Top administrators in the Baltimore City school system were used to staff meetings with fluid agendas that left time for all to speak.
But now, Andres Alonso was presiding. And class was in session.
When I send you an e-mail, the schools' new chief executive told them on that summer day in 2007, I expect a reply within 20 minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week.
This wasn't a conversation, but more like a lecture, one in which students keep quiet for fear of being admonished for falling behind on their homework. This was the way it was going to be.
Before Alonso agreed to leave New York City, where he was deputy schools chancellor, he insisted that the Baltimore school board give him the power to run the system as he sees fit. He arrived with a mission to bring a culture of high achievement to a system where historically only about half the students have graduated.
To succeed in a job that had defeated so many others, Alonso knew he would have to create some discomfort among the people working for him. Making decisions in the best interests of children, as he pledged, would require adults to operate differently. In short order, he began cutting staff at the mammoth North Avenue headquarters to send more people and money to the schools.
"It takes extreme leaps to get a system like this to take small steps," Alonso said. "My work here has been all about extreme leaps."
He made clear to senior staff that, to keep their jobs, they would have to work harder and faster. He would tolerate no excuses, no passing the blame for failure. He didn't want to hear grumbling that he was asking them to take on too much responsibility, to do things no one demanded from them before.
He didn't really mean that they couldn't go to church or a movie without checking their BlackBerrys, but he didn't mind planting the thought.
"Part of his style is to take very extreme stances to move us just a little bit," said Laura Weeldreyer, who was the head of charter schools and later promoted to be Alonso's deputy chief of staff. "You want me to be available 24 hours a day? Really? No, 14 hours a day, but doesn't that sound reasonable?"
Weeldreyer thought it did. "Parents and kids don't think we're going too fast," she said. "None of them are like, 'Whoa, I'm really worried about those bureaucrats at central office. I really think they're working too hard.' "
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