A photo of the front entrance of Clarke Middle School on Nov. 18, 2020 is shown. A CMS PTA meeting was held over Zoom on Jan. 18, and members of the CMS community spoke with representatives from the Clarke County School District. “Trust is very fragile. We recognize that we have fractured that trust. Just as you would with any relationship, you take step towards (rebuilding) and it’s your actions that speak the loudest. We have to work at rebuilding that trust,” CCSD Chief of Human Resources Dr. Selena Blankenship said. Photo by Gretchen Hinger
Members of the CMS community met over a public Zoom meeting with representatives from CCSD on Jan. 18.
Acting Superintendent Brannon Gaskins and Chief Human Resources Officer Dr. Selena Blankenship spoke with members of the Clarke Middle School community in a public Zoom meeting on Jan. 18.
After former CMS principal Chris Pendley was reassigned from his position on Dec. 16 and replaced by CMS interim principal Dr. Amanda Gorham, parents, teachers and students were left with doubts, according to CMS social studies department teacher Sasha Baker.
Former Clarke Middle School principal Christopher Pendley stands in front of CMS after school on Aug. 26, 2019. Pendley, who became the CMS principal in the 2019-20 school year after serving under former CMS principal Tad MacMillan as assistant principal, was reassigned from his position on Dec. 16. “Many of us feel that he was doing a phenomenal job leading the CMS staff, students, and communicating with parents and community members,” CMS community member Emily Smalling said in the Zoom meeting. “We were told there was no severe violation of policy, and that it was not based on performance-related issues. So (we want to know) if those two things are not the case, what other reasons could lead to the abrupt, immediate removal of a school leader?” Photo by Elena Webber
“I just think it’s so hard to heal trust if we don’t know what could remove a person from our school in the middle of the year,” Baker said in the Zoom meeting. “We have no way of trusting that another person’s not gonna get the carpet pulled out from under them. It’s hard for us to have trust that something is transparent and not gonna happen again without that.”
It was this perceived disconnect in communication that CCSD administration sought to address in the Jan. 18 Zoom meeting.
“I think that we have heard loud and clear that there has been some missteps in communication to the CMS community around that change, and how that has fractured the relationship, and how there is mistrust because of that action, to say the least,” Gaskins said in the Zoom meeting. “I can tell you that we acknowledge your concern with the decision that was made, and we will take that in consideration in our future decisions.”
Staff members like CMS math department teacher Rebecca Draper expressed a desire for CCSD to take restorative steps towards repairing their relationship with the CMS community.
“We really believe strongly in restorative approaches in our community,” Draper said in the Zoom meeting. “There’s mistrust, there’s a fractured relationship, and that doesn’t just disappear. So when will that (restorative) process start to happen, specifically between the district and the staff, and the district and the parents? Because there’s a lot of stakeholders that were harmed, and I don’t think it can be just a one-way street there.”
“There’s mistrust, there’s a fractured relationship, and that doesn’t just disappear. So when will that (restorative) process start to happen, specifically between the district and the staff, and the district and the parents? Because there’s a lot of stakeholders that were harmed, and I don’t think it can be just a one-way street there.”
— Rebecca Draper,
CMS math department teacher
To Gaskins, the Zoom meeting was a first step for the district in reaching out to the CMS community, but they are taking the community’s feedback towards next steps into consideration.
“We do need to have some actions steps as we relate to restoring our relationships with the staff. We want teachers to know that we support them, we want staff to know that we support them, and as we move forward, we want to do a collaboration, and not a top down type of approach,” Gaskins said in the Zoom meeting. “I will say that our attempts to restore with the larger CMS community, I think today, us being a part of this is one step towards that.”
CCSD will be working primarily with the Local School Governance Team during the process of choosing a new permanent CMS principal, but are prioritizing transparency and collaboration with the CMS community as a whole.
“We really want someone who is a good fit, not only for leadership competencies that we look for in all of our leaders, but someone who can specifically support the CMS community,” Gaskins said in the Zoom meeting. “Definitely we are open to meeting with parent groups, we are open to meeting with teachers, and we acknowledge that we have to do some work around that.”
“We really want someone who is a good fit, not only for leadership competencies that we look for in all of our leaders, but someone who can specifically support the CMS community.”
— Brannon Gaskins
Acting CCSD superintendent
Looking forward, Draper feels that it is necessary for the CMS community to play an active role in choosing the next permanent principal.
“I want to stay here, and I want to be happy here, and I want to support our children here. The fracture between the district and our school is not gonna do any good for our students. Ultimately for me, it’s about our kids,” Draper said in the Zoom meeting. “If our relationship is going to be mended, I need to know what happened, and I need to be part of the process going forward.”
The Zoom meeting recording can be viewed here with the password “cmspta#1”.
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