LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The former principal at Mill Creek Elementary has taken a voluntary reassignment after she was among six principals at Jefferson County Public Schools recently deemed unfit to lead their schools’ turnaround efforts by the state.
Michelle Pennix, Mill Creek’s principal for more than 22 years, accepted a voluntary reassignment on Feb. 5 to develop curriculum for the Gifted and Talented Leadership program at JCPS, according to Renee Murphy, the district’s communications director.
An interim principal had not been formally named at Mill Creek at the time of publication. Assistant Principal LaQueisha Bonds, who had been in charge at the school since Pennix's departure, has since been appointed to the role, according to Murphy.
A diagnostic audit team with the Kentucky Department of Education found that Pennix and five other principals lacked the capacity to improve their low-performing schools. The state audits schools identified for comprehensive support and improvement, like Mill Creek, every year.
Pennix has taken issue with how the state audits low-performing schools and determines which principals should stay in their positions and which should be removed.
She decided on her own to leave Mill Creek before meeting with JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio to discuss the audit results, she said. While the state can identify principals as poor fits for their low-performing schools, only superintendents can remove them.
Three of the four JCPS principals that the state determined shouldn’t lead their schools’ turnaround efforts last school year were ultimately replaced.
Job statuses for the five remaining principals found unfit to improve their schools this year have not changed, Murphy said.
In a phone interview with WDRB News on Thursday, Pennix questioned why she would be expected to stay at the school and help develop a turnaround plan if the state believed she lacked the ability to lead Mill Creek. She’s contacted KDE for 15 days in a row to find out whether she can appeal the state’s determination but has not heard back.
“I can’t get a phone call back,” Pennix said. “...To be honest with you, I don’t know what steps two through five are because I’m giving them an opportunity to let me know about an appeal process.”
KDE Associate Commissioner Kelly Foster said the state does not offer a chance for principals who feel aggrieved by the audits' findings and recommendations. She noted that the final determination is up to superintendents.
The state’s diagnostic review team met with Mill Creek staff and reviewed school operations over a four-day period in December and found that while Pennix and the school’s assistant principal had been at the school for years, 86% of the school’s certified teachers had fewer than five years of experience and four were new to Mill Creek for the 2019-20 school year.
The audit team also determined that the school leveraged resources for things other than student learning.
They determined that the school’s administration could better implement digital learning tools and rethink its approach to professional learning communities, noting that five permanent substitute teachers cover classes as educators meet for instructional planning.
In another instance, auditors were critical of the school’s decision to abandon its one-to-one introduction of Chromebooks after only one year “due to the perceived lack of successful implementation.”
“The team suggests that the school should be strategic in resource use and prioritize improving student learning outcomes, including formal and systematic intervention for less than proficient students and acceleration for higher performing students,” auditors wrote in their Mill Creek report.
Pennix’s biggest gripe with the audit is the fact that the diagnostic review team scored her and the school “insufficient” in every category as they looked at Mill Creek’s leadership, learning and resource capacities. Another principal determined incapable of leading their school’s turnaround efforts had no “insufficient” ratings in those categories, she said, referring to Wheatley Elementary Principal William Bunton.
She also noted the school’s performance on the Effective Learning Environments Observation Tool, or eleot, which examines equitable learning, high expectations, supportive learning, active learning, progress monitoring, well-managed learning and digital learning.
Mill Creek typically outperformed the 14 other CSI schools audited by the state, with only Watson Lane Elementary besting Mill Creek in every category.
“We were the second best, but yet I don’t have the capacity,” she said.
In her opinion, the audit review teams deployed by KDE offered subjective reviews of schools and lacked consistent metrics to determine what was and wasn’t working in the buildings.
“The things that they highlighted that were areas of concern about Mill Creek were things that I specifically told them,” Pennix said. “I told them that our failing last school year was about the one-to-one Chromebooks, which is what the report listed, but I told them that was an attempt on our part to really think outside the box and do something different for kids.”
“I was told that the lawyers at KDE actually reviewed the reports before they were handed back,” she added. “… If you show me the lawyer who reviewed these reports, I will show you someone who needs to be disbarred because I would not want to stand by this work.”
Foster, however, defended the auditing process that Kentucky's lowest performing schools must undergo.
The diagnostic review teams are made up of experienced evaluators who examine all areas of school performance, including conducting classroom observations and interviewing stakeholders, she said.
"The overall diagnostic review process is designed to energize and equip the leadership and stakeholders of an institution to achieve higher levels of performance and address areas that may be hindering efforts to reach those desired performance levels," Foster said in a statement.
"We stand by the recommendations of the diagnostic review teams."
The evaluation process for CSI schools, particularly when auditors recommend that principals be removed from their jobs, has been a sore spot in JCPS, which has most of Kentucky’s low-performing schools based on academic indicators like K-PREP test results.
Pollio, speaking to reporters after the audits were released Jan. 16, said he doesn’t think the auditing process is “necessarily fair.” Principals in schools audited by KDE “are very hard-working, committed and dedicated,” he said at the time.
“This is so challenging for school communities to face this,” Pollio said. “I've already gotten a lot of correspondence from people supporting their principal, and I appreciate that.”
Pennix says most of the schools that have been consistently identified as low-performing serve vulnerable populations comprised of high numbers of impoverished and minority students.
The KDE diagnostic review team noted in its Mill Creek audit that the school saw its student demographics shift in that direction since 2009, when 50% of the student body was black and 71% qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.
Ten years later in 2019, those demographics comprised 92% and 86% of student enrollment, respectively.
“It seems like the bigger question is how are we judging schools?” Pennix said. “What is making them low-performing? Is there some other measure that we can use besides one test that students take one time of year to determine that this school is low-performing or not?”
Other principals identified as unfit to lead their schools, aside from Pennix and Bunton, are Stephanie White at King Elementary, Kimberly Marshall at Roosevelt-Perry Elementary, Stephanie Nutter at J.B. Atkinson Academy and Todd Stockwell at Doss High.
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