90s19 First Impressions

School districts are complicated and Iowa City is no different. Actually, I found it far more complex than I expected. It was five times the size of the Mt. Pleasant district and structured differently. Unfortunately, in those days there was no real orientation for “new to the district” administrators so you had to figure it all out for yourself.

I spent a lot of time reading documents in my new office and listening and talking with veteran staff members. They warned me that gossip traveled at lightning speed across the district. Without exception, they warned me that the parent population was a tough to please crowd. One even described them as anarchists and warned me to be careful.

My predecessor had a lot of difficulty with the parent group and I remembered the scrutiny they had given me through the interview process. I could see that there would be some challenging times.

I did not have much experience with active parent groups. At Mediapolis the only people who showed up for PTA meetings was the president and I. Mt. Pleasant was the same. People were too busy to get involved or just not interested. It wasn’t going to be the same in Iowa City.

One of the first few days at work a parent called to welcome me to the district. It was a very cordial conversation. She told me now familiar stories about how difficult the parent group could be and how I needed to “watch my back.” She ended the conversation with “Don’t let the sharks get ya, guy!” Little did I know then that she was one of them.

I learned there was some disagreements among staff and a few that had been involved in controversy. I was getting conflicting stories from different people and it was all difficult to sort out.

The staff had a barbeque for us at one of their homes. It was well attended with most wanting to check out the new principal and his wife. It went well and everyone was very welcoming.

My journal is full of comments about how supportive and welcoming everyone seemed to be and aside from the warnings about how difficult it could be I was very excited about being there. I felt I could navigate through the maze of issues and, in time, figure out how the district operated.

The dynamics of a highly educated community actively involved in their schools and serving a diverse population of students made the job challenging. There was an English as a second language program in the building with over twenty students from all over the world. A significant part of our population lived in poverty and had many needs. Another part of the population was from very affluent families. We had students from the domestic abuse shelter and two SCI classrooms.

That first year Longfellow had about 350 students and was multi-aged grouped for instruction. That was new to me and it took some time to figure out how it worked. Basically, we had a kindergarten, four first/second grade classroom, four third/fourth grades, and four fifth/sixth grades.