Sunday, February 1, 2015

Moving forward at East High School

Well, it's official. The University of Rochester has been approved as the EPO for East High School! What a long road it has been. Renegotiating all four union contracts, fine tuning and negotiating the budget and contract with the district ... all while making sure we recruit students and set up the application process for teachers, administrators, and staff. Whew. Well worth it though.

One great thing was being able to announce who we hired as the Deputy Superintendent - Dr. Shaun Nelms. His experience from the classroom to central office and his dedication to transforming education in urban settings made him the perfect choice. Seems like many people will apply to work at East because Shaun will be there. Remember that we will, in effect, be our own school district. Steve Uebbing will be the Superintendent and Shaun the Deputy. We will report directly to the school board. This will afford us the space to transform teaching and learning free from some of the district's restrictions. Of course, we have state requirements around testing and Common Core, but we plan to exceed them in meaningful ways.

If you are interested in working at East, start with this webpage: UREast All in All the Time.
You can also find the new teacher and administration union contracts there and the full EPO proposal so you'll know what we are planning.

As I keep saying, we are going to make history.