If they take the best Principal in Dearborn away from Long School, the parents of this area will make sure the voters in Dearborn know that it is time for some changes for the next school board election! They seem to think that what is best is to change Principals around every couple of years. This is not what is best for our young children!

Dearborn Public Schools should not be jeopardizing the proven success of Long Elementary removing their principal and leader, Mrs. Jakubus. The parents don’t want this, Mrs. Jakubus doesn’t want this, the children certainly don’t want this … Mr. Whiston has not given a valid reason for disregarding the opinions of those who are directly affected by his irresponsible choice.

The district has, once again, proven that they have lost sight of who they are truly here to serve … the students and families of Dearborn.

Hopefully, Mr. Whiston will reconsider his decision.

Why would the district move the principals from Long and DuVall? They’ve only been at their schools for 3 and 2 years. I’ve heard that 5th graders at Long will have had 3 principals during their elementary school years. That’s not right.

There are other principals that have been at their elementary schools longer than 3 years. If the objective is truly to give the principals different experiences, then it would make more sense to move the principals at Haigh and Howard (the principals have been there longer) … but they rarely mess with Haigh/Howard/Lindbergh and sometimes DuVall.

My kids do not go to Long or DuVall. I would hate to see our principal leave, but it would be more fair than moving the principals at DuVall and Long. The children in my neighborhood are not any more deserving of a stable school or a better principal than the kids that live in the Long School area. Based on demographics alone, you’d think the leadership of our district would be doing all they could to help the kids at that school. There are more single parent families there and it’s a lower income area.

Why wouldn’t they give these kids the advantage of stability and security in school that they may not have at home? Especially since the principal doesn’t want to leave. Kids in “better” neighborhoods get that from the district … but then the kids of the Mayor, City Council members, School Board members and other officials go to those schools, don’t they? I benefit from that, but can admit that it’s not fair.

It would be a large pill for me to swallow if our principal was told there was no choice in the move and we received a principal that I’ve heard negative things about. Based on who was chosen to move, it’s clearly not professional development. If it were, others would have been chosen to move and not Mrs. Jakubus (3 years at Long) and Mr. Awada (2 years at DuVall). It would be the principals who have 4, 5, 6+ years in their school.

It would be a lot easier to accept if the district would be honest and not use a smoke screen to hide behind their true motives.

Isn’t Fadlallah involved in all that controversy at Fordson? He’s getting promoted? Where’s the Oakman principal going? Who are the new assistant principals (replacing the 3 that were promoted to principal?)

Good luck to all of you Long School parents! Fight to keep the principal that’s best for your school and for your children!! Especially if she doesn’t want to move! At the very least, I hope you can get an honest answer as to why you are loosing yet another principal in such a short time.

One west-end neighborhood cannot change the landscape of the school board as the neighborhood, in itself, carries little weight. This IS NOT an insult, merely reality. I understand your plight. Make a commitment, AS A WHOLE, to attend EVERY publicly televised board meeting and DEMAND answers, EVERY meeting, until the issue is addressed to your satisfaction.

You MUST remain resilient, focused, and act as a whole. Be prepared to present your positions in a professional, persistent manner. DO NOT accept political, circular, psych-babble as answers to your concerns. Make EVERY one of them answer YOUR QUESTIONS clearly and concisely! Get more media involved, if needed!

Sidebar; Another Fadlallah at the helm of a Dearbornistan public school? Now that’s complete lunacy!

Re:VIRES ACQUIRIT EUNDO

Thank you for the words. We understand we are a little neighborhood. We are an active apart of this school system. Many of our parents have been on committees to find ways to shape DPS in a better manner. We have created programs in out school that no other Dearborn schools have, we fund them ourselves without being a TITLE 1 school.

Yes we are a focused group of parents who want to keep their school tight, Mrs J is apart of that. She has supported our programs like no other.

BTW we are dealing with a lobbyist. This should be interesting.

PS We were told that if we brought media to this subject it would back fire
Friday is when we were told we would have an answer but we wont stop til the July.

youngdearborn,

who told you guys it would backfire if you called the media? the district?

To other schools:
We can try our hardest to change it. These are elected officials who do have to answer to us for what they do.

The fact of the matter is that the district, even after being asked for an explanatio, is not giving Long Elementary parents the whole story. If this were true that it was standard to switch principals from school to school, then why are they not moving principals who have been in their school the longest, as a previous poster mentioned?

As taxpayers, we essentially sign the checks of both our elected school board officials and hired individuals like Mr. Whiston … they owe an explanation to each and every parent in the schools who will be affected.

In regards to what another poster said, I know that in some schools when a principal leaves, some are sad and some are pleased with their departure … I know of not a single person at Long Elementary who will be happy to see Mrs. Jakubus leave.

Also, I know that change can be good … if we can’t change Mr. Whiston’s mind, we will surely welcome Dr. Klee with open arms and a positive attitude. But why fix it if it isn’t broken? We are a very successful school in spite of the “statistics” regarding income and home life that show we shouldn’t be successful … but our children are academically successful and our staff provides a stable environment for the kids who don’t have one at home. Mrs. Jakubus is a big part of that … she greets each and every child and knows everything there is to know about them … she is an important part of our school and our children’s everyday lives, and Mr. Whiston, at this point, intends to remove her without our children even having an opportunity to properly say their good-byes … don’t they deserve that?

Everyone at Long School should be worried since they are gaining an incompetent principal that has caused many parents to shy away from Snow Elementary. I was so happy the day my son left that school knowing we would never have to deal with Dr. Klee again. Besides the favortism she showed some students/parents, the total lack of control she had at the school was appaling. There DPS goes again by hiding incompetent staff at other schools while not taking into consideration the feelings of parents /students that have bonded with the great staff that is out there. I know the staff at Snow must be celebrating the move of Dr. Klee to Long Elementary, since most of them thought she was incompetent also.

“This goes for the Mayor, City Council & school board members, whom we have contacted to hear us!”

I can understand holding your school board members accountable for this, but what exactly does the Mayor or City Council have to do with administrative decisions made by the school district? Isn’t the school system ultimately an entity of the state government?
Shouldn’t you be addressing the Governor and your state senators and representatives too? Call Mike Flanagan, he’s the Superintendent of Public Instruction at the Michigan Department of Education. Get the state BofE involved too! The more the merrier!

First I have to Thank the Superintendent for meeting with Long Parents on Monday morning. We showed up while he was in a meeting. He left his meeting early to meet with us. It is appreciated that he was willing to do that.
I don’t agree with the answers we received. I don’t think they know how much parents talk to each other. Chris, Most people I have talked to have the same views as your about the move. After hearing these things I feel like we are going from one extreme, the best principal, to the other. That is hard to take.

The Long Community is different than any other in Dearborn. We have activites planned all summer long. Twice a month we rent out Crowley pool have snacks. WE will be having a camp out in Crowley park. We have a great neighborhood and school. This is one benefit of having a smaller community.

In these hard times,single parents, loss of employment, foreclosure, Our children need STABILITY. This is something that Mrs J. brought to our school. Our children need her support and stability. She was out greeting them in the mornings and telling them good bye in the afternoon.

We want to keep Mrs J!! As we told the Superintendent “We will fight for her and do whatever it takes to keep her.”

Re:Chris Amend

As of right now, our focus is not about who we are getting, just who is being taking away. As a group we have heard awful things about Dr. Klee, does that worry us, of course. Thanks for everyone’s opinion.

We are not saying Dr. Klee is bad. We are saying Mrs. J is great! We are saying that she does not want to move, the parents don’t want her to move and the children don’t want her to move. We are saying the Superintendent and the board are not being honest about why she is being moved. The parents of Snow are not begging to keep Dr. Klee. We are saying, why not move Dr. Klee to Duvall and leave Mrs. J at Long!

I agree that this is not about Dr Klee, it is about Mrs. J. We would love to hear more positive about Dr Klee. It seems the negative always comes out more than the poisitive I am sure the Superintendent and his staff are looking at our request. Like Long Dad said “We need to be patient and wait until friday.”

I can add a positive comment about Dr. Klee… she shows up for work everyday !!!
But by far, the negatives certainly out number the positives.

I am a Long pta mom of three, one which will be starting the fall as a 5th grader, one who will be entering all day kindergarten, and the third who will be starting preschool. My daughter has been at Long since she started kindergarten, and I feel so blessed and lucky to say my kids attend Long . Mrs J has been such a huge impact on my daughter she knows her and reaches out to her as my daughter has struggled a bit in her reading and math….she makes it a point to go out of her way to encourage her and guide me as a parent with support. I am always at our school and feel like it is our second home as do all three of my children. Mrs. J is such a huge part of what has made our school so great! I feel that our children need some constant at school….they already change from teacher to teacher every year, they need to be able to build a realtionship that can grow as they to are growing too! We are a very small community but….we are strong and tight, we work hard and fight for what we believe in. I think I speak loud and clear for all my fellow nieghbors that we are not ready nor do we feel letting Mrs. J go is the right thing for our school.

When I was in school, the only interaction we ever had with the principal was when we were in BIG trouble. Not minor trouble. We heard her voice on the P.A. like Oz, but that was about it. Why is there some sort of need for principals to interact on such a routine or frequent level with parents and/or students to the point where your kids can’t learn without the school’s ADMINISTRATOR being part of the process? Isn’t that what teachers and parents are for?

If your child lacks “stability”, maybe you should look in the mirror. Being a “single parent” is not an excuse to foist responsibility for parenting on the place responsible for teaching. If you want to hire someone to pat the kids on the head and be a stable, calming figure outside the classroom, you can probably hire a retired grandmotherly type to stand in the halls and get to know the kids for a lot less than a school administrator.

If the head of the school has enough time to get to know each kid by name and spend time with them every day, they’re probably not spending enough time doing principal stuff. And if they ARE, maybe we should be hiring part-time principals.

Re: It’s All About Principals
It is a good thing that things have changed since us as parents were in school. Isn’t it a positive change that the principal plays a role in the student’s education.
There have been many days Mrs. J was in her office until 6 pm. doing her office paperwork and principal stuff. I am appalled that you compare Mrs. J to a retired grandma??
Mrs. J made an impact by greeting, visiting classrooms, being involved in the extra programs she has implemented, being in the lunch room and patroling after school.
Back in our day, maybe the principals weren’t doing their jobs. They hid in their office. It is ridiculous to say that was better than a principal who is active in the education of our children.
Our home has both parents and the single-parent homes is not an excuse to keep our stable leadership. It is for the benefit of the whole school and for the students to reap the benefits of the policies and programs Mrs. J has implemented at Long.
I find it absolutely absurd that you think the principals shouldn’t take the time to learn the children’s names and their families.

WOW
How empowering it is to have your voice heard! Well done Superintendent Whiston & The School board. You have no idea how happy and excited we are to have our Principal back. This is HUGE. I have tears of joy right now. We cant thank you enough, We all have promised to be more active and supportive.

What a wonderful group we have at Long & Crowley neighborhood.

My deepest and most sincere thanks to Mr. Whiston for reconsidering the changes and keeping Mrs. Jakubus at Long Elementary!

Our superintendent and his advisors should remember that a school is not made of its test scores or its demographic statistics. Without talking to the parents of a school, how can you know what we need? Future changes of this magnitude should come with discussion to find out if the plans made by the administration actually address the needs of those affected.

But, again, many thanks!

Re: DuVallDad..

Here ya go

The administrative team discussed the pros and cons of each possible scenario and debated the educational value of changing the principals balanced with the emotional concerns raised by the Long School parents. We also considered the timing of the announced changes. I understand how difficult change can be and throughout my career have made it a priority to take the necessary steps to prepare people for change. Unfortunately, due to the middle school principal vacancies and the process used to fill those positions, I did not have the option of making a final decision prior to the end of the school year. After much debate and deliberation we felt that a compromised solution would be to limit the elementary school changes to include only Mr. Maleyko to DuVall and Mr. Awada to Oakman. Both of these gentlemen are exceptional principals and will do an outstanding job to create a successful learning environment.

Just got home from tonight’s (July 13th) School Board Meeting. Although our P.T.A. President spoke eloquently, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Whiston has already made his decision. While the 20 other DuVall parents who took time to attend tonight’s meeting sympathize with Oakman’s troubles, we fail to understand how and why it must affect OUR children.

Mr. Whiston failed to explain HOW it was in the best interests of DuVall’s students OR Mr. Awada himself to be moved out of a building that he has led for LESS THAN TWO YEARS. Looks like DuVall is destined to welcome Principal #5 (in less than 5 years).

What both Mr. Whiston and the School Board fail to recognize is that parents have many, many choices today. Private tuition-based parochial schools, free charter schools, and home schooling are all viable options for middle-class, college educated parents who feel that their local school district is NOT adequately serving their children.

How did Duvall not know about these changes the Friday Long did? This blog was entered on the 29th.

youngdearborn: does the timing really matter?

Just because DuVall parents weren’t flooding the comments on this blog, doesn’t meant that we weren’t contacting Mr. Whiston and expressing our disappointment at Mr. Awada being moved to Oakman. I personally find it odd that the new “compromise” solution keeps the current principals at Snow and Long, while DuVall gets the privilege of yet ANOTHER new principal. The true compromise would have been to just place Mr. Maleyko at Oakman and leave the other 3 schools unchanged. By all accounts Mr. Maleyko is an excellent principal, so I can’t see any reason that he wouldn’t be an excellent principal at Oakman.

Here’s hoping that Mr. Whiston changes his mind on this. It would be nice to get some administrative consistency at our school, rather than having to start over with a new principal every year.

It isn’t the blog that concerns me. Blogging has nothing to do with the situation. My remark was to show dates.

I just wondering why Duvall parents ( or any of the other 2 schools included) were not at the Ten Eyck building Monday morning? So yes timing did matter to this topic. I believe Long was successful do to our timing.

No need to be defensive, this is our school system. As I scroll up I do see a remark made by a fellow blogger, it asks the question “where are the other schools?”

I was a active parent for Long on this whole issue, I can relate to your pain and confusion.