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Lessons Learned From Principal’s Resignation

The resignation of Dr. Rosemary Bradley closes a short, tumultuous chapter in Jamestown High School’s history.

The no confidence vote by Jamestown High School teachers and staff put both Bradley, Superintendent Bret Apthorpe and the Board of Education in a tough position. Resignation was the best choice for all involved.

Teachers at JHS had a laundry list of issues regarding Bradley, but perhaps the most troubling were a seeming inability to set consistent policy for student misbehavior, a feeling among staff members that their principal was unavailable to discuss issues and the staff’s feelings about Bradley’s leadership during and after a fight on Nov. 6 that resulted in police being called to JHS.

Both Apthorpe and Bradley said, in their own ways, that Bradley and Jamestown were a bad match. But the way Bradley said the match was poor is instructive as the district moves forward. In a Twitter post on her account, Bradley said, “It is with great sadness that I step aside so that teachers can focus on students and not on me. I leave knowing I can hold my head high; that this was a school unable to embrace my vision for the future. I’ll look for a place where I can join with the staff to move forward.”

The school was unable to embrace Bradley’s vision for the future? No wonder the relationship between Bradley and Jamestown was bad. The vision for Jamestown High School’s future was never Bradley’s, it was the community’s, passed from the community to Apthorpe and the school board over the last two years. Bradley might have had thoughts about how to implement the community’s vision, but her use of the term “my vision” indicates the vision of the community and staff took a back seat to Bradley’s thoughts.

As the Jamestown Public Schools Board of Education and Apthorpe begin their search for a new high school principal, how the new principal fits into the community and the school will be just as important as the resume the candidate is able to present. Bradley came with a wonderful resume from the Rochester City School District and Sullivan BOCES. That resume didn’t translate to success in Jamestown.

One message the school board, Apthorpe and any candidate for the high school principal should have heard loud and clear over the past month is that student discipline needs to be restored throughout the district, that discipline must be consistent and that teachers shouldn’t be second-guessed on every decision they make in the classroom. Teachers, meanwhile, want to see policies and procedures followed when emergencies arise and to have a principal who leads collaboratively rather than expecting the community to adapt to “my vision.”

Jamestown has had tough luck with two Rochester-area hires – Bradley and former Superintendent Tim Mains. Both had sterling resumes that should have led to lengthy tenures in Jamestown. While Rochester and Jamestown may share many demographic traits, the communities are completely different. The hiring of Apthorpe, meanwhile, has been a better fit, possibly because Apthorpe has local ties in the Mayville area. Hiring locally — either from within the Jamestown Public Schools District or picking a candidate from the immediate surrounding area — may result in a better fit for the community than hiring people who need to use the GPS in their car to find Jamestown.

A final thought on Bradley and her vision. It is striking that the resignation came after two public meetings in which more than 100 parents and teachers expressed their frustration with discipline in the district and with Bradley specifically in the aftermath of the Nov. 6 fight at Jamestown High School. If issues between Bradley and teachers were evident before the incident, we wonder if they were being addressed behind the scenes. After all, Bradley was hired by Apthorpe and the school board. It was their choice to bring Bradley and her vision of high school leadership to Jamestown. Would this resignation have happened without the outrage expressed by parents and teachers? It’s an interesting question. Moving forward, however, it becomes apparent that Apthorpe and the school board need to take concerns from teachers and the public to heart before the situation escalates as it did this time.

Dr. Rosemary Bradley came to Jamestown with her vision of how Jamestown High School should be. The next Jamestown High School principal should take the job to implement the community’s vision for the school. That is the biggest lesson to learn from this debacle.

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