Burlington High School has had quite the year.
When former interim principal Noel Green resigned suddenly last week, it sent the latest in a series of shockwaves through the community. Over the past nine months, Burlington High has contended with not only a pandemic, but also a building contaminated with PCBs, known carcinogens, which forced the school to go remote this fall.
Burlington High staff members say that Green’s departure, just days before he was to be appointed the school’s permanent principal, exposed tensions in the district that have surprised many. But they’re also looking ahead: to a wide-ranging search for a new principal, and to a return to in-person learning in the days to come.
“There was a lot of shock,” Andrew Styles, president of the teachers union, said of faculty. “So many things are hitting them all at once.”
He said he has faith, though, in the school’s new leadership.
An acrimonious exit
Green’s resignation letter, which he sent to superintendent Tom Flanagan on Jan. 8 and which VTDigger has obtained, was brief. It was delivered within minutes of a separate email he sent to faculty announcing his departure.
In the letter, Green wrote of longstanding frustrations and “overbearing” school board members who did not support him and “do not value the work of our teachers.” He called Clare Wool, the school board chair, “manipulative” and said the high school’s leadership had been held to “impossible” standards, though he gave few specifics.
“I never imagined my tenure in BSD ending the way it has, but this district has shown that it has no interest in looking out for my best interests so I must do so on my own,” he wrote.
Green did not respond to an inquiry from VTDigger Friday. Clare Wool was not available for an interview, but has said she was “surprised” by Green’s criticisms, which she said were not communicated to the board “at all.”
Flanagan had planned to nominate Green Jan. 12 for the permanent position as Burlington High principal, and Green and some faculty knew it. “He was prepared for that,” Flanagan told VTDigger.
In Green’s resignation letter, he said that, under his contract, he had already become permanent principal of the high school, as the district had not announced a search for the role. Green had remained the interim principal of the high school for three years, after the board declined to name him to the permanent position in 2019.
In his letter to the faculty, Green cited his long-term interim status as one reason for his departure. Yet Flanagan says this time around, the school board supported making him the permanent principal.
Flanagan dismissed some of Green’s other criticisms of the school board. “I have found that our board is very supportive of our teachers,” he said. Still, he said, it can sometimes be a challenge to delineate the responsibilities of the district and the board, leading to conflict.
“That’s something that all boards and superintendents work on,” he said.
Styles said he and other teachers were “really surprised by that characterization” of Wool and the board. If there was tension, he said, it was not apparent. “I haven’t heard anybody who can tell me what that might have been,” he said.
However, Burlington High faculty members who spoke with VTDigger on condition they not be named said they saw Green as at times resistant to board leadership and to Flanagan, who became superintendent last July.
At the same time, Green was described as steadfast in support for BHS staff, particularly through the trials of the fall.
Moving forward
On Jan 10, two days after Green’s resignation, Flanagan announced he had appointed assistant principal Lauren McBride as the new acting principal, and Gayle Botelho, a teacher at BHS, will be acting assistant principal. Herb Perez remains the other assistant principal.
Though it’s likely McBride will continue in the role, BHS has opened internal applications for interim principal and assistant principal, to adhere to hiring procedure. The district will soon begin its search for a new permanent principal, aiming to have that person in place this fall.
“There are a lot of different moving pieces right now,” McBride told VTDigger. But as she takes the helm at BHS, she says, “our goal is just that this stays as consistent and smooth as possible.”
One of those moving pieces is the plan to move Burlington High into the former Macy’s Department Store on Cherry Street, adjacent to Church Street Marketplace. The department store closed in 2018.
Work to reconfigure the building is slated to be completed by mid-February. In-person learning, Flanagan says, will begin the first or second week of March.
The impending return to in-person education has lifted spirits, McBride said. Just a few months prior, Burlington High had no building to speak of, and no clear plans for a return.
“The walls are up; faculty and staff are prepping for what next semester’s going to look like,” McBride said.
“Everyone’s really excited just by the opportunity to get back into a home.”
