This chapter describes the elements contained in the GMRSD decision-making system. I begin with a description of organizational leaders, as these individuals were the primary participants in the system. I provide a summary of all decisions made during the 2016-17 school year, and provide details about social, political, and historical context that surfaced during my data collection, which allows greater understanding of the system dynamics that resulted in these decisions. I then identify and describe the primary system elements—trends, issues, and dilemmas that garnered participant attention—many of which had been active in the system in past years.
The most prominent issue that surfaced in 2016-17 was consideration of the high school’s mascot, the “Indians,” which revealed deep cultural factions within the community. I describe two additional participant groups that I term “localists” and “regionalists” that were highly engaged in decision-making during the year on either side of the mascot debate. This chapter lays the groundwork for a deep exploration in Chapter 5 of the ways in which these elements interrelated during decision-making activity.
Organizational Leaders as Primary Participants
Organizational leaders in the GMRSD include an elected school committee, the superintendent of schools, and the administrative team. In concert, they are responsible to manage all of the day-to-day activity of the organization, and to ensure it is meeting external policies and requirements. The overall survival of the organization is in their hands, and they are also highly visible stakeholders that are perceived to have a high degree of authority and control over decision-making. In addition, the district has a unique relationship with a
partner organization called the Gill Montague Community Schools Partnership (“The Partnership”) that writes grants to provide training and support in the schools around students’ social and emotional learning. Partnership staff members also act as organizational leaders in this capacity. This section describes these individuals and their perspectives. The GMRSD School Committee
The GMRSD is governed by a nine-member school committee comprised of six residents of Montague, and three of Gill who are elected by residents of the two towns. The school committee conducts its business in public meetings twice per month during the school year and once or twice during the summer months, and is subject to Massachusetts open meeting law. The committee encourages input from the public during a public comment section at the start of every meeting, through informal forums, and via email or telephone with individual members.
From July 1, 2016 through the May 15, 2017 election, the school committee was comprised of nine individuals who brought a wide range of skills, expertise, and perspectives depending on the duration of their time on the committee, parent status, alumni status, educational background, and so forth. Members included the following individuals:
Mike (chair) was a Montague resident in his fifth term, and had been the chair on and off for that period of time. His adult children attended GMRSD schools. He was a carpenter and woodworker by trade, and was also on the board of Montague Community Television.
Sandy (vice chair) was a resident of Gill. She had been on the school committee for several years, and was the chair for most of the 2015-16 school year.
April (secretary) was a Montague resident in her first term. She grew up in the town, attended GMRSD schools, and had children in the schools. She had been an active school council member for two different GMRSD schools during their School Improvement Plan development processes in 2015.
Christina (assistant treasurer) was a Montague resident in her first term. She had children in the GMRSD schools. She worked as an administrator at a pre-school in
company.
Heather was a Montague resident in the first year of her first term. She had children in the GMRSD schools. She has a degree in engineering, and had worked as a mathematics teacher in a variety of public schools. She also worked as a self- employed photographer.
Jane was a Gill resident and retired elementary school teacher in the district. She had been on the school committee for several years, and was the GMRSD representative to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC) in 2016-17.
Lesley was a Montague resident in her second term. She grew up in the town, attended GMRSD schools, and had children in the schools. She was trained as an early childhood educator, and supervised teacher practicum students enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Marge was a Montague resident who lived in the village of Lake Pleasant. She ran a company that coordinates produce distribution between local farms and retailers. She voluntarily vacated her seat in May 2017 after the election due to personal
obligations.
Timmie was a resident of Gill, and was in her first term back after a six-year break. She served for seven years prior to that. She was also a member of the Gill finance committee. One interview participant described her affectionately as the “self- appointed fiscal hawk” of the school committee.
The fact that these participants are individuals is significant; each brought his or her own world view and priorities to the table. However, they functioned as a single unit in this context, especially with the support of the superintendent, and through the efforts of the chair.
Other individuals regularly participated in school committee meetings as non-voting members. Up to three representatives from the town of Erving are allowed due to their contract with the district to educate students in grades 7-12. In 2016-17, Marisa was the sole Erving representative. She was rarely present at meetings, and primarily acted to advance her own interests regarding the Indians mascot when she did participate. There is always a non- voting student advisory representative from the Turners Falls High School student council whose role is to serve as the voice of the secondary school’s student body. School committee
meetings regularly include the superintendent, the director of business and operations, and the executive secretary. The superintendent is responsible for all organizational leadership, oversight, and management, and is the primary contact to the school committee, who in turn supervises and evaluates his work and performance. The director of business and operations is responsible for district finances, operations, and human resources. These individuals do not vote, but they make most of the day-to-day organizational decisions about teaching and learning, operations, and finances, and make recommendations to the school committee that carry a lot of weight. The executive secretary is responsible to assemble and distribute agenda packets, announce meetings, take minutes, and post all meeting materials on the district’s website. The individual in this position changed in October 2016 due to a retirement.
The school committee has published operating norms that define how they conduct their work. They state, “As advocates for public education, our primary responsibility is to represent and support the needs and interests of the children of the Gill Montague School District. We serve all stakeholders in the community and the school system.” They articulate their adherence to all laws and regulations, including open meeting law, while providing “a model for responsive, respectful and civil adult behavior for our students.” This includes treating people with dignity and respect, active listening, professional conduct, and a focus on facts and data as opposed to personal feelings. They claim to set goals that are focused on policy and student achievement, and monitor their progress using data. The chair indicated to me that these norms are espoused, but not always enacted. He complained that the school committee does not hold anyone accountable to them. He said, “We carry them to all the meetings, but never look at them, and never talk about them,” and recognized that this was his responsibility and an emerging area of growth (interview, November 2016).
A notable departure from past practice in 2016-17 was the level of unity among organizational leaders. The district had experienced a decade or more of unstable
administrative leadership with a seeming revolving door of superintendents and principals, and inadequate staffing in the central office. In addition, the school committee was
comprised of individuals who acted primarily in their own interests and engaged in open conflict. The 2016-17 school committee chair was working to improve relationships and ensure equitable opportunities for voice. He also spent time collaborating with the superintendent. Their 2016-17 goals reflect this level of commitment to working
collaboratively, and they were successful in doing so for the most part as evidenced by the respectful dialogue and mutual support that characterized their work during the year, even around highly contentious issues. All of the members with whom I spoke indicated a high level of trust in the superintendent and the administrative team, and that this supported their attempts to do their best work as a functioning governing body. I provide greater detail about administrative team members later in this section.
Interview participants reported to me that there had been decades of relationships within the school committee that they characterized as “toxic,” “poison,” and
“manipulative” (interviews, November 2016, April 2018). Much of this appeared to have centered around a particular member who held the chair position for approximately half of her tenure over almost twenty years. A current member who had worked with this person for years described her as being driven by her own personal agendas, most of which were about increasing her level of control over others. The current chair described her as a “recruiter” who would get people on the school committee who would support her ideas.
In the context of talking about how the district had not had a strategic plan for a long time, the chair explained, “She selected [school committee members] strategically. She
had a strategic plan! She just didn’t share it with the district” (interview, November 2016). He explained that her recruits were not selected for their ideas, and were actively
discouraged from expressing their opinions, or disagreeing with her. I asked, “What were her decisions based on?” He replied, “Being in charge.” He told me that she was opposed to hiring the current superintendent because she had someone else in mind whom she thought she could manipulate. Without me mentioning the chair’s statements, another member also told me that this person regularly recruited people to run for school committee whom she thought she could easily manipulate, and that some of them had figured out her modus operandi only after getting burned (interview, November 2016). School committee members claimed that some of the conflict on display in the past was due to damaged relationships that had resulted from people being resentful after figuring out that they had unwittingly been used as pawns in her quest for control.
This controversial person was regularly referenced in my interviews. In another instance, a school committee member was describing current member interactions outside of meetings to me, and explained that they were “definitely not supposed to tell people how to vote, but this sort of thing used to happen a lot,” and then referenced this person (interview, April 2018). The following excerpt is from a fieldnote in which the chair described the former power dynamics:
He says, “This was a person who had to be chair, and once they were chair, they did everything. Nobody else did anything.” He clarified by saying she made it so she was the one to make all the decisions. “So you’d have an interesting discussion at one meeting, and you’d come back to the next meeting, and the decision had been made. And you wonder…how did that happen?” He goes on for a while about her personal characteristics that were not conducive to a well-functioning board, such as her tendency to finish everyone’s sentences, and act like she had all the information. “I had one member, though they voted for this person every time they ran [for chair], came up this year and it was like PTSD. She was, like, afraid to talk in the meeting. [very quiet whispering] ‘Is it OK if I say this?’” I ask why this person voted for the chair every time, and he replies, “Well, if you look at the dynamics of domestic
one school committee member, someone who’s been here forever, and the other one has been here forever…knows her parents, knows her aunts and uncles, so it’s like using influence wherever possible…did a lot of stuff behind the scenes, was in the buildings all the time, talking to the teachers, ‘Oh, I can get you that, and I can get you this.’ It was just poison…poison, poison, poison. […] So, one year the thing came up about the [different process to decide the] budget, and it was not allowed on the agenda. The next year I was chair, and all I did was put it on the agenda. And it passed 8 to 1.” I ask why it wasn’t on the agenda before, and he says, “It wasn’t her idea.” He says that his intent was to get people to talk about it, not necessarily to get everyone to agree to it. He explains that the board hadn’t changed in composition, yet the votes were not split the way they were when the prior chair was in place. He says that her control stemmed from having enough people to vote the way she wanted every time in order to get her preferences passed. This is when things went to a vote at all, as she wouldn’t include anything on the agenda that she didn’t want to pass. (interview fieldnote, November 2016)
This illustrates power dynamics that had existed on the GMRSD school committee for many years prior to the superintendent’s arrival in 2013.
I assured my interview participants that I would not connect their names with any of these negative comments about a colleague, but some were not concerned, saying this was all public knowledge. When I investigated, it became apparent that social tension between school committee members had been on full display to the community in years past. For example, in July 2015, there was a comment in the meeting minutes that “some members felt coerced and/or intimidated by other members and felt they had to be quiet.” In September of that year, a visitor made a statement that was recorded in the minutes as “Let’s not be disagreeable. We can disagree, but not be disagreeable.” Later on, those same minutes state, “Spirited discussion ensued on a number of topics related to the negotiating committees/5 minute break/More spirited discussion.” No other details were included.
An online video of that meeting shows heated exchanges over procedural issues related to appointments to the teachers’ contract negotiation committee. At the next meeting, a community member who had been in attendance at the prior meeting was recorded in the minutes as having said that:
He was appalled at the infighting and disrespect he saw among members. He
reminded members that they should be role models for children in the district and as representatives for the community they need to conduct themselves with decorum and respect.
In March 2016, a school committee member shared at a meeting printed copies of emails from the chair that she felt were bullying and harassing, stating she wanted them on record. The current chair explained that he had also been part of this ongoing dynamic. He said,
There was real adversarial energy, and I wasn’t gonna do that again. I mean, I contributed. I wasn’t like, “It woulda been great if everyone else hadn’t been a jerk.” I made mistakes too, and needed to learn a lot about […] the structure. How do we use the structure well? (interview, November 2016)
He said he had learned that “the chair is not the CEO” (interview, March 2018), and described his efforts to help everyone figure out how to do what they all want to do, and to work collaboratively with the superintendent. These efforts represent organizational work to change the perceptions of the community about how leaders behave with each other. In 2016-17, they tended to present as respectful overall. The superintendent speculated to me that external pressures on the committee served to unite them (interview, March 2018). The GMRSD Superintendent
The superintendent was hired in mid-2013 after several years of rapid turnover in this position (he was the fifth superintendent in seven years). His arrival signified a
significant shift in organizational functioning due to his professional expertise and relational skills. He stated in his entry report, “Stakeholders frequently observe that the lack of
continuity of district leadership has contributed to shifting priorities, fluid expectations, inconsistent organizational procedures, and a lack of strong, trusting relationships”
(February 2014). The turnover had resulted in an organization that lacked vision, as well as consistent systems and structures. In an interview with him, I mentioned district efforts I had noticed to clean up accounts, codify practices, and create policies and procedures
manuals. He said to me that this was a significant portion of their work for the first few years of his tenure as inconsistent leadership had resulted in “a garden that [had] been unweeded for too long” (interview, March 2018). He also lamented that this work had nothing to do with teaching and learning.
As an administrator and manager, the superintendent was focused on organizational learning, and to using an evidence-based approach to decision-making as opposed to instinctive or emotional responses. In his entry report, he observed that the Accelerated Improvement Plan had pushed the district to collect data solely in order to meet compliance requirements, and not to advance organizational learning. As a result, he said, “the district ended up measuring things that were easy to measure like lesson plan submission rates and the number of pieces of evidence submitted for evaluations rather than in providing extended training, targeted feedback, and celebrations of meaningful successes” (February 2014). He saw data as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
One of the district’s strategic plan categories that grew out of this entry report was “Learning Organization,” which sought to “create a culture of adult learning driven by goal setting, feedback, collaboration, and accountability” (2014-17 GMRSD strategic plan). This described inquiry-based sequence perfectly expresses his approach as a manager and district leader. In another strategic plan category, “Performance-driven Curricula,” it states that one initiative was to “provide time for teachers to collaboratively develop and revise curriculum maps based upon actual experience, not just hopeful outcomes.”
One school committee member told me that the superintendent’s comfort with data was one of the appealing aspects of his candidacy, as well as his highly relational approach and calm demeanor. She said they liked that he was a “data guy” (interview, October 2016). He consistently referred to data as a means to check his own progress, as well as others. For
example, he provided measures for each of his 2016-17 goals (e.g., “classroom observations will show an increase in the degree to which students are engaged in tasks requiring analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and judgment of information and concepts”), trained teachers to revise their instruction based on measured student progress toward learning targets, and suggested