Susan Lumley was told to change things at Santa Fe High. She did.
Santa Fe High School Principal Susan Lumley sits at a table in a stuffy library room.
It's afternoon in early May and the room smells of sweat. Lumley's assistant principals are also in the room, some of them gray-haired and grim, looking every bit the stereotypical administrator. Lumley, neck garnished with colorful jewelry, wedged espadrilles garnished with flowers, looks like spring. Her flaxen hair falls neatly to her ears and her complexion is as radiant as the day. Factor in her Texas twang and Lumley is the most approachable administrator in the room. When her colleagues depart, she becomes even more relaxed. She giggles when discussing how surprising it was that her favorite country singer, Kenny Chesney, wed Renée Zellweger. She blushes when describing the edgy way she recently helped her twin daughters-seniors at SFHS-celebrate their 19th birthday.
Hard to believe this 47-year-old soccer
mom is the same person who has inspired teachers in the past month to file a grievance against
her for creating a hostile work environment, to storm the latest school board meeting with protest signs and even inspire the ACLU to get involved. This vocal group of teachers says the school year has been marked by suppression of opinion, humiliation of teachers and unprofessional conduct.
In some ways, the root of much of the unrest has been the district-mandate to transition the school to what's called "small learning communities" in which students and teachers are divided into smaller, discrete groups. SLCs, in conjunction with other educational reforms associated with The No Child Left Behind Act, add up to a hefty amount of school reform. "Whenever you start talking about high school reform, there is change involved, and…it causes controversy," Lumley says. "Everyone's concern is that you're going to change something that they are familiar with."
But many teachers say the problems extend beyond a resistance to change.
"I've never before heard teachers say
there is a hostile climate," says Anita Gerlach, a 16-year science teacher. "I've never before heard of so many teachers receiving written reprimands...I've never before seen so many teachers let go or even run off."
Indeed, 20-year SFHS veteran Diana Capshaw, a pleasant woman whose jewelry complements her black hair and honey skin, says when faculty went into an SLC training session "the first sign we saw said, 'We don't want to know how you used to do it.'" By then, Capshaw says, "I think a lot of the faculty had been lost."
Despite her critics, Lumley characterizes her management style as participatory. "It's interesting how people say it's a hostile place and then other teachers say, 'Well, I go in and talk to her all the time.'" (Lumley referred SFR to five teachers she says she's worked well with, but none were available for comment).
Perhaps more revealingly, however, is that when Lumley discusses the expectations she had for the school year, she talks about students-not teachers-at great length. Lumley says she set out, "to provide students with the very best, not only in education but also in extracurricular activities." SLCs, she believes, could go a long way in addressing Santa Fe High's 30 percent dropout rate.
Mary Ellen Gonzales, Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education secretary, says teachers need the same consideration as students. "Now there's some disagreement about that," she says. "There's the idea that students need to be primary. I'm challenging that. I'm saying that
our employees need to be equally important."
The outcry over Lumley took
both the embattled principal and her administrative supporters by surprise.
"I am very concerned when we say we want excellence and we want accountability and this sort of thing has transpired," says Associate Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez. "Ms. Lumley is…excellent…She has an impeccable reputation in other districts."
Indeed, there is little in Lumley's
previous work that would have foreshadowed the problems this year at Santa Fe High.
As principal of Huntsville High School in Texas, where she lived
until 2003, Lumley's reputation was stellar. She was principal of the year for the region in which Huntsville-70 miles north of Houston-is located and was one of four principal of the year finalists for the state of Texas.
Born 20 years after her sole sibling in the Dallas-area town of Mesquite, Lumley attended the University of Texas at Arlington for college. She majored in English and physical education (and would later teach English and was a soccer, track and cross-country coach). As a college student, Lumley knew she would pursue a career in education. "I have always been amazed at the potential that high school kids have," she says. "And, if they have a good leader or a good teacher or good coach, then the possibility of their success is limitless."
For graduate school, Lumley studied at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. A town of 35,000, Hunstville's greatest attraction is General Sam Houston, elected the first president of the Texas Republic after securing its independence from Mexico. In addition to having Sam Houston's various homes, Huntsville boasts a 67-foot statute of its hero, the tallest of any American patriot.
The town remembers Lumley fondly. Huntsville High Assistant Principal Panette Kelch worked with Lumley for five years, first as a teacher and, later, as an administrator. "She's a strong leader, outgoing and student-centered," Kelch says. Twila Lindblade, a former education reporter at the Huntsville newspaper, The Item, also praises Lumley. "She communicates very well with the students and teachers…and anyone else who has had questions of her," Lindblade says.
At Huntsville High, Lumley welcomed opinions that differed from hers, explained her decisions and made herself available to teachers, according to Kelch.
With Lumley at the reigns, the school underwent a transition akin to what Santa Fe High is undergoing now in which reforms such as small learning communities were implemented
in the ninth grade. Lumley helped teachers understand the impact these reforms would have on student success.
Teachers "got out of that mode of 'I want to teach this the way I've been teaching it for 25 years,'" Kelch says. "She made them realize that we've got to do what's best for the students and student success."
Shortly after SLCs took off in Huntsville, Lumley took a job at Santa Fe High School. Here she would not prove as persuasive.
Her first year at Santa Fe High, as an assistant principal, Lumley
focused on getting acquainted with the staff. She impressed them so much that when the principal position opened up she emerged as a popular contender.
When she was chosen, the teachers were enthusiastic. Gerlach, a teacher since 1966, includes herself as one of Lumley's former supporters. "I thought she would add to the structure of the campus. I thought she was a person who treated people fairly."
The 2004-2005 school year began with a two-day workshop in Glorieta, the purpose of which, says Gerlach, was "to find out what was most important to teachers. One of those things was climate, just a feeling of being part of the [decision-making process]."
Lumley cites the retreat
as an example of her participatory leadership style. "We looked at our major goal areas that we wanted to improve on," she says. "We looked at that and came up with a plan, and that was all teacher input."
Thus teachers felt their views of school reform were welcomed.
By November, however, an adversarial relationship had begun to form between teachers and administrators.
The problems were ostensibly over the creation of small learning communities. SLCs cluster groups of students into the same classes with the same teachers throughout the school year. Proponents say the structure creates a school-within-a-school setting and allows teachers and students to know one another better. Critics say the system limits student choice and ignores student differences.
But critics of the SLC plan at Santa Fe High mostly say they objected because they were not able to give input on how SLCs would be implemented at Santa Fe High (next year all freshmen will be in SLCs).
Indeed, 20 teachers interviewed by SFR described the reform environment at the high school as one in which they were told, not asked, how things would be. Although a small pilot SLC program was in place, the administration's decision to put all 400 freshmen into SLCs for the 2005-2006 school year met resistance. A call for teacher volunteers for these SLCs prompted little enthusiasm.
It was at this point, Mitch Buszek says,
that the administration began to bully teachers. Teachers were told, "If you don't want to volunteer to be in a small learning community, you should look for a job elsewhere. We don't want you teaching here," Buszek, head of the Parent Teacher Committee, says.
As tension mounted, Buszek says the teaching staff decided to conduct a survey to evaluate the faculty attitude at the high school. The survey found that 83.6 percent of teachers were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their input into the development of SLCs.
It was during this period, Gonzales notes, "I became concerned that perhaps the voices of all teachers weren't being listened to," she says. "I don't think we can implement SLCs or any other reforms without really listening to what the experts have to say."
By the beginning of 2005, relations at SFHS had gone from tense
to hostile. "I've never seen teachers so humiliated in public," Gerlach says. "I've witnessed teachers so mistreated that most of us were so appalled we couldn't speak." A teacher who wanted to remain anonymous says Lumley yelled at her in front of others. "It was in her office, but the doors were open, and there were a lot of people around," the teacher says. Lumley calls such charges false.
Sally Dinwiddie, an 11-year
visual arts teacher, says when she discussed a matter with a school board official in late January, she received a written reprimand two weeks later. "I was written up about my classroom management style when Susan Lumley has never been in my classroom," she says.
Lumley, who refrains from discussing personnel issues, says she has never told teachers not to approach the board. She just wants issues resolved at the lowest possible level. She also denies the charges that she humiliates teachers.
In March, the Parent Teacher Committee conducted another survey to identify teacher concerns. This time administrators discouraged teachers from taking the survey because the principal's office had not approved it (a board mandate).
Nonetheless, half of the faculty filled it out anyway. Gerlach says while others filled out the survey anonymously, she alluded to her participation in a newspaper editorial piece she wrote and was written up.
Says Lumley: "My job as…principal, is to uphold board policy. And, if I ignore board policy, then I'm not
doing my job."
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico sees the matter differently. In a letter-dated April 4, 2005-to School Board President Martin Lujan, ACLU Staff Attorney
George Bach says the survey raises issues of public concern protected by the First Amendment. The ACLU views the administration discouraging teachers from participating to be "a thinly-veiled threat of retaliation." It continues, "Public employees should be free from such fear and are protected from retaliatory actions by the First Amendment…"
Just when relations between the faculty and administration seemed headed for the worse-the ACLU stated it would urge teachers to pursue all "judicial options available," if necessary-Lumley apologized to faculty for how the SLC process unfolded. She continues to reflect on what she could have done differently. "I think the controversy has come from, I didn't give them a choice of whether we did it, I gave them a choice on how we did it," she says. "And the reason I didn't give them a choice on whether is because that was what [the district] expected of me as the leader of this school." Supt. Gloria Rendón agrees. "I gave principals a directive," she says.
Dinwiddie says she doesn't object
to the superintendent's call for school reform. "That's her right." But of Lumley
Dinwiddie says, "Don't tell me I'm going to have input when you're never going to ask for it again. In other words, don't lie to me."
In any event, Lumley's apology didn't stick. In April, the Faculty Senate of Santa Fe High, a group of 20-odd teachers who act as staff advocates, filed a grievance against Lumley for creating a hostile work environment. When the contract of outspoken teacher Megan Siesennop wasn't renewed several weeks later tensions reached a
boiling point. They also became more public than ever.
Megan Siesennop is a math teacher in her third year at Santa Fe
High. She, along with many colleagues and students, views her dismissal as retaliation for speaking out at a board meeting about SFHS's lack of remedial math courses as well as criticizing SLC implementation.
Not long after speaking out, Siesennop received an evaluation so poor the administration judged her unfit to return. "I really think it's fishy how, if [the basis of my dismissal] clearly was and exclusively was just because of my errors, the process to correct my errors wasn't used," Siesennop says. The error, according to the math teacher, is she didn't turn in all of her paperwork. But, she adds, "A lot of teachers haven't, and I'm the only one getting fired."
To protest the decision not to retain Siesennop, SFHS students, parents and faculty descended on the
Chaparral Elementary campus-the site of the May 17 school board meeting-with signs that called for Siesennop to be reinstated. "I have not been happy this year with what Susan Lumley is doing, and I have not gotten a full education this year," Ben Foreback, a sophomore, says. "I fear that it's just going to be worse next year."
Ruth Brenneshotlz, mother of a 10th-grader, also is worried. "Teachers feel stymied by the administration…and I am concerned that the good teachers will all leave and it will be just all the mediocre teachers who are afraid to open their mouths,"
she says.
The rally also brought out former SFHS faculty who left before the end of the school year, such as Diane Capshaw.
"I retired in January because morale was going steadily down hill," Capshaw says. "I think it was the worst I'd ever seen. I didn't leave bitter, but it really was a place…[where] things got more and more divisive."
Richard Olivares can relate. This school year, the longtime government teacher decided to take early retirement. "I retired because of lack of cooperation from the administration, lack of organization, lack of just continuity and inconsistencies at all the policies at Santa Fe High," he says. Olivares says he tried ironing out his concerns about curriculum with administrators before leaving. But, in the end, he felt ignored. "You keep hearing about this open door policy," he says. "I went in there and essentially got the door slammed in my face after 25 years."
If community members attended the latest school board meeting
hoping to finally be heard, it's unclear if they got what they came for.
Board President Martin Lujan instructed the audience to stop applauding speakers during the meeting's public comment forum. Later in the meeting-which lasted until 1:30 am-Lujan said if people are unhappy they should resign.
But Rendón tells SFR: "I never want any
employee to feel intimidated or that they are working in a hostile working environment."
Indeed, the following day, the superintendent oversaw a "facilitated" discussion over the issues raised. Although it was a chance for teachers to air their problems directly with administrators, the meeting hasn't alleviated some faculty fears.
One teacher, who didn't want to be named, believes the facilitation perpetuated fears because administrators took notes which led some teachers to believe they could become targets if they spoke up. "It was incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like a set-up." The teacher also says the point of the discussion was lost on her. "I feel like people are saying what they have been saying for a long time." Dinwiddie feels similarly. Of the administrators, she says, "I think they're planning on business as usual."
The one hope teachers have for
next year is that Siesennop may be reinstated. But teachers, including Siesennop, say retaining her only addresses part of the matter. "It puts out the fire," Siesennop says. "But the problem really goes very deep." Gerlach agrees. She says Siesennop's situation "was the precipitating issue that caused the protest." But to renew teachers' trust in the district those in power must do something very simple. Says Gerlach, "They've got to stop treating people the way they have."
Buszek-who was embroiled in controversy himself earlier in the year over comments he made to The Journal about the different learning styles of different ethnicities-believes it's been difficult for the principal to "deal with the upset on campus"-especially when she appears to have been revered in Texas. Here, though, "we're talking about a very different cultural milieu," Buszek says. "In Santa Fe, we embrace our diversity…We hold teachers in high regard and the community across the board is made up of independent thinkers. People here expect to have their opinions asked for and respected."
As for Lumley, next year she will have to tackle, among other things, empty nest syndrome. Her daughters, Haley and Holly, will be starting college at Texas Tech.
From the looks of things, she'll have plenty to keep her occupied.
