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Exodus of principals at turnaround schools continues in Bronx

Turnover is continuing in the principals’ offices of schools facing “turnaround,” the federally prescribed reform process that the city has proposed for 33 struggling schools.

Enrique Lizardi, the founding principal of the Bronx High School of Business, has resigned, according to a Department of Education spokeswoman. The spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, said Lizardi took another job within the department and would be replaced in the short term by an assistant principal. Teachers at the school were told that a new administrator would arrive next week.

Turnaround requires principals who have been in place for more than a few years to be replaced, and the city has started informing principals at some of the schools that they would be removed at the end of the year. But at least some are leaving mid-semester, just as the city is fleshing out details of the turnaround plans, which require half of teachers at the schools to be replaced this summer.

Lizardi is at least the second principal to move on in recent days. Barry Fried, the longtime principal of Brooklyn’s John Dewey High School, was removed abruptly on Friday and replaced by the founding principal of a successful small school who had trained teachers helping to overhaul some of the 33 schools.

The Bronx High School of Business opened in 2002 in the Taft Educational Campus, where Lizardi had been a guidance counselor for more than a decade before the city began phasing Taft High School out. A decade into its existence, the school’s four-year graduation rate is just over 50 percent and it received a C on its most recent city progress report. More than 20 percent of its students require special education services and more than 20 percent are classified as English language learners.

Last year, the city assigned the school to undergo “restart,” a process that pairs struggling schools with nonprofit partners. That process brought the school extra federal funds that, according to Insideschools, Lizardi used to hire expert teachers in English and special education.

A teacher who asked to remain anonymous said the school had improved this year but that teachers have been worn out by “this year of indecision” as restart gave way to turnaround.

“We are very sad for our kids,” said the teacher. “They need consistency and this year, and likely next, will be very stressful on them.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397245457 Mary Conway-Spiegel

    Incredibly disruptive, sad and, of course, horrible for morale.  I hate to think the almost end of the year removal, resignation trend is calculated to do just that, further demoralize…

  • Parent132

    They need to get rid of the Bronx Superintendents next!

  • Transformation Teacher

    This is another disgrace on a record of disgrace. How can they even pretend this is about the kids anymore?

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/william-johnson/ Will Johnson

    Glad you’re covering this– as others say, the whole situation is a disaster. One quibble: the principal taking over Dewey does not come from a “successful small school”– at least, it’s not successful by any credible standard. As the NY Times reported last year:

    “With a graduation rate of 88 percent, [Williamsburg Prep] is performing well
    above the citywide average and has earned A’s on its progress reports
    for the last three years.
    But of the 38 students — 39 percent of its graduating class — who went
    to CUNY last year, 75 percent could not pass the reading, math or
    writing exams CUNY uses to determine if freshmen can pass college
    classes.”

    So, while according to the DOE’s rating system, this school is indeed successful, a sizable portion of its graduates are not prepared for college. Whatever Fried’s faults may be, there’s no reason to believe Dewey’s new principal will fare any better.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397245457 Mary Conway-Spiegel

    Yes.  It would be interesting to ask students how they feel about a Principal being in the building one day and gone the next.

  • Guest

    I don’t understand why anyone backs these principals. Like good nazis, they just carried out their orders from Adolf Bloomberg, and made life miserable for hundreds of teachers.
    Hopefully, they’ll get rid of their gestapo, the APs, next.

  • Concerned

    Your analogy is absurd and disturbing. 

  • Jay1

    They can shuffle teachers, principals and ‘plans’ as much as they want.  The simple fact is that a school with a lot of ‘high needs’ students can never really perform at the same level as a school with a more stable, native-language-speaking population.  

    Any examples that are held up as bucking that trend seem to always involve later-discovered cheating scandals, grade inflation and ‘credit recovery’ irregularities.  This is why liberals, while espousing the wonders and benefits of ‘diversity’ rarely send their own children to ‘diverse’ schools – unless they are colonizing (‘gentrifying’) an area and are using property values to squeeze poorer people out!

    Anyone with even a third-rate science education knows that nature is built on the principle of winners/losers in an endless cycle of competition.  We humans, to our credit, attempt to escape this cycle and care for our weaker members, but all the best intentions in the world cannot manufacture equal outcomes for all in a population with diverse needs and capabilities. 

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