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Leader of UFT Charter Elementary School steps down
May 8, 2008 10:57 AM
Rita Danis will be returning to work at the Teacher Center after serving three years as leader of the UFT Elementary Charter School.
As the UFT Elementary Charter School rounds out its third year, the guiding hand and an architect of the unique experiment — the only union-run school in the country — has announced she will leave at the end of the school year.
When School Leader Rita Danis began her leadership of the Brooklyn school in September 2005, she envisioned it as a three-year commitment. With that commitment met, she will return to the union’s Teacher Center to the job she had before the school was founded.
In her letter of resignation, Danis thanked the school’s board of trustees “for this incredible professional opportunity to serve the children and their parents.”
UFT President Randi Weingarten thanked Danis for her hard work and dedicated service to the school.
“She helped design and launch the school and it has been her life for the past three years,” she said. “Now we welcome her back to the UFT family at the Teacher Center, where she will resume her work as a professional development specialist after helping to ensure a smooth transition at the UFT Elementary Charter School.”
The UFT Executive Board voted on May 5 to give Danis the Jules Kolodny Award at next fall’s Teacher Union Day. Danis has shepherded the school through its growing pains from its K-1 beginnings with a staff of nine to the K-3 school of 410 students and 31 staff that it is today. Serving children from tough East New York neighborhoods in Districts 19 and 23, she has worked with staff, parents and community to establish a learning community focused on student achievement and respect for others.
From the school’s daily morning meetings to the monthly Town Hall meetings which celebrate student accomplishments, Danis and her colleagues have provided a real foundation for the UFT’s path-breaking vision of a school in which teachers have a voice in decision making and in shaping the culture of the school.
UFT Vice President Michelle Bodden, a member of the school’s board of trustees, said, “The school is in terrific shape thanks to Rita’s hard work and dedication and its future will rest on the extraordinary foundation she has set.”
A wide search process for a new school leader is under way. The school will also need new teachers for the incoming 4th-grade class that will expand the school to K-4.
“In selecting a new leader,” Weingarten said, “we will search for a candidate committed to the UFT’s goals of student achievement and parent engagement through educator professionalism and voice.
