Exit Interview
Recently departed principal Brent Hurst talks with the Scene about the state of Metro schools
Last week, the Scene reported that veteran educator Brent Hurst had resigned after e-mails surfaced in which he disparaged Metro school administrators, including director Pedro Garcia and chief instructional officer Sandy Johnson. This week, Hurst sat down with John Spragens to discuss what he sees as a leadership crisis in Metro schools.
An edited portion of the conversation appears below. Click here for the unabridged version.
Do you regret sending the e-mails that were negative toward the administration?
I don't think so. Again, the intent was to be humorous; it was not to hurt people. I had no idea that it would be many months later sent on to them for whatever purposes. The purpose was to laugh, to be absurd in some cases. To make people want to read them.
I guess the interesting thing was, people can [report someone] anonymously and it's in the newspaper and it's OK. Someone actually says what they believe—honestly—with their name, and that's wrong.
Did you express your criticisms directly to Dr. Garcia or to Dr. Johnson?
I would take specific problems and issues that I thought were being handled wrong or unfairly or unduly being delayed directly to him. I told him once, "Your principals can't come to you every single time with every single frustration because you don't have the time for that."
I did not have good communication with Dr. Johnson. I communicated, mostly by e-mail but no, we did not have a good personal relationship. You just don't hit it off with some people, and that just didn't happen.
But there was communication, yeah. And again, in some cases it was on things that, in my opinion, it shouldn't have been something you would even have to [consult the central office about]. Trust your principals. Give them the latitude to do what's best for a school. They know their school. They know their teachers.... They know their kids. They know their parents. They know that school. Give them that flexibility, and don't just dictate and say, "You will do this, you will do this."
As somebody who's been in the system for 30 years as a teacher and principal, is what you're describing a departure in the way things are run in Metro schools?
It's the climate, sort of like this aura of fear and intimidation has taken over. I'm fearful of saying something for what might happen to me. I feel so intimidated that I can't do what I as a professional feel like is best. Say they put this program in and it doesn't exactly fit my kids. It doesn't exactly fit my school. It doesn't exactly work for me; I want to tweak it, I want to do this. No, they say. This is how you do it. Here's your manual for how to teach this course. Boom boom boom. Here's all the overheads. Here's all that. In other words, you're not a professional anymore; you're a robot.
Wouldn't some people say that public schools are in such a crisis these days, that there are so many failing students, that it takes sort of a radical, centralized effort to improve them?
I think that type of solution would need to be used in a situation where you've got total failure going on, where nothing works. That was not the case in Metro schools. Yeah, there are some that were not succeeding well, but by and large there are great successes in this school system. Lots of pockets of it.
For example, what we were doing [at Rose Park] was going for, maybe even focusing on, the nontraditional good student, the verbal and the math skills, and saying, every kid's got strengths. It's the whole issues of learning styles, multiple intelligences, et cetera. Every kid's got strengths. Let's identify them. Let's play off them.
Rose Park is the first school in Metro to fully implement Format Teaching strategy, which without a lot of details, does all that. It focuses on everything that the child could be strong in and uses it as a springboard to the things they could be strong in. Success breeds success.
Let your principals work that way together; not sit in a meeting for three-and-a-half hours being given a three-inch packet of information and directives and "you will do this you will do that." But spend that time sharing. Because that's what's so good about education and teachers: we're not a business.
Where would you like to see Metro schools go in the next year, and also in the next five years or so?
First I'd like to see it get a handle on this whole issue of demoralized people, and that's going to be tough. I'm glad to see that they're beginning to look at and talk about how gummed up the system is in terms of decisions, things happening and getting done on time, the orderly flow of stuff. That's got to all be addressed quickly. I don't think a new organizational chart is going to do it.
Let's go back to that day when we were all a family of professional educators, and it wasn't one person who had all the answers. Because that is not possible. If we can get that back, I think things are going to start clicking. Things are going to perk up. People are going to feel good about going to schools every day and working, and that's going to translate to the kids, and when you translate it to the kids you translate it to the parents.
And let's not run people out of the school system. Because there's a lot of people that are getting really frustrated—and I'm talking good people that are getting frustrated and are beginning to feel that they just can't take it anymore. And that's a terrible feeling.
Comments (2)
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Well isn't this strange, this is 4 years old, and rumor has it Brent Hurst has done the exact same thing at McGavock High School. "Accidentally sent people some wrong emails?" or his only good excuse to resign? You decide.
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