grass roots kind of thing,
curriculum change that comes from faculty within the
department and then it's presented to the department chairs
as a whole, and then to the administration or whatever. At
times the students certainly have an influence, either open
forums or the student government, you know, there's an
elective -- it was through student, I won't say pressure but
interest, that a couple AP courses were added in the last
couple of years, physics and chemistry basically.
Q. Incident -- influenced by parents?
A. Every day. In an independent school -- I'm sure you're
aware of this -- for the most part, parents are very
committed to the process because not only are they paying
their taxes but they're paying hefty tuition in addition to
send their child here. So they're very aware of what's
happening, almost on a daily basis, at school. On the
positive end, they can be very helpful. We have a parent
liaison committee that meets with me and meets in the high
school once a month and I get the feel of what they're
hearing from other parents, their concerns, which can be
academic as well as anything else, and I get to also respond
and clear up things with them. A number of incidents where
teachers have been off base and we find out about it from
parents and then we have to change their whatever, change
their grading policy, change their homework expectations or
what have you, but we do hear a lot of things from parents
and we respond to them. They don't tell us how to run the
school but, on the other hand, if the teacher is out of
line, then we need to respond to it.
Q. Incident -- influenced by any legal or judicial judgments?
A. No.
Q. Incident -- influenced by a professional organization with
which you identify -- or teachers association, which
probably doesn't affect you at all.
A. Not really. I go to professional conferences and you pick
up ideas and you assimilate things and change operational
tactics or whatever, but there's not been any incident that
I can think of that all of a sudden we had to change. We
belong to the National Association of Independent Schools
and we have an annual meeting and we meet these people and
talk to people and things, but there aren't teacher unions
or other organizations that we deal with.
Q. Incident -- influenced by in-service training or your own
continued education?
A. I think that the difficulty for me here is an incident. I
can't think of incidents that are necessarily any more --
stand out any more than the others. But I, too, went
through a doctoral program and that influenced me, and my
master's work. Probably in recent times, the most
meaningful training program I went through was two summers
ago, a program on understanding the students and parents of
the 90s. A six-day workshop. I brought home a lot of
things that we're dealing with kids from duo-working
families that are being brought up by third party
caretakers, and, you know, a lot of things; parents are much
more guilt-ridden about their kids because they should be --
the fact that we're going, although we need to keep the
academics up, the influence in a school like ours is going
to be more and more the whole child, counseling, and taking
the role of the family, has an advantage.
Q. Was that through the Association of Independent Schools?
A. That was through ISM, which is Independent School
Management, a consultant company that runs workshops all
through the year and summer.
Q. And they are geared toward the needs of independent schools?
A. Independent schools, right.
Q. The next question is about the influence of students but
you've told me about how they influence the school through
their leadership organizations that they have.
A. Yes, the students certainly don't vote on policy or get
involved directly, but we certainly try to listen to them,
in curriculum or in other matters, we hold open forums and
if they feel somebody is unfair and the student handbook on
whether they can wear facial hair or can't wear facial hair,
we let them have their thing and they talk about it, but
they just realize they're not voting on it.
Q. Incident -- influenced by colleagues?
A. Sure, it happens all the time. I have a staff here of five
people who are with me in the upper school, a dean of
students, a counselor, college counselor, and athletic
director, and we meet as a staff and -- the way the group
works, it's a pretty trusting and supportive group, and they
feel free to let me know if I'm off base or -- sometimes
we -- I've learned a lot from them, and not that I'm good
at it, but in dealing with women, because the first 18 years
of my career was with all male institutions, boarding
school-type, all male college, etc., so learning how to deal
with issues with women in a school, they are very helpful.
Very sensitive to an issue -- so I've learned a lot from
them. Also, I'm sure that I've learned from ______________
as well, not just one incident, but my first job as a
headmaster was in Atlanta, in an open faculty meeting, a
teacher came in afterwards and said that he could feel my
anger at him in the meeting by my facial expressions when he
would make a comment, and I had to try not to show my face
so much in a public meeting.
ADMINISTRATOR INTERVIEW
(Part. 2)
Crestwood Country Day School
June 3, 1992
Q. How much influence on: establishing curriculum.
A. A great deal of influence.
Q. How?
A. Well, I mean one of my key roles in my job description is
being in charge of the academic program for the upper school.
So, I mean it's a democratic providence but I'm usually the
person chiefly responsible for it so that I wouldn't coerce
departments into making curriculum changes but it's my
responsibility not only to get them together but to give them
leadership and direction.
Q. Influence on determining instructional methods in classroom?
A. Not as much as the department chairs. Their main
responsibility in the evaluation process and in their job
descriptions is what's going on in the, you know, classroom
daily within their department and then they report to me so I
have a secondary influence but not a direct influence. I
would have a direct influence on things like discipline which
I'm also in charge of, but as far as methodology, it would be
the department chair.
Q. Influence in allocating funds?
A. The way we're structured, both capital and operating budgets
for teaching, for classroom instruction, come from each
department. My position, I'm in charge of overall
expenditures -- some of them transcend curriculum, field
trips, student activities, large capital questions, but again,
the supplies and materials and all of the come through the
departments budget-wise.
Q. So each department is assigned a particular --
A. __________ budget.
Q. Budget. They request? They make a request and that's how the
budget is determined?
A. Early on, probably around December over the preceding school
year we start to prepare our budget and each department
chairmen, director of athletics, physical education etc.
prepare their budgets and submit them and then they are
reviewed by the business office, the finance committee and the
Board of Trustees and approved or amended or whatever and they
never come through my office. I'm not responsible for any
financial thing except my own --
Q. And you submit a budget?
A. In the upper school administrative budget, right.
Q Influence in hiring new full-time teachers?
A. Again, that is somewhat confusing in a school that is
structured and administered like this, the head of the school
is ultimately responsible and that is Mrs. XXX. Then
basically each division head is directly responsible for the
hiring procedures. We look at resumes, we make phones calls
for references, we make phone calls to candidates and then we
get together with the appropriate department chair, Mrs.
XXX the head of the school and the division head who would
get together and decide which candidates we wanted to
interview and then my role would be to be responsible for that
person's visit to make sure that they get to see the
appropriate people and have the appropriate experience and
then again, we all get together the department chair, the
division head and the head of the school and make a final
decision. But the contract talk with the candidate, however,
is done strictly with the head of the school. The way we're
structured, I do not know what anybodies contract is except my
own.
Q. So this school doesn't use a teaching salary scale?
A. Nope. No scale. No public scale at all.
Q. My research is directed at a current debate in education. It
is a claim by particular authors I've been reading that I
might have mentioned to you last time. They claim that
private school teachers have greater autonomy to innovate,
adapt curriculum in teaching to meet the needs of the students
and that in doing so they're primarily influenced by the
students and the parents, not by school bureaucracy. Whereas
public school teachers are subjected to a variety of
influences and pressures that restrict their autonomy in
meeting the student needs. Among these influences are state
and federal regulations, teacher's unions, court orders,
organizational rules called bureaucracy. What do you think of
all this?
A. I think they're right on. The only thing I think they're
missing in that is there is an internal independent school
bureaucracy as well that affect teachers. I mean, they're not
as autonomous, I think, as that the generalization would make
it. The chief stimulus to them, you know, would be student
and parent feed back but there's still a great deal, of at
least in this school, of organizational structure and it that
means by structure that there are guidelines or there are, you
know, things that you don't cross then that is what it is. I
mean we have it a basic mission, philosophy of education and
that is imposed on us, our people. We want our kids to think
and we tell teachers that our kids have to write and if the
teacher wanted to be autonomous and give all objective
questions in English or in social studies, that wouldn't be
allowed here because, you know, we want our kids to think and
analyze and do a lot of expository writing. We impose
Southwest studies on our faculty. Every department have to do
something with Southwest studies. We've imposed women's
issues on departments, and things like that. The head of the
school and the Board sets the philosophy and mission for the
school and so there are restrictions, but within that, we're
a lot freer from certain state and federal problems, red tape
or regulations. The court thing, we aren't free from that
anymore. I mean the liability issue and the whole question of
legal responsibilities weigh heavy on us too. We stopped, for
instance, doing all sorts of experiential things in education
-- trips, rock climbing, white water rafting, its school
things because of the liability problems. We no longer have
an outdoor club. We no longer take field trips to see the
whales, or whatever. Which is sad.
Q. How do the teachers learn the rules and regulations?
A. Which rules and regulations? The legal rules and regulations?
Q. You said there is some structure here and like the way you
write a test or --
A. Well, it somewhat comes from the top. I mean the heads of the
divisions and the head of the school, you know, chart a course
that they want to go on and then the department chairs are
involved and sometimes, we say its coercive, we are not going
to tolerate certain things and the ways its gotten to teachers
is through faculty meetings, through one-on-one discussions
with supervisors, through the evaluation system which is
fairly thorough. Teachers are evaluated every three years
after their first two years. I mean, its on going. I just
had a parent in her the other day with a student's term paper
that she was angry about because her son had gotten an "A" and
she didn't think it was worth an "A", which was kind of
refreshing.
Q. Yeah, different problem. If Crestwood Country Day and Sunset
High School were the same size how do you think teacher
autonomy might differ if at all?
A. If we were able to keep our philosophy and with the size, you
know, I think teachers would have more autonomy because there
would be less supervision and less feed back. We are a small
school and very little happens here, you know, that doesn't
get to two or three constituencies almost immediately. We
talk to 5 or 6 ninth grade girls about drugs one day because
they were reported to be thinking about using them, thinking
about using them, and kids, alumns in college were dropping in
within weeks saying "I hear we have a drug problem", let alone
parents and trustees and whatever. So, it's a very small
school and we, you know, we know an awful lot whether we want
to or not. We know who's controlling their classes and who
isn't and who is allowing kids to _________________ and who
isn't, or whatever the issue is. Then in a larger school in
that sense, we wouldn't and so teachers would have more
autonomy if that means freedom from people knowing what the
heck they were doing. So, one of the, I think that's a
question of size more than it is public or private.
Q. What if Sunset had a student body the population size as a
size as you have?
A. Then I don't think it would matter because I think the things
that are restricting their autonomy are still going to be
there; the state, the courts, the federal government, those
issues, you know, the issue of public control is still there
no matter how big the school is. But in our case, we're free
from any of that than I would say the larger the school was,
the more freedom the teacher would have because the less
ability there would be to know what was going on and to
control it.
Q. I think that's all I have left over.