Kennedy principal under fire

by Joshua Myerov
Staff Writer

Sitting in the front row and facing forward almost the entire PTSA meeting, John F. Kennedy High School Principal Sheila Dobbins listened intently for almost five hours. Behind her in the packed cafeteria one speaker after another took the microphone to question Dobbins' leadership and management practices or defend her performance as head of one of the worst academic schools in Montgomery County, according to public school data.

Moderating last Wednesday's meeting was county Deputy Superintendent of Education Steven Seleznow, who in his opening remarks before a standing-room-only crowd of parents, students, teachers and administrators said he wanted to lay everything on the table.

"There are some people here who would like to see Dr. Dobbins removed as principal of this school and there are some people here who want to make sure Dr. Dobbins remains as principal," Seleznow said.

The marathon meeting ended with Seleznow restating Montgomery County Public Schools' support of Dobbins and announcing his intention to call in mediators -- one black, one white -- to ease tensions and begin taking steps toward solving Kennedy's issues.

Victoria Mayo, vice president of the PTSA, said the most assuring outcome was that Seleznow "let parents know that Dr. Dobbins is going to be there." But Seleznow tried to impress upon everyone that the public meeting was not about Dobbins, Kennedy's leader since 1996, but about flushing out the myriad problems at the racially and economically diverse school and beginning to look for solutions.

"I am not here tonight to hold a trial for Dr. Dobbins," Seleznow said.

Of Montgomery County's 22 high schools, Kennedy has the highest percentage of failing students, the third poorest percentage of students taking honors courses and the third worst Scholastic Achievement Test scores, according to recent MCPS data.

But Dobbins' critics point to one of the most troubling statistics -- SAT scores have dropped an average of 15 points during the past three years since Dobbins has taken charge.

Many parents, however, credit Dobbins with pushing through the county process an improvement project that brought to Kennedy a $28 million state-of-the-art building.

For last week's meeting, the crowd of about 400 came prepared to discuss and debate everything, including the future of Kennedy High School, its Leadership Training Institute signature program, and its principal.

While Dobbins and the Leadership Training Institute have been rallying points for proponents on all sides of the issue, many parents said their criticism goes beyond Dobbins and beyond LTI.

The conspicuous absence of school crossing signs and traffic signals on Randolph Road have made it not just a traffic nightmare, but a hazard to the approximately 1,400 school children at Kennedy, some parents said.

Parents also are divided over the fact that the capacity of the modernized building's cafeteria is 200 people short for each of two lunch periods, leaving students sitting on the cafeteria steps and often not eating lunch.

No matter what the issue, the dispute among parents seems to arise from the same disagreement.

Some parents feel Dobbins is both qualified and capable of running Kennedy and should be allowed to do so independently; others feel the school administration needs to be more responsive to parents' requests and ideas.

Mike Morella, a Kennedy parent, at last Wednesday's meeting, summarized many people's frustration with Dobbins.

"Parents often feel like they're being blown off by [Dobbins] or they are being cavalierly handed over to someone else," said Morella, one of many who told stories of unreturned telephone calls and closed ears on the part of administration.

LTI, the signature program begun in 1993 as a way to infuse leadership theory into high school classes, has been the source of much of the controversy. LTI was introduced at Kennedy for 50 students two periods a day in each high school grade. LTI was conceived as a way to stem "bright flight," the phenomenon of the area's best students transferring out of Kennedy to more academically challenging schools.

The mostly white PTSA parents have said from its inception they planned to expand LTI throughout the school, arguing that the leadership-training concept would benefit all students. Gradually LTI was to infuse classes not just at Kennedy but within the feeder schools as well, creating signature schools throughout the Kennedy Cluster.

LTI proponents however claimed they faced resistance from Dobbins, who they said, was unresponsive and uninterested in expanding LTI.

A March 5 letter from Kennedy Cluster Coordinator William Waller to Seleznow claimed to speak for many PTSA members. Waller said PTSA parents were troubled by Dobbins' "unwillingness to engage us seriously, continual refusal to embrace the LTI vision, and a tendency to micro-manage every detail in the school without empowering the staff.

"I also believe that this mess has an unfortunate undercurrent of race," wrote Waller, saying that the PTSA criticism of Dobbins, a black principal, was unfairly being portrayed by African-American parents as racially motivated.

Then, on Sept. 13, an essay in the New Republic magazine by Kennedy High parent John Judis rekindled the LTI controversy. In it, Judis accused Dobbins of undermining LTI and diverting funds directed at LTI to other schoolwide programs.

"Dobbins capped LTI's enrollment at 200," Judis wrote, "and then, having undermined its egalitarian purpose, complained that it was elitist and didn't include enough minorities."

It remains unclear who was responsible for the stalling of LTI and why. At Wednesday's meeting, Seleznow maintained "MCPS supports LTI, Dr. Dobbins supports LTI and the superintendent supports LTI. It's not going anywhere."

As for the diverted funds, Dobbins maintained her right as principal to shift the funding within Kennedy's $15 million budget to accommodate the school's needs. Dobbins used $6,000 of LTI money for general chemistry textbooks, one of several incidences that led LTI founder Jeff Shultz to resign as LTI director at Kennedy.

Seleznow, however, firmly supported Dobbins' authority to make such decisions.

"Any good principal in this county is going to shift their money where their needs are," Seleznow said.