Reference no: EM13719383

How will your values and beliefs impact staff and stakeholders?

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What would you do to respect school climate and culture?

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Changes at St. Mary's High School

Kinsey Johnson had accepted a position as principal of St. Mary's High School a year ago knowing that it was going to be a difficult job. Historically, the school's student population had drawn from mostly white middle-income to upper-middle-income parents, and the school generally performed very well on state achievement tests. School Climate was positive and student and staff morale was high. Within the district, the school was often spoken of as "the country club."

The principal whom Kinsey had succeeded had been at St. Mary's High School for 13 years. Though he did have something of a patrician manner, the teachers, who were a stable teaching force in the school, loved him. He had been removed by the superintendent last year, however, because of growing problems, both with declining test achievement scores and increasing discipline problems. The teachers opposed both he principal's removal as well as the appointment of Kinsey Johnson, whom they distrusted and viewed as an unwelcome outsider.

All the trouble seemed to begin about 5 years ago when the district had to rezone the high schools due to increasing enrollments brought on mostly by two new manufacturing plants that had been built in the area. Since then, St. Mary's High School had been drawing increasing numbers of students from the migrant farm-labor families who lived in the rural areas as well as factory workers' families who were moving into the new development houses that were going up "out there." These students, mostly form low socioeconomic families, did not perform as well on the state achievement tests and St. Mary's High School's reputation as a "good school" suffered. In addition, friction quickly developed between the "new" students and the "old" students. In sports, for example, a more intense conflict developed in the usual competition for spots on the teams. The coaches agreed that it was largely a reflection of tension between the Hispanic students and the non-Hispanic white students. Fighting incidents, as well as other behavioral problems in both the cafeteria and the classrooms, increased dramatically. For the most part, teachers no longer felt as safe as they once did on campus, and over time, more teachers were asking for transfers to other schools than had been the experience at St. Mary's High School.

Kinsey viewed the issue of mistrust as the main problem at St. Mary's High School, so she introduced a new idea to teachers and students at the beginning of her first year as principal. Most of the teachers and students decided to give Kinsey's idea a try because they knew that something had to change. A consultant was hired to train teachers and students in a personality identification program called True Colors, which uses four different colors to represent different personality traits. The idea is that if everyone becomes more knowledgeable about individual personality and motivation and has a common language to discuss individual and group differences, everyone will become more trusting of one another. At the end of Kinsey's first year, and the time for her annual evaluation approached, the superintendent could assure the school board that progress had been made in reduced behavioral problems. Although the test scores improved a little, student achievement was far from the levels that he knew the board wanted to see.
Kinsey knew that, of course, and she knew that she had to be ready at her evaluation to make a convincing case for reappointment.

1. If Kinsey asked your advice, what kind of three-point plan would you suggest that Kinsey have ready to discuss with the superintendent at her annual evaluation?

2. What rationale underlies your suggestions to Kinsey?

3. Should the True Colors program be continued? Why or Why not? If yes, suggest ways that it could be used to continue improvements in behavior and learning.