Mired in the Blair bureaucracy

When social studies resource teacher Cherie McGinn returned from her father-in-law's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery on Oct. 5, she felt less sadness than apprehension. "Any time a teacher misses school, work gets backed up," she says.

She needed to turn in a report that same day on a teacher training session she had missed, a report that took her four hours to complete. She had to set up interviews for a prospective social studies teacher. She did not write one test, grade one paper or observe one class that day. Only two weeks later did she begin to feel caught up.

McGinn is only following the administration's orders, but this year, she finds herself rushing around in a flurry of papers, swamped by an upsurge in bureaucracy. "There's days when everything I planned gets dropped," she says. She attributes the change in part to the Baldridge plan, a business management model being applied to education across the country and now at Blair.

Under a county directive, the Baldridge model will guide Blair through school improvement starting this year, says Principal Phillip Gainous. Blair is in the third and last group of MCPS schools to implement the Baldridge model, along with 108 other schools. Michael Perich, coordinator of system-wide improvement in MCPS, calls Baldridge "the best criteria for organizational development anywhere in the world."

But teachers are buckling under the additional stress. Also burdened with a new grading policy, an increase in meetings and a stricter enforcement of professional standards, they clock more hours in the office and share more complaints. As the administration pushes forward with initiatives, the growing Blair bureaucracy is taking its toll.

"Meetings for meetings' sake"

Because of English teacher Sandra Ivey's workload, room 142 has become her temporary home. From 2:10 p.m. on, after a day of straight teaching, she enters assignments on BEN, contacts parents, grades and holds academic support. She often stays at Blair until 8 or 9 p.m. and sometimes works weekends.

Still, Ivey's commitment is not enough. She recently discovered that she needs to sign up for a committee, a requirement of all faculty members that supplements the three focuses of Blair's current school improvement plan: boosting achievement through the academies, building student-teacher relationships and promoting literacy, according to Gainous.

The plan of attack at Blair is mainly to hold meetings - existing faculty and department meetings, new committee meetings, new training on strengthening relationships with students and, for 10th grade teachers, new academy meetings.

Social studies teacher Brian Hinkle objects to the many meetings and the meager results they produce. "I'm a big believer that we don't have meetings for meetings' sake. You talk about stuff, and you know it's not going to get done," he says. He practices a policy of avoidance: As of Nov. 2, he had escaped all but three of the meetings. He cannot avoid, however, the foot-high stack of letters for the Residency Committee sitting on his desk.

In the social studies department, protest abounds. "Two years ago, this was a rockin' office," says social studies teacher Kevin Shindel. He and McGinn reminisce about a time when teachers crowded around the lunch table, chatting about current events, their kids and the latest concert. Now, Shindel tends to eat lunch at his desk, if at all, while he catches up on work.

With the deluge of responsibilities, teachers may stop giving extra effort to help students, social studies teacher George Vlasits grimly predicts. Vlasits complains that the enormous time commitment he puts into writing college recommendations - at least two hours for each - does not win any relief from the administration. "They say that's on our own time," adds Hinkle. "Well, what if we don't do it?"

A literate staff

Another new item on teachers' plates this year is the literacy initiative, a push to attend training sessions, integrate reading comprehension strategies into their classes and cover the word of the day in student planbooks. According to Gainous, examining student performance on state and county assessments made him realize the necessity of literacy development. "Everything you do requires reading and writing, even math," says Gainous. "A significant portion of our population, even our honors students, needs to have some strengthening in literacy."

Not only did students need help with reading comprehension, but teachers needed it too, Gainous believes. "Most of the staff was not skilled in knowing the strategies, in addition to teaching them," he explains.

In the effort to devise a solution, Baldridge rolled into gear. The model aims to improve an organization through a continuous process of evaluation and re-evaluation, according to staff development teacher Pam Leith. Baldridge principles have steered the literacy initiative: It "involves all stakeholders," from the Literacy Committee to administrators, teachers and parents, and it stresses data collection from sources like teacher feedback and reading log checks in Connections classes.

Every month, staff development teachers present one new literacy strategy to the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT), which consists of resource teachers and administrators. During the department meeting the following Monday, resource teachers train their departments in the strategy. Gainous hopes that, by giving teachers "one snippet at a time," the training will help literacy become embedded in all subject areas.

Because of the literacy training, BCRs and articles about sportsmanship and nutrition have found their way into teacher Emmanuel Charles's physical education classes. All physical education teachers now quiz their students on the words of the day, Charles says.

As the afternoon sun spills through the windows of an otherwise dark room 266, clusters of English teachers complete a reading activity for October's strategy: making text accessible to students. Lucas Henry marks his passage with a purple pen, pausing to clarify something for Phyllis Fleischaker.

"Sorry, I'm too tired to read this," replies Fleischaker, whose workday often runs from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. this year.

Resource teacher Vickie Adamson announces that literacy will become part of teacher evaluations. The intention is not to pressure or punish teachers, she says, but to meet students' needs.

The administration's push for literacy has a supporter in English teacher Larry Fogel-Bublick, who leads the session. "I'm glad that we're making steps in the right direction," he says, though he wishes that more time could be allotted to training so he could discuss the strategies in depth.

Ivey, however, feels that she has learned nothing new. The training effectively reminds teachers of the strategies they should practice, but that reminder could have come in an e-mail or handouts rather than a time commitment, Ivey says. She also objects to the training because of the implied disrespect toward her teaching skills. "I resent the meetings because it appears that we are not deemed as being professionals and knowledgeable of content and pedagogy," she says.

"Courageous conversation"

On one side of this trust issue lie teachers; on the other side lie administrators. From his side, Gainous sees that many teachers have not followed the six professional standards and expectations set by MCPS, which include a commitment to student learning and to professional development. "It's frustrating to hear that your staff is not doing what it's supposed to be doing," asserts Gainous.

Parents complained to him that teachers do not use BEN. Assistant Principal Linda Wanner reported to him that 70 percent of teachers failed to comply with the attendance policy. On top of it all, he heard that teachers did not attend special-education meetings.

Gainous decided that the staff needed "courageous conversation" to address these problems. He passed his frustration down the chain of command, directing the ILT to enforce the professional standards and expecting resource teachers to follow up with their departments. "I'm saying enough is enough," he says. "If we don't hold [teachers] accountable, then our students are suffering. It goes beyond their professional and legal responsibilities. We need everybody pulling on the wagon."

But in Vlasits's eyes, the "wagon" puts extra strain on an already overworked staff. This year, he works at least 20 hours a week in addition to the 36 hours and 15 minutes for which he is paid - overtime comes at his own expense.

Vlasits e-mailed an informal complaint to the Montgomery County Education Association, the local teachers' union, about the "tremendous increase" in teacher duties this year. He noted the administration's violations of the job contract: requiring teachers with eighth periods to work beyond the duty day and holding a mandatory lunch meeting on PSAT proctoring when teachers' lunches should be duty-free. In the e-mail, he writes, "I believe that teacher morale here is at an all-time low."

Down the chain of command

Teachers may sense a heavier workload this year, Gainous admits, but they will always feel burdened as long as passing requirements for standardized tests remain. The only way for pressure to abate, then, is through school improvement plans that raise test scores - using the same literacy training that has drawn criticism, he says.

As Blair moves through this transition state, Vlasits's assessment holds true. Upon arriving home from work, Fleischaker feels "simply too wasted" to do work for the next day. She spends her weekends grading papers and waiting for a vacation. "I want a life. I like myself and my life a lot better in the summer, and that's from a teacher who loves being in the classroom," she says. Now, if she could start over, she is not sure she would still decide to teach in MCPS.

The downpour of duties, Vlasits says, may explain the "horrendous retention rate" among teachers: About half of people who enter teaching leave within the first five years, according to a 2003 report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. In MCPS, the retention problem is compounded by the many teachers approaching retirement. In its effort to create a system of teacher accountability, the administration fails to consider the consequences, Vlasits fears.

McGinn still feels optimistic about the promise of school improvement, but right now, she sees no end to the tunnel of meetings, paperwork and protest. "I'm supposed to be the cheerleader for everyone else, but it's kind of hard to do that when I'm not convinced myself," she says.

Note: The printed version of this story contained an error: It stated that Gainous had heard that special-education teachers did not attend meetings. The error has been corrected in this online version.