More on Jolanta Rohloff at Lafayette HS
You may have read ”The Galleries Lafayette,” in my Wave columns last spring on Jolanta Rohloff, the Leadership Academy trained principal of Lafayette HS. We’ve commented how these people are trained by pulling wings off butterflies to get them ready to torture teachers. The mainstream press has picked up a number of stories about Rohloff, the latest being Samuel Freedman in the Nov. 22 edition of the NY Times. After starting out talking about the Ministry of Fear, Freedman unfortunately drops the ball and never connects Rohloff’s dictatorial management style to the training at the Lead. Acad., giving Rohloff half the column to defend herself. The DOE press releases have been doing that, so what bother? I guess that’s “balanced” press for you.
The article naturally talks about how horrible the school was BR (Before Rohloff), the usual mantra to justify any action of BloomKlein no matter how horrendous. The mantra used by the corporate takeover types to degrade the public schools as an excuse for the hostile takeover, one of the clearest signs being the appointment of non-educators to run large school systems. (Think Scarsdale is hiring a CEO?)
Back to Rohloff. Stories have been floating out of Lafayette that there are a thousand less students and the school is way underserved. By manipulating the population, the DOE increases the chances of Rohloff being a success and justifying her actions in driving many teachers out of the school. In fact Rohloff showed up the first day with threats of a sea if U ratings. One person told me Rohloff’s first words were “Why do you want to be here?” followed by U-observations within the first 2 weeks of school. Rohloff has managed to unite teachers, students, parents and alumni against her. Maybe we should send her and the entire Leadership Academy to Iraq.
It's odd that no one on the Bloomberg team has the remotest notion of how to inspire loyalty. Negotiations are tough with this Mayor, but paying bottom dollar for both teachers and administrators hardly seems the way to build a first-class teaching force.
ReplyDeleteTreating teachers like expendable garbage doesn't seem good for students any more than teachers. It's a wonder the press lets him get away with all these gimmicks and nonsense when there's a working model of good education just over the Cross-Island Parkway.
Randi promised the Lafayette teachers- 50 of them- a story in the N.Y. Teacher. Where is it?
ReplyDeleteRedhog will write it as soon as he pulls himself out of his trench.
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