A majority of faculty and staff in the Washington Central school district say they have “no confidence” in Superintendent Bryan Olkowski’s ability to lead the district.
The vote of no confidence came Thursday from educators across the district’s six schools, after a climate survey last week showed widespread dissatisfaction and distrust in Olkowksi’s leadership.
“Whether it’s his inability to collaborate, his unwillingness to communicate, and his penchant for making unilateral decisions, it is clear that he has lost the confidence of those of us who put students first every day,” said Kate McCann, a math teacher at U-32 High School and co-president of the Washington Central Educators’ Union, in a statement.
The district operates U-32 Middle and High School in East Montpelier, Berlin Elementary School, Calais Elementary School, Doty Memorial School in Worcester, East Montpelier Elementary School and Rumney Memorial School in Middlesex.
In the vote on Thursday, more than 90% of the 184 faculty and staff who participated cast ballots of “no confidence,” representing a majority of the staff and a super majority of the union, according to McCann. There are just over 300 teachers and staff in the district.
McCann said no one incident inspired the survey that preceded the vote; rather, it was a continual stream of concerns being brought to the attention of union leadership. She said they decided that a survey would be the best way to find out just how widespread the concerns were.
The questions on the survey came from the Agency of Education’s “core leadership standards for Vermont educators” — covering ethics, professionalism, equity and cultural responsiveness. About 85% of the district’s teachers and support staff completed the survey, according to a press release from the union.
A large majority of respondents either “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” that Olkowski demonstrated qualities like “transparency, trust, collaboration, perseverance, learning and continuous improvement” (75% disagree), “leads with interpersonal and communication skill, social-emotional insight, and understanding of all students’ and staff members’ backgrounds and cultures” (73% disagree), and “develops and supports open, productive, caring and trusting working relationships among leaders, faculty and staff” (75% disagree).
Additionally, a majority of educators said he is unavailable or unapproachable, is not a good steward of the district’s resources, and fails to address matters of equity and cultural responsiveness, according to the press release.
Olkowski said Friday afternoon that he hadn’t had time to look at the full results, and he’s still “trying to process” the survey as a whole — but he pushed back on the idea that he is difficult to work and communicate with.
“I think I’m very approachable. I think we’re in a pandemic, it’s a difficult first year in the district, it’s difficult to form relationships in the virtual world,” he said.
The Washington Central Unified Union School District was formed in 2019, putting five elementary schools and U-32 Middle and High School under the same umbrella. Olkowski was hired in July 2020.
Olkowski said he thinks there are still growing pains from that merger that the pandemic only exacerbated. He said he expects the survey feedback will be “really interesting” in helping to navigate those challenges.
“I want to review it and treat this as feedback. What are the actual concerns? How do we move forward as a newly merged district coming out of a pandemic focusing on student achievement? That should be the focus,” he said.
However, McCann said it’s Olkowski’s failure to lead the school through the pandemic that raises her concern. For example, she said, the union heard from a staff member in the beginning of the school year whose spouse was immunocompromised, and needed to work from home because of that. Ultimately, the teacher and the school board agreed on a plan where she would be farmed out to the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative in exchange for more remote seats for students at the school.
“It really was a win-win, but Bryan didn’t see it that way. He wanted to assert, I think, that he had total control of the situation,” McCann said.
Another situation that frustrated teachers, McCann said, was when Olkowski decided that art and music teachers in Berlin should be shared with other schools, “bringing down the level of teacher-student interactions at Berlin to meet the level at this other school rather than raising the level of arts and music at other elementary schools,” McCann said.
She said educators wanted to see the level raised districtwide, but Olkowski didn’t seem to share those concerns.
“This is just his ongoing inability to collaborate and communicate, and these unilateral decisions that are made that clearly don’t have the best interests of students at hand,” McCann said.
McCann said there’s no specific outcome that the union members hope to achieve through their vote, other than having their voices heard.
“What I want is for the board to be aware of the problems,” McCann said. “The faculty and staff have really poured their hearts into telling their stories, and there are just so many stories about how Bryan has failed this district. What I want is for those stories to be heard.”
McCann emphasized that the district’s educators have great respect for and trust in building-level administrators. She said she knows it’s difficult to be a new superintendent during a year like this, but Olkowski’s failure to address the needs of students and staff “shouldn’t be overlooked — even during a pandemic.”
School board member Flor Diaz Smith said she was surprised when she first heard about the survey and the vote of no confidence, but said she can’t comment beyond that, because it is a personnel matter.
However, the school board has a meeting scheduled for Monday night, where board members plan to discuss the matter further.
“We will be addressing the comments with our superintendent,” she said. “We will be meeting and not by any means taking a position on what these reviews said. It’s just one data point to really look into the climate of our schools.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story imprecisely described the results of the vote.
