In the last few years, the Vanguard Parents Organization raised almost all the complaints about Jones. Some from the local community found this divisive, but after reading the report, any reasonable person has to conclude that the Vanguard PTO did the right thing, however uncomfortable it was.
Task force investigators found the school has no working communications system. Thirty teachers out of 90 attended the monthly faculty meeting in February (and this was while they knew they were under increased HISD scrutiny). E-mail is not used. There are no staff bulletins. The school needs to start sending information home in Spanish as well as English because the student body is 37 percent Hispanic.
Deron Neblett
Allen is going to have to make a lot of changes to bring his school up to standard.
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Equipment is broken, outdated or missing parts. Students are in the wrong classes. Five teachers are floating without classrooms of their own, although some classrooms have been converted to offices.
Even when teachers go through a special training course, there's no follow-up to see if more training is needed or whether the program is being implemented as designed.
"There is no effective student record management system," the report stated. An explanation for this may lie in this determination: "Acceptance of responsibility for quality data management is non-existent." The people in charge of student data entry don't have the training or skills to do their jobs correctly.
Teachers are increasingly unwilling to serve as faculty sponsors of clubs. There is no student council. "Students appear to lack a sense of ownership in the school; and, the faculty and staff do not appear to have a shared vision of success for all students."
So the question is, what's going to happen after all or most of those troublesome Vanguard parents are gone, after HISD's attention turns elsewhere? Stripling has pledged to give Allen whatever help he needs to become a better administrator and manager. And maybe the parents of the regular students will become more involved and demand changes that should have been made long ago.
The report is direct, detailed and damning. The members of the task force did not flinch from some hard truths, saying in summary:
"A major transformation must occur at Jones High School. The children and their needs do not appear to be at the heart of the school's culture."
It's hard to read this report and believe that the district would still allow Allen to continue in his position. There are just so many breakdowns, so many areas that have fallen behind or raced out of control.
The hope, which is addressed in the report, lies in the children. "Resilience is an organizational strength at Jones High School. Although improvement is needed… students in particular, exhibited resiliency during the transitional period subsequent to the removal of the principal."
Everyone needs to keep watching Jones High. Watching the principal and the children left in his charge. Hope for the best, but be vigilant. And count on those children, and their resilience to make something more out of this than we have any right to hope for.
