Parents Speak Out on School Superintendent Search

BY ALEXIS GUSTIN agustin@loudounnow.com

About two dozen parents showed up March 16 at Heritage High School for a sometimes-contentious meeting to provide input on the selection of the next Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent. Top characteristics for a new superintendent emerging from the session included honesty, transparency, accountability and leadership.

GR Recruiting Associate Robert Alfaro got through three of 10 questions prepared to get an idea of what parents were looking for when he struck a nerve with attendees by asking “what are the most important challenges the division is facing?”

That question alone led the discussion for the next 90 minutes.

Kathy Mitchell brought up several challenges she said she has experienced personally, including dishonesty, retaliation from teachers, a lack of accountability from teachers and administrators, and biased investigations to name a few.

“There is a culture of gross dishonesty. I have been lied to by the superintendent, a director, a supervisor and a teacher about my son’s academic performance,” she said. “This is a school. LCPS is run like a corrupt for-profit organization.”

Mitchell spoke of the division not doing impartial assessments of teachers and of administrators as being “arrogant and non-progressive” and said if they evaluate themselves, they will always find themselves doing fine.

“Our teachers and parents are not heard, and certain parents are never heard and with continued inequity and bias in LCPS, issues will continue, and I’m talking as a black woman and a mother,” she said.

“The work model at LCPS, to me, is staff and administration first. That is the problem right there. Other districts in the country that have parents and students first as a working model are happier as a community and more progressive academically,” she added.

Alfaro interrupted her at one point to allow for other parents to speak to which several in the crowd said Mitchell was covering their concerns.

Another parent, Lori Levine, said she felt the biggest challenge facing the division was that the core mission had been lost.

“We need a superintendent who will focus on academics and get rid of all the ideology,” she said. “There are all kinds of cancer in this school system, and it needs to be eradicated. We need a superintendent to come in and go back to the basics—no politics, no political agenda, and look at the test scores and say ‘learning loss happened’ and all of these kids who were harmed by that need to be brought