Changes at Whitewater Middle School

One reads that Whitewater Middle School principal Tanya Wojciechowicz has resigned, after a few months in which her departure seemed probable. For those months, one version or another of this post awaited publishing.  

The best one can now confidently say is that Whitewater Middle School will for months remain a work in progress.  It has been a troubled school for some time now, and residents’ and students’ repeated concerns stretched over a few years – literally years.  It’s simply wrong that behavior problems, faculty departures, ignorance or willful disregard of academic accommodations, and poor academic performance festered for so long as they did.

For a post that refers obliquely to these problems, see The Canary in the School District’s Coal Mine [“if determining the right course in an isolated employment matter is difficult, how is one to believe confidently that the district will properly oversee the conduct of an entire school (of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, for example)?”]

All those who write, if they should be thoughtful, have regrets.  So many of these concerns deserved greater attention; failings of omission are failings just as much. It weighs on one’s mind, as it should.

Now, I’ve been writing for a bit, and in this time many administrators and politicians – dozens, truly, even in this small town – have come and gone.  For it all, it has been true that Coming and Going Depend on Doing (where “coming and going depend on doing, and doing well depends on doing rightly”). 

There has never been a time – and perhaps never will be – when a mere departure, a mere change of personnel – proved sufficient.  A change of leadership is sometimes necessary, but hardly enough, to create a better climate.

Each day one begins anew, to address the work that life offers, hoping to do well in that work.

There’s much work to be done at Whitewater Middle School.