Principal succession riles Galileo parents

Many want longtime assistant principal in the mix

06/23/2010 10:00 PM

By MICAH MAIDENBERG
Editor

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Galileo parent and local school council member Kali Plomin argued acting principal Blanca Miarka deserves a shot at leading the school at a press conference Tuesday morning.
Photos by MICAH MAIDENBERG/Staff



Parents at Galileo Elementary School are pushing for Chicago Public Schools to allow its longtime assistant principal to be included in the pool of candidates eligible to serve as the school’s leader.

Blanca Miarka didn’t pass one part of the assessment Chicago Public Schools requires prospective principals to take before they take the helm at a school. But parents say her decades of experience as an assistant principal at Galileo, where she worked beside former Principal Alfonso Valtierra for two decades, more than qualify her.

Valtierra died in December of last year, and Miarka completed the last school year as Galileo’s acting principal. To many, she represents continuity with an academic program and leadership style parents know well and one they say has demonstrated its value over the years.

“Why are we going to mess with a system that’s already working here?” said Anthony Sutor, who has enrolled six of his children at Galileo, three of whom currently attend the school.

“She has the disciplinarian part of it,” Maria Asuncion, another parent, said. “But I also feel her passion for student achievement.”

Those backing Miarka have petitioned CPS to include her among the candidates vying for the school’s principalship, gathering more than 500 signatures and claiming unanimous support from the school’s faculty. They planned a protest on her behalf at the June 23 board of education meeting.

A magnet school, Galileo, at 820 S. Carpenter, enrolled 614 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, according to a 2009 report card distributed by the state board of education.

The local school council began discussing who would lead Galileo in January, according to Kali Plomin, a parent member of the Galileo council who wants Miarka in the candidate’s pool.

At the May 27 LSC meeting, a manager from Chicago Public School’s Autonomously Managed Performance Schools office, which oversees Galileo, informed the council Miarka didn’t qualify.

“And that was that,” Plomin said.

Miarka’s score on a teacher evaluation section of the exam CPS asks potential principals to take wasn’t high enough to qualify her for the Galileo position, Miarka acknowledged.

Documents posted on the district’s Office of Principal Preparation and Development Web site describe that part of the exam as a way to assess a “candidate’s ability to observe and evaluate classroom instruction and provide appropriate development feedback to teachers.”

Candidates watch a video and role play their response, CPS’s description of the process says.

“I can’t understand it,” she said of her performance on the evaluation part of the exam. “I’m doing this on a daily basis.”

Miarka said she knows other longtime administrators who haven’t passed sections of the principal assessment even as younger candidates made it through.

As parents try to convince CPS to provide an exception for Miarka, administrators from downtown are showcasing alternatives. The local school council has made no decision about Galileo’s next principal.

On Monday night, two candidates seeking the job discussed their qualifications and skills before dozens of parents in the school’s auditorium.

The Galileo position would represent the first principalship for both Adam Parrott-Sheffer, who currently serves as a “principal resident” at Harte Elementary in Hyde Park, and Dalia Denise Cotasaenz, the director of English language instruction for the United Neighborhood Organization, which operates a network of charter schools.

Both emphasized their time as classroom teachers and up-and-coming administrators before taking questions about the length and breadth of their leadership experience.

“I know that experience is something that people are concerned about,” Parrott-Sheffer said. “But I also know that, at the same time, please consider expertise. There are things I come to with expertise in.”

“Even though I’m young and even though on paper it doesn’t seem like I have a lot of experience, I have a lot of knowledge,” Cotasaenz said.

That newness didn’t sit well with some in attendance Monday.

“I just feel they lack the experience our current acting principal has,” one woman said after Parrott-Sheffer and Cotasaenz had left the room.

There are parents, however, who are ready for a new principal at Galileo.

Toni Kasper, who has seen two of her kids graduate from the school and enrolls one child there now, said Miarka didn’t pass the eligibility test, and that was the bottom line.

She accused the local school council of dragging out the principal selection process, hoping they could find a way to hire Miarka.

“It’s time to move on. It’s time to get a leader, to get the school going and get going,” Kasper said. “September is right around the corner.”

Plomin, the parent LSC member, wants CPS to appoint Miarka as the interim principal at Galileo before a final decision is made.

Contact: mmaidenberg@chicagojournal.com


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