July 04, 2010|By Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun
Staff and students at Gilmor Elementary, the city school at the center of an intense bullying debate this year, said they experienced a worrisome decline in classroom safety and learning environment, according to the results of a district-wide survey that come to light as the school undergoes a major staff shake-up.
All of the school's staff and administrators have had to reapply to return next year under a plan that Gilmor, along with six other long-troubled schools, is implementing as part of a turnaround plan. Officials said they have not determined how many of the staff, including the principal, will be back.
But schools CEO Andrés Alonso said that the results of the school's most recent climate survey will factor into personnel and other key decisions for Gilmor's future. The survey is distributed annually to all city schools and allows parents, teachers and students to sound off on everything from food to teacher quality.
The changes come as the school grapples with the transition from private to public school management, which has left some parents wondering whether a related reduction in student services contributed to the problems.
Last year, the city school board granted Alonso's request to sever ties with New York-based Edison Learning, which had been running Gilmor for nearly a decade, placing its operations back in the hands of the district. Edison was praised for its ability to improve the school's climate but failed to meet student achievement targets.
Alonso said the 32 percent drop in the number of staff who said in the survey that the school provided an orderly learning environment showed that "clearly, something frayed in the school this year in comparison to last year."
The percentage of students and staff who said they felt safe also drastically decreased, and staff and students said that behavior such as fighting, harassment and students picking on one another was a problem.
But Alonso said the problems at Gilmor "highlight the complexities schools face when presented with the challenge of raising student achievement and addressing the social and emotional developmental needs of our students."
"Yes, obviously staff and students felt that the school's climate declined this year," he said. "But the bottom line remains, what are its outcomes?"
He said he did not regret the decision to cut ties with Edison, though Gilmor received more funding and resources under its management.
On April 20, the school was thrust into the media spotlight when the parent of a third-grade student with cerebral palsy said her daughter wanted to commit suicide and attempted to jump out a window at the school to escape a group of students who had beaten and bullied her repeatedly. The school system said that she had threatened to commit suicide but had not tried to jump out a window.
The girl's mother, Geneva Biggus, has continued to speak out publicly about how the school was not safe for her daughter. Last month, she joined about 200 other upset parents in rallying for school officials to acknowledge that resources and responsiveness are lacking in keeping students and teachers safe.
"Finally," Biggus said upon hearing the survey results. "Finally, it's someone else on the record saying that. It felt like I was standing alone but now that it's coming out in other ways from other people, it helps a lot.
"They were saying that my daughter was blowing things out of proportion, but they can't say that now," she said.
The 2010 climate surveys were distributed in January and returned by April 16.
Edison resources missed
Last spring, students and teachers from Gilmor protested Alonso's decision to take the school back from the for-profit company, and key arguments against the decision centered on the school's support system.
Edison paid for a dean of students to manage student behavior, a character education coordinator, a student support manager for parent outreach and referrals for struggling students, a school operations manager and a technology manager.
Under the district's leadership, those services were reduced. The school now offers counseling services provided by a school social worker, a Department of Social Services worker and a behavior interventionist.
Alonso said he knows that the change in resources has caused challenges, because the school's suspension rate spiked in the winter. He said the school is looking to build community partnerships to help provide more resources for dealing with student behavior.
A teacher who left the school because of its declining learning environment said that Edison's support staff kept the school afloat.
"When that staff went away, the kids noticed, and it was a free-for-all," said former Gilmor teacher Tammy Matthews, who left the school in February after two years and now works as an instructional specialist in North Carolina. "Under Edison, things were under control; kids were learning."
