Warning: Principal Burnout Danger From the Los Angeles Unified School District Teacher’s Strike.

One story not being widely reported is the heroic and champion actions performed by Principals, AP’s and other school administrators during the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teacher’s strike. Imagine performing two very difficult jobs at the same time, teaching and managing a school! And although their efforts are ‘superhuman’, they are in fact very human and thus in danger of coming out of this conflict (that will eventually end) emotionally and physically exhausted. This could spell possible ‘burnout’ danger as the school year progresses. It is extremely hard to serve in a school administrators role in ‘normal’ school times; particularly in those (Title 1) schools where the majority of the children are poor and in need of every ounce of your psychic and physical energy. Principals can regularly feel overwhelmed, exhausted and unsupported even in non-strike times, and so in the present strike conditions in LAUSD…

But I can appreciate that these ethical school leaders understand why they must ‘stand in the gap’ and keep schools open. Putting some kids ‘in the streets’ unsupervised could create a series of serious life-long problematic situations (e.g. an arrest, pregnancy, house fire, etc.), or could even mean a death sentence. When parents are ‘living in and/or on the edge of poverty’, taking off from work to do childcare is not an option. Also, many of these children desperately need the daily meals and the orderly and stable environments their schools provide. Parents with the financial resources can provide safe out of school ‘substitute learning experiences’ for their children during the strike; and so, we see another harmful (for some students) emergence of the ‘opportunity gap’ in public education. We know that most poor parents won’t have this option, which is why student-attendance is so high in the poorest strike afflicted LAUSD schools.

Too many school districts in this nation cynically take advantage of the good will and professional commitment of school-based administrators; and I don’t think that will end this year. But I would hope that the California Governor, State Legislators, City of Los Angeles, and the LAUSD school board could come up with a one-time financial grant-award to all LAUSD school administrators that would hopefully be substantial enough to allow them to take a nice rest and recuperation travel-vacation break when schools go into their calendar closings. That financial-gift plus ‘over-time’ pay could at least help to keep these wonderful educators from burning out before the end of the school year. It would also be a really wonderful gift-that-kept-on-giving if some of the things the striking teachers are asking for (e.g. adequate social-guidance-counseling services and expanded health care resources) could also be awarded to these brave administrator’s schools!

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He writes a bi-weekly column: “On Education” for Brooklyn’s: Our Time Press. He recently completed a book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership… http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/

I love to read, but sometimes reading can be painful…



“A Historic Black Golf Course Faces Uncertainty as a Bidding War Over Its Future Begins…”
Washington City Paper

I never told students that sometimes reading can be painful; in part out of fear that such a comment would be discouraging. Get them hooked on reading I thought, and eventually they will discover all of the attributes of reading’s power to make us smile, laugh, learn and yes sometimes even bring forth feelings of sadness. Reading: “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo in high school, was an extremely gut-wrenching experience for me, especially since all of us boys in that 1968 English class were a year away from the Viet-Nam war draft. But I am forever thankful to my English teacher for introducing me to that book; for it has taught me some life-long lessons that I still call on to this day. And as we have learned from our last presidential election, the price we pay for ignorance is far worse than any discomfort that knowledge and information brings to our ‘emotional senses’. Besides, in this nation teaching a politically disenfranchised child to read effectively is a subversive act, giving them access to books is an act of intellectual insurrection. Being able to read, in joy or sorrow, is far superior to the sorrow and suffering of not being able to read, and not reading!

But by all accounts, this article was a painful read. (One day I will learn to stop reading DC news if it conjures up such hurtful memories, but for now…) The Langston Gulf Course should be a Crown Gem of the DC-MD-VA region. It could also as I utilized it, serve as an important gateway resource for introducing Young Black and Latino Washingtonians to the sport of gulf. I tried very hard to engage the former Ward 5 Black councilman (and others) in a conversation about the great potential of this wonderful institution; in the same way I tried to get him to ‘wrap his brain around’ the great potential greatness of Phelps ACE high school for the citizens of Washington DC.; I failed on both accounts because his mind and interest were always elsewhere. We can’t blame the loss of every community institutional resource on ‘gentrification’; even if gentrifiers come along later and see pearls where we see mud.

I also think that we need to clearly define “Black Power” in the context of our current political condition. We can’t just elect a Black person to office (as wonderful as that is) and then assume that we have arrived, and our work is over. The price we pay for having unaccountable Black leaders is simply too painfully harmful and deadly.

A Historic Black Golf Course Faces Uncertainty as a Bidding War Over Its Future Begins: “This was the mecca of black golf on the east coast… Langston brought everybody together. Now, the fear is change.”

Washington City Paper: https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/sports/article/21043261/beloved-historic-black-golf-course-langston-faces-uncertainty-as-a-national-bidding-war-over-its-future-begins

Why Not Have a Real NYC Specialized High School Integration Plan?

“…Some NYC politicians, civic leaders and professional educators (who should know and act better), are floating, unknowingly or cynically, a dangerous narrative: That poor performance on a high school standardized admissions exam proves that there is something ‘inherently’ wrong with the brains of Black and Latino children; thus the ‘problem’ requires an ‘admissions process’ fix, rather than an expanded educational opportunity and an improvement of learning quality fix. They either ignore or don’t know that these students not having full ‘front-end’ access to a better quality of learning and test-preparedness, are predictably doomed to suffer from academic under-achievement and test underperformance. In our present national political climate, it is probably not a wise or helpful decision to imply, even by accident, that Black and Latino children are ‘by nature’ intellectually inferior. What is inferior is the quality of the K-8 education and test-preparation too many of these Black and Latino students are receiving…”

Why Not Have a Real NYC Specialized High School Integration Plan?
Michael A. Johnson; Our Time Press

Part 1:
http://www.ourtimepress.com/why-not-have-a-real-nyc-specialized-high-school-integration-plan/

Part 2:
http://www.ourtimepress.com/why-not-have-a-real-nyc-specialized-high-school-integration-plan-2/

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed a book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership… http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/