Superintendent Hagerman Outlines Internal and External Challenges For Scarsdale Schools

Before Scarsdale Schools Superintendent Thomas Hagerman could give his take on his first ten months on the job at an April 23rd PTA meeting, the leadership of the SHS PTA offered a humorous look at the challenges Hagerman has already faced as leader of the Scarsdale Schools.

Channeling David Letterman, they showed a list of "The Top 10 Ways You Have Been Initiated," highlighting some of the hurdles Hagerman has faced since last July when he took the helm. Though intended to be funny, many hit home. In December he was faced with a vote on an $18 million bond referendum, two of the three Assistant Superintendents and a principal announced plans to retire, a bomb scare forced the evacuation of the school and he got much flack for substituting electronic agendas rather than paper versions for board meetings.

Here were the Top 10 Initiation rites:

• Spelling "Colloquy" at the Friends of the Library Spelling Bee
• Hiring an entirely new staff
• Realizing that electronic agendas are a big deal
• Being tossed into a bond vote and getting it passed
• Participating in the ice bucket challenge
• Memorizing the athletic code of conduct quickly
• Interrupting carpools at dinner hour for a 6:30 start to Board of Education work sessions
• Handling an emergency during the coldest day of the year during lunch
• Central office open floor plan
• Surviving Superintendent hazing: to snow day or not to snow day!

Hagerman opened his talk to the sound of Taylor Swift singing "Welcome to New York" and discussed the differences between life in Chicago and New York where he "Rarely sees the four walls of (his) rental."  He added, "Everything here takes a little more time, effort and work – everything is multi faceted." He continued, saying "While in Chicago a sandwich is just a sandwich, in New York "we don't just have sandwiches – we have wedges, heroes, wraps and hoagies. There are 25 questions about the ingredients with group consensus about whether it was done the right way. There's an obsession with detail." Speaking about the depth of conversation on all issues, he joked, "I supervised another meeting that should have been an email."

His agenda for year one on the job was to meet with students, staff, parents and community members and use this feedback to identify goals.

He broke these priorities down into three lists and identified Board priorities as:

• Appropriate data needed to make decisions
• Time to process and ask questions
• Building trust with the Superintendent and other staff
• Board development and succession planning,
• Short and long budget issues
• Striking the right balance between operations and instruction
• Facility concerns and district wide master plan

From the staff, he learned that the following were their top concerns:

• Communication
• Distric culture, values and beliefs
• Staff Children
• Active involvement in ongoing decision making.

Parents concerns included:

• Communication issues
• Construction and deferred maintenance: Greenacres School and the district master plan
• BOE policy development and more active engagement in the budget process.
• Curriculum consistency across schools and the quality and quantity of feedback on student progress
• Sustainability issues
• Wellness and food service

Hagerman will consider all these concerns in forming a strategic vision for the future that he plans to role that out in the next few months. The vision will layer concerns of the board with those of parents, students and staff.

In the meantime he announced some shifts in responsibilities in the central office:

• Assistant Superintendent Lynne Shain will also take on arts and aesthetic education and global initiatives.
• There will be an interim Human Resources Director for next year as the district was not able to find a person to replace Joan Weber.
• Jerry Crisci will oversee instructional technology and focus on innovation and emerging instructional models.
• Rachel Mosley will be the Director of Information Services, overseeing district data, operations and technical services which is an expansion of what she is already doing.
• Director of Special Education Eric Raushenbach will now be Director of Pupil Services and expand his role to include medical and mental health services.
• Registration for school will be handled at the district office rather than at the individual schools.

Hagerman then turned to a discussion of the new state regulations for teacher evaluations and testing, saying, "I did not anticipate that I would be playing David to Governor Cuomo's Goliath. The Governor is actively seeking out ways to discredit educators and undo the last vestiges of local control."

Cuomo's 2015 agenda requires that district teacher evaluations systems include both student test scores and evaluations, one from an independent evaluator Hagerman explained that in order to comply with this mandate, the district will need to renegotiate the teacher's contracts and have a new evaluation system in place by September 1. Furthermore, when contracts are reopened, all items can be renegotiated including salary and benefits. This, he explained, is causing us great consternation.

Tenure will now only be granted after 4 probationary years and to those who received a rating of favorable or higher.

Districts may now begin dismissal proceedings for teachers who have received two years of unfavorable ratings. But he said, "We don't have the data to do this correctly. False scores can misrepresent the professionalism of the staff." For example, students who took the first day of state tests and opted out of the second day will now receive a score of "1" for the second day, and this could affect their teacher's evaluations.

School turnaround and local assistant plans are in force and ineffective schools can be put into receivership. Normally Scarsdale would not worry about this; but schools that don't have a 95% participation rate on tests for three years could be sanctioned and go into local assistance plans.

Hagerman said that he is involved in advocacy to address these issues and credited State Assemblywoman Amy Paulin with being a champion on these issues and getting the district access to the Governors staff. Hagerman called on parents to recognize their role in this work and urged them to stay abreast of what the policy committees are doing here in Scarsdale.

Moving forward, the district will need to consider how to keep teaching and learning at the forefront for the BOE and the community while confronting operational issues, such as construction, facilities, negotiations and political reforms. The question is, "How do we prepare for future changes while preserving Scarsdale?"

He concluded by saying, "We have a future full of promise and many unknowns, but it is not going to business as usual. It will take thoughtful deliberation and planning and creative problem solving. Each one of us bears responsibility for managing change. I ask each of you to think about how individually and collectively we can manage.

Watch the entire presentation here: