Learning Environment Survey.
Well, yes, there was just one problem she acknowledged: she blamed Keith Peterson, the school’s hard-charging chapter leader, for refusing to set up meetings with her — something Peterson documented as nonsense.
On her office walls are degrees from local colleges, and the principal proudly talked about her role as a 23-year school veteran and a former master teacher. She bragged that she was familiar with children in every classroom and every classroom’s problems — a neat trick, her critics say, “as she rarely leaves her office.”
“You know delusion when you see it,” Mulgrew said.
The teachers’ full list of grievances against Penaherrera needs enumerating on a legal pad. When 60 of 79 UFT chapter members on Nov. 20 voted “no confidence” in Penaherrera in a secret ballot, their bill of particulars included failing to collaborate with the union; interfering with union activities; belittling and raging and screaming at teachers; retaliating at any hint of criticism; playing a blame game without even trying to come up with solutions; victimizing union activists; threatening new teachers with U-ratings; and ignoring safety and security problems.
The chapter also faults her for following a closed-door policy, for ignoring formal grievances, and for splitting up classes as a cost-saving measure when she should be calling in substitutes. “She won’t even properly post openings for compensated or OTP positions,” one said.
There’s also a pervasive fear of victimization — something the rally was meant to allay. As Peterson wrote to the staff in the chapter’s monthly bulletin, “Teachers should not have to change their personal conversations as quickly as the wind blows whenever they hear a set of jingling keys [signaling Penaherrera is near] or footsteps coming their way. I myself have just realized that people are even afraid to speak with me because they do not want the principal to see them talking with the union rep.”
It isn’t just a lack of professionalism or bad people skills for which teachers fault their principal. There’s a leadership gap, too.
“She’s hired four APs, one of whom doubles as her driver, while another, quite talented, AP is marginalized,” said Peterson as an icy wind gusted off the Atlantic and the nearby Canarsie pier. “Meanwhile she’s letting teachers go, eliminated the Project Read program after just three weeks, and her budget’s in the red.”
She also refused to evacuate the building and inform the staff after police rushed to the site following a phoned-in bomb threat. The school was rife with rumors and near panic after seeing bomb-sniffing dogs and police activity.
Penaherrera is also the same principal who in spring 2006 failed to book a proper graduation space, forcing students to have their ceremony during a heat wave in the school’s non-air-conditioned gym. A second ceremony was held at the UFT headquarters’ conference center, complete with air-conditioning, food, cake and a congratulatory talk by UFT President Randi Weingarten.
With all that, it’s the school’s budgeting that may prove Panaherrera’s undoing. While she tried to assure Mulgrew and District 18 Representative Richard Mantell following the Jan. 3 rally that school finances were in line, and repeated the claim at a Jan. 7 faculty meeting — reportedly telling staff she had even set aside some $135,000 — she simultaneously let go two substitute paras who had repeatedly been told they would be hired full time. One of the paras is the father of newborn twins.
She also dismissed an F-status teacher, the mother of a 2-year-old and the sole provider of the family’s health insurance. Meanwhile, she has hired six staff developers for a school of just 900 students. While still denying any fiscal woes, she announced starkly at the faculty conference that she has contacted the Office of Special Investigations, asking that it conduct an investigation into “fiscal irregularities” that she claims took place at the school prior to her arrival in 2004 and that she “inherited.”
A Jan. 9 letter from Mantell to Chancellor Joel Klein referred to the PS 114 budget situation as “nefarious” and said Penaherrera “placed the school in a financial quagmire” after a meeting with representatives of the DOE, the principals’ union and the UFT revealed the budget gap stood at $160,000.
Mantell wrote Klein that accountability “is a common buzzword in today’s school system, but that in the case of the principal at PS 114, it is non-existent. How can one person be allowed to disrupt the lives of so many people and damage an entire school community with such impunity? At what point will something be done?”
Mantell said he “was under the impression that a principal’s accountability included, at the very least, the educational, fiscal and personnel aspects of a school building. This principal has failed on all three counts. Who is accountable for this?”
Meanwhile, staff morale may be changing as more teachers heed Peterson’s advice that “those who think their position is just fine and don’t want to rock the boat should realize that there are plenty of others who need their support.” He regularly reminds colleagues of how “our office, position, and good standing can be taken away just as easily as was done to the ones before you.”
So how do PS 114 teachers cope? One veteran told the New York Teacher at the morning rally, “It’s a gathering like this, seeing us sticking together, that makes me think we can win this thing.”
Asked what it would take to improve the school, another added, “The only thing I want to see changed is to get [Penaherrera] out of here.”
PRINCIPALS IN NEED OF IMPROVEMENT
When a principal gravely mismanages a school and makes life impossible for the staff, it tends to happen in the shadows. Many staff members are intimidated and afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals. But for the sake of the staff and of the students this situation needs to be brought into public view. In November and December, the union raised a number of schools where principals were mistreating staff. To date, despite repeated entreaties, the DOE has done nothing. As a result, the UFT will will do its own intervention and these stories will be told in this occasional series.
