New Lincoln Principal and Bad Journalism
The criticism of her is supported by absolutely zero evidence
Lincoln Elementary, in my neighborhood, the Third Ward, just hired a new Principal: Amber Samuels.
Within hours, I started receiving emails relating to a story from Tacoma, Washington regarding Ms. Samuels and a “no confidence” vote at a middle school. The Evanston Roundtable wrote about it this morning. Dr. Turner put out a statement to the community regarding this, which is how most people found out about the issue. You can read the story at local TV station KOMO: Tacoma teachers vote no confidence in middle school's admin over academic, safety concerns
I Would Not Publish this Story
The KOMO story is very light on details. There is no evidence presented other than the testimony of a single teacher, a Mrs. Spencer-Grant. Looking at her class website, she is a colorful figure. The KOMO story details a 3-page document provided by Mrs. Spencer-Grant, but doesn’t provide any details or links other than the note below;
The 3-page document also accuses its leaders of not providing professional development and not following through on various policies and RCWs, like not disciplining students for using vape, marijuana, and tobacco products.
The story lists that there was some vote held;
Spencer-Grant, who's been teaching in this district for more than two decades, told KOMO 93% of the staff at Gray voted no confidence in the principal.1
The KOMO story provides no evidence of how the vote was held, whether it was fair, who was included or excluded. They specifically say that the Union was not involved and the Union gave the reporter a pretty milquetoast statement on supporting change;
While the no-confidence statement did not come from the union, the Tacoma Education Association told KOMO News that it does support the need for change at Gray Middle School.
The Comment Section
The comments on the KOMO article tell a different story. Consider this one:
Or this one:
So I have no idea how to validate which story is true and neither does anyone else. I reached out the KOMO Journalist, Mrs. Spencer-Grant, and Ms. Samuels for comment and received no replies.2 At this point, I feel bad for Ms. Samuels because this one story (not covered in any other Tacoma news outlets) is now being discussed more, which is just going to poison her search results for the rest of time and make it harder to find fair work.
I think this is bad journalism on the part of KOMO.
Trust is Broken
With that said, I can definitely see why people are paranoid - until 2022, Lincoln had a beloved principal and assistant principal. After they left, Dr. Horton started a process for hiring a new Principal that was conducted with little community input. I applied to be on the parent committee and was rejected, which led to my first FOIA on the slides used for the interview committee training. As far as I know, nobody was ever put on that committee.
Dr. Horton eventually hired the new Principal3 and I thought she was fine4 (she had big shoes to fill) but some of her Instagram posts, such as this one, rubbed folks the wrong way and led to internal strife. There was a breakdown of trust and allegations of racism - many beloved staff members left at the end of the 2023 school year. At the end of this year, the Principal and Assistant Principal moved on.
As further evidence, breakdown of trust is captured in the annual 5Essentials survey conducted by the University of Chicago and the ISBE.
Sadly, they don’t poll Administrator-Parent Trust because if they did that number would be pretty bad too. The scores above are from 0-100, so a 12 is pretty dang low. I think the only direction from here is up — but the rebuilding of trust is going to take some time and requires leadership from the Board and Administration. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Dr. Turner cites that only 5 teachers voted in this no confidence thing but then it was 93%, which doesn’t make any sense mathematically. Maybe the whole thing was just made up - we have absolutely no idea!
The Roundtable wrote that they contacted the Journalist - “The RoundTable contacted Whitaker, who did not remember exact numbers for staff participation in the vote. She said much of the concern centered around “threats of violence from a disgruntled teacher and from a student, that Principal Samuels failed to tell staff about.”
Who again, lived out in Aurora - more than 90 minutes away. Why do we keep hiring people who don’t live anywhere near Evanston? This makes no sense to me at all.
I will say that I thought it was unkind that neither her nor the assistant principal would show up to things like the science fair or music performances. I think that’s a core function of the job, a lot like the Superintendent not attending the 8th grade graduation. However, the staff was always respectful to me and my family.
Give this woman a chance. Principals are leaving in droves. It is probably hard to recruit people here. Have an open mind, let’s see what she can do. The good people in DeKalb, GA were able to do this, and see?? I’m kidding, we don’t know anything about this woman other than this story. I’d love a follow up in a year, Tom.
Maybe this is changing the topic slightly but why would any parent have confidence in a system that doesn't value or trust teachers? This morning I learned from a D65 parent that technology is now integrated with all subjects. Specifically , this means kindergarteners have laptops. This flies in the face of what we know about the development of children. More specifically, I'm sad not to witness a revolt by teachers and parents. Why do we continue to accept this top-down model of curriculum strategy. Best learning occurs when a teacher designs lessons ( within standards) based on the needs of her/his students.
Vikki Proctor