I apologize that this is going to have to be more blunt than I would like. But when you are forced to consolidate 3 years of frustration, abysmal customer service and unfulfilled promises into 3 minutes, all you can do is be blunt.
As a parent of a JCPS student and a tax payer, I am here to express my growing lack of confidence in our current superintendent’s leadership.
You spoke at the State PTA conference about the importance of parents being involved, your actions around creating a Community advisory Team made up of half JCPS Administrators and the other half business leaders excluding the parent voice show us that you did not mean what you said.
You’ve claimed that JCPS values every employee, but the way that negotiations have been handled with teachers and staff tells another story.
You said that teacher voice was valued, but the teacher and bus driver voices were initially excluded from the code of conduct meetings.
You claim our district is transparent, yet there were gross misrepresentations in reporting bus incidents and the use of restraint with students.
Your words mean nothing when your actions are the opposite.
These actions do not earn our trust as parents. And many of us have no choice but to entrust our children to you. Because unless you can afford private school or to home school, participation in JCPS is state mandated. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be required to send your child to a place every day in which you do not have complete confidence? I do and I wish that on no one.
We have lost multiple cabinet and upper administration positions. We have lost half of our area superintendents in just the last 15 months. We have a bus driver shortage. We cannot find enough teachers to come to work and stay in our district.
At the end of last school year my son’s school lost half their English department and the entire math department. So even though you are paying them on average $8,000 more than comparable districts, this track record shows that qualified educators and staff still don’t want to work for this district. Our district is hemorrhaging talent from the bottom to the top and our children are the ones paying the ultimate price. This cannot continue.
We need a superintendent that people flock to instead of flee from. We need someone who listens to parents and teachers, not just business owners and internal administrators. We need someone who can lead with honesty and authenticity; transparency but still be humble enough to admit and take ownership of mistakes that are made and ensure those mistakes don’t happen again. I and many other parents have not gotten that from our current superintendent over the last 3 years.
I have to ask you “How long must we continue to make a mistake just because we’ve spent a lot of time and money making it?”
Erin Korbylo
Co-Founder, Dear JCPS
JCPS Parent, Taxpayer, Community Member
