This is a portion of a mural at Wright Middle School depicting the African Migration and the Harlem Renaissance.
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Governance

This section details the emergence and evolution of the current James C. Wright Middle School shared governance structure.

Beginnings. When Madison Middle School 2000 was conceptualized, stakeholders wanted the school to be governed by all participating parties: parents, staff, teachers, community members, and students. To implement that vision they set up a governance structure that consisted of a Core Group and four committees. The Core Group was also granted authority to establish ad hoc committees.

The Core Group and each of the four committees were to have the following members: a 6th, 7th, and 8th grade parent, student, and teacher representative. In a school of only 240 students, complete implementation would have required the active, willful, and benevolent participation of a high percentage of the school population. Combined, the group to be sharing governance exceeded seventy people.

There were two main problems with the original shared governance structure. First, the group was simply too big. The slots were never all filled on the committees; had they ever been, that would have required people---especially staff-to double and triple up on representation. Second, and more importantly, there were no clear channels of authority within the committees. This caused staff to lose interest because committees quickly became firing squads; it was the parents against the teachers. Many parents called those committees "parent groups" instead of the learning, climate and budget committees they were designed to be.

Today. A new Governance Board has been set up to implement shared governance. It is made up of:

  1. 3 teachers
  2. 3 parents
  3. 1 community member
  4. Principal
  5. Sergeant at Arms

This group meets once a month and coordinates the efforts of two committees:

  • Communication Committee (Parents, teachers and students kept informed about events)
  • Booster Committee (fund raising)

The design of the current Governance Board was informed by two lessons learned from earlier shared governance efforts. First, the new Board is small and centralized; the power is shared. Members have developed relationships and built a trust among themselves, instead of the suspicion and anonymity that the larger group fostered. Second, it is spelled out clearly in the structure that these committees are in service to the Governance Board.

The new Board took on the effort of renewing the charter, which was up for renewal in 2001. They sought ongoing input from a small working group of teachers, later seeking input from the entire staff. Soliciting input from the staff helped to allay any fears the staff had about charter renewal language that would have made promises the teachers would be asked to keep, most notably that they should be doing full-time integrated, multicultural and thematic curriculum.

What the new charter outlined was a loose umbrella concept of "learning from social action." This concept would offer a more realistic professional challenge to current staff. There would be no rigid specifications about what should be done, instead a loose umbrella of building connections of action between what goes on in the classroom and what issues the students value in the community. This was to relieve pressure the staff felt to keep up with a mantra they weren't doing--- the integrated, multicultural, and thematic curriculum.

The group also took on the challenge of further engaging parents in school events and initiatives. They developed a document called "Wright is a Charter School: So What Does This Mean To Me?" as well as a parental involvement contract to be signed when enrolling at Wright.

(This section based largely on a personal conversation with Keivan Stassun February 19, 2001. Keivan's daughter graduated from Wright in 1999, yet he has continued to be an active force in Wright's governance committees.)

Additional Governance Resources Online