APS leadership restructure

The Journal reports this morning, link, that APS Supt Winston Brooks has restructured his “leadership team”.  The restructuring addresses Brooks feeling burdened by operational issues instead of being able to focus instead on "improving instruction".

As to the likelihood that Brooks renewed focus will actually improve instruction, the Journal chose to leave the issue unexamined both in this report and in general.

The idea that Winston Brooks knows more about "improving instruction" than the thousands of teachers who work in APS classrooms every day, is nonsense on its face.

Had they dug even a little, they would have found no empirical evidence that Brooks has any particular expertise in "improving instruction" to bring to the table.  It will be the blind trying to lead the sighted.

Worth wondering;

shouldn't a public school superintendent worth more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, know pretty much everything there is to know about improving instruction already?

Brooks does have the wherewithal to improve instruction in the APS, but not through his supposed acumen.  He has the power and authority, but not the inclination, to ask teachers what they think and then act on their best advice.

There are nearly 100,000 years of teaching experience in the APS, and the teachers who have earned that experience have yet to be asked;

What can the administration do to help you improve instruction?

Brooks won't ask because one of the top responses will be;

Do something about the out of control students whose behavior makes instruction of other students impossible.

Enforcing discipline policies is first and foremost, an administrative responsibility.  Failure to enforce discipline, failure to establish and maintain discipline and order in schools is first and foremost an administrative (and executive) failure.  Improving student discipline will have a far greater effect on improving instruction than "improving" teachers will have.

The leadership of the APS and Supt Winston Brooks in particular, don't want the truth to be known about student discipline and chronically disruptive students, link.  They don't want the truth to be known about a lot of things.  That's why teachers are never surveyed; that's why we struggle along without the benefit of their experience and education and expertise; simple fear of confronting the truth.  It is the administration and school board dodging honest accountability.

Nor for that matter, is there any empirical evidence that the people who work for and under Brooks regard him as an instruction "leader" in the first place.  If solicited, the consensus would be; Brooks has far more to learn on the subject of improving instruction, than he has to share. If he gave a talk on improving instruction in APS classrooms, he would present to a largely  empty room, save the usual handful of sycophants.

Trimming his team included
severing direct ties with APS'
million dollar a year public
relations effort and APS' Exec
Director of Communications
Monica Armenta.

She will now report to the new
chief operations officer.

The Journal does not report
whether Armenta will remain
in charge as an APS crisis manager.





In a move that will further insulate
Brooks from the breaking scandal
in the leadership of APS' publicly
funded private Police force,  Brooks
has distanced himself as well, from
his new Chief of Police Steve Gallegos.

Gallegos will report to the new COO Ruben Hendrickson, and not will not participate in meetings of the inner circle.

The reorganization of APS inner leadership circle trims membership from 19 to 12.  Dealing with fewer people, Brooks argues, will give him more time to pay attention to improving instruction;

“ I want to know how we’re going to improve math instruction, for example."

Brooks said he trimmed the number of administrators on the team to help him give more attention to ways the district can improve instruction at its schools and less on operational issues.

According to Brooks;

it’s easy for operations issues to take over a superintendent’s day because that’s where the little daily emergencies usually pop up. But he said if a superintendent pays too much attention to operations, he loses focus on instructional matters.

Apparently, Brad Winter was not such a hot COO after all, allowing Brooks to be burdened as he was by the "little daily emergencies" that Winter should have addressed but apparently did not.

Winter's failure appears to have thwarted Brooks' desire to become an instructional leader.

That, and Brooks' own lack of any meaningful experience and expertise in leading instruction. 




photos Mark Bralley
Gallegos' photo ched macquigg