Staff and students at Gilmor Elementary, the city school at the center of an intense bullying debate this year, said they experienced a worrisome decline in classroom safety and learning environment, according to the results of a district-wide survey that come to light as the school undergoes a major staff shake-up.
All of the school's staff and administrators have had to reapply to return next year under a plan that Gilmor, along with six other long-troubled schools, is implementing as part of a turnaround plan. Officials said they have not determined how many of the staff, including the principal, will be back.
But schools CEO Andrés Alonso said that the results of the school's most recent climate survey will factor into personnel and other key decisions for Gilmor's future. The survey is distributed annually to all city schools and allows parents, teachers and students to sound off on everything from food to teacher quality.
The changes come as the school grapples with the transition from private to public school management, which has left some parents wondering whether a related reduction in student services contributed to the problems.
Last year, the city school board granted Alonso's request to sever ties with New York-based Edison Learning, which had been running Gilmor for nearly a decade, placing its operations back in the hands of the district. Edison was praised for its ability to improve the school's climate but failed to meet student achievement targets.
Alonso said the 32 percent drop in the number of staff who said in the survey that the school provided an orderly learning environment showed that "clearly, something frayed in the school this year in comparison to last year."
The percentage of students and staff who said they felt safe also drastically decreased, and staff and students said that behavior such as fighting, harassment and students picking on one another was a problem.
But Alonso said the problems at Gilmor "highlight the complexities schools face when presented with the challenge of raising student achievement and addressing the social and emotional developmental needs of our students."
"Yes, obviously staff and students felt that the school's climate declined this year," he said. "But the bottom line remains, what are its outcomes?"
He said he did not regret the decision to cut ties with Edison, though Gilmor received more funding and resources under its management.
On April 20, the school was thrust into the media spotlight when the parent of a third-grade student with cerebral palsy said her daughter wanted to commit suicide and attempted to jump out a window at the school to escape a group of students who had beaten and bullied her repeatedly. The school system said that she had threatened to commit suicide but had not tried to jump out a window.
The girl's mother, Geneva Biggus, has continued to speak out publicly about how the school was not safe for her daughter. Last month, she joined about 200 other upset parents in rallying for school officials to acknowledge that resources and responsiveness are lacking in keeping students and teachers safe.
"Finally," Biggus said upon hearing the survey results. "Finally, it's someone else on the record saying that. It felt like I was standing alone but now that it's coming out in other ways from other people, it helps a lot.
"They were saying that my daughter was blowing things out of proportion, but they can't say that now," she said.
The 2010 climate surveys were distributed in January and returned by April 16.
Edison resources missed
Last spring, students and teachers from Gilmor protested Alonso's decision to take the school back from the for-profit company, and key arguments against the decision centered on the school's support system.
Edison paid for a dean of students to manage student behavior, a character education coordinator, a student support manager for parent outreach and referrals for struggling students, a school operations manager and a technology manager.
Under the district's leadership, those services were reduced. The school now offers counseling services provided by a school social worker, a Department of Social Services worker and a behavior interventionist.
Alonso said he knows that the change in resources has caused challenges, because the school's suspension rate spiked in the winter. He said the school is looking to build community partnerships to help provide more resources for dealing with student behavior.
A teacher who left the school because of its declining learning environment said that Edison's support staff kept the school afloat.
"When that staff went away, the kids noticed, and it was a free-for-all," said former Gilmor teacher Tammy Matthews, who left the school in February after two years and now works as an instructional specialist in North Carolina. "Under Edison, things were under control; kids were learning."
Edison spokesman Michael Serpe said the company does not monitor climate changes, but called the results of the survey "positive news for Edison, but it's about what's positive for the kids."
The other elementary school, Furman L. Templeton, under Edison control was also removed from it last year. Its climate survey reflected a 10 percentage-point decline in the school's learning environment ratings, but there were consistent positive ratings in school safety.
Alonso acknowledged that the survey validated concerns raised by Gilmor parents and teachers in recent months about bullying and disruptive behavior becoming rampant at the school in the last year.
This year, 8 percent of staff surveyed agreed that fighting was not a problem, compared with 41 percent in 2009. Thirty-five percent answered last year that they didn't think students picking on each other was a problem, while only 4 percent said that this year.
"The decline in indices of student safety in the survey verified some of the concerns that had been brought to light earlier in the spring around incidents of bullying at the school," Alonso said.
'A vindictive administration'
Across the district, the average number of positive responses to questions related to school safety rose among staff by 0.8 percentage points from last year; among parents, 1.8 percentage points; and students, 3.9 percentage points, according to data provided by the school system.
Other school leaders are also taking notice of Gilmor's survey results. Baltimore Teachers Union President Marietta English said she was concerned that the survey noted a 72 percent decline in the number of staff who said teachers and staff are not abused.
English said that complaints of student attacks on teachers have risen districtwide but that teachers at Gilmor have complained more this school year of being bullied by the school's administrators. She said teachers reported being reprimanded in front of students and having their jobs threatened.
"There was the feeling that it was a very vindictive administration," English said, adding that when she visited the school in April, "it was like being in different worlds." She said that on one floor, teachers were happy with Gilmor; on another, the teachers complained about the administration.
The school principal, Ledonnis Hernandez, did not return repeated calls for comment, but Jimmy Gittings, head of the city's administrators union, called Hernandez a "darn good principal." She has been the principal at Gilmor for two years, including the final year when Edison was in charge of the school.
Gittings said he "supported any decision Hernandez has made because I'm sure it was for the betterment of the students and the school."
Alonso declined to comment on any allegations because he is prohibited from publicly addressing matters of personnel. But he did say that the school's leadership has proven to be effective in the area that matters most: student achievement.
In 2009, when Edison was operating the school, Gilmor reached highs in reading and math proficiency. Sixty-five percent of its students were proficient in reading; the target was 81 percent. In 2008, the school was at 43 percent proficiency with a target of 71 percent.
In math, 69 percent of students were proficient in 2009, just short of the 74 percent target. In 2008, only 33 percent made the school's target of 69 percent.
Alonso said parent responses to the survey — which remained consistent and positive in most areas — were also promising for Gilmor's future.
Tierra Mills said her daughter, who will enter second grade at Gilmor this fall, does well academically. But the climate took a toll last year because her daughter told her that all the teachers did was "yell at the bad kids." Mills said she registered those concerns in her survey.
"I wouldn't say it's a bad school or an unsafe school," Mills said. "It's just that they have students that don't want to learn. I think they just need to remove them — even if it's the majority of the class. You have to do what you have to do to teach those that want to learn."