School board member explains no vote

With this forced change in governance, our school community now stretches across these three towns and I believe it is now more important than ever for school board members to be transparent with their votes. Over the last several weeks the school board has made important decisions regarding the Stowe High School principal and the superintendent. I felt I had to dissent from the majority on both decisions and want the public to know why.

At the end of last school year when the Stowe school board was still intact, we hired an interim principal for the 2019-2020 school year. Through my lens, the reason we posted the position as interim was because we were very late in the year to post a position for a principalship and wanted to signal to the school community that we would do another search early the next year.

The intent of the board was to hire someone and monitor feedback. When the time came to offer the current principal a contract there was much discussion about the feedback we had received and ultimately a majority of the board voted to extend a one-year contract to the current principal.

I abstained from the vote because I did not feel the feedback supported extending the contract without doing a full principal search.

A significant part of the job of the superintendent is to implement and oversee the curriculum across all the schools of the district. The shift to proficiency based learning and grading was no small undertaking.

It was an initiative that required a buy in from key stakeholder groups, especially teachers. Our superintendent did not take the proper steps to get buy-in and there was not enough of the groundwork laid before rolling out such a huge change.

The most fault lies in the fact that years after rolling out this initiative in the schools, very little has been done to address the issues we now face. Some of the most obvious examples are that not a single change has been made to the original mastery report and that Schoology is still the software used by teachers and students.

Personally, I have bought in to the idea of proficiency based learning. I believe shifting our children’s focus to an education is about learning and not about achieving grades is important. However, buying into a theory is easy; it is the work that is required to implement a theory that is hard.

There is very difficult work to be done in our schools surrounding this shift and the responsibility falls primarily onto the superintendent. I believe we need a fresh set of eyes on the issue. I believe we need new leadership. That is why I voted against renewing the superintendent’s contract.

Obviously, I am very disappointed with these decisions. However, I do believe in this board and have faith that we can work together to continue to improve the education that is being delivered to our children.

At the end of the day, our school’s greatest assets are our teachers and students. They deserve the best we can provide and I will work tirelessly to do my part in making sure they get it. 

Tiffany Donza

Stowe board member

Lamoille South School Board