Unruly News & Updates

Friday, February 4, 2005

A Series of Unfortunate Events, a Disturbing Pattern of Behavior: A History of the Way Dr. Zendejas Does Business

Ask any staff member at one of the aforementioned sites about reaction to the January administrative shake-up and you’ll get a similar response. “We were angry and never given a clear reason why this happened,” says our Team Unruly correspondent from YB. A bewildered unruly reader from Piedmont Hills writes “The whole process was very unprofessional.” The complaints are not just about the changes, but rather the process used to implement those changes. This management process embraces change for change’s sake. It’s a philosophy that its adherents feel creates educational quality, but evidence shows it leaves employees irate and morale obliterated.

A significant part of the complaint surrounding this administrative shuffling is the failure of district management to articulate a logical purpose for the changes to school site staff. In the District Administration webzine article, Dr. Zendejas boasts about her ability to communicate with employees: “Not talking to people at all levels "will easily catch up with you," Zendejas says. "Lots of times messages don't reach down, and they don't reach up” (read it here: ) One could argue that Zendejas feels she learned this hard lesson from past experience. Contrary to her perception of her own communication skills, those messages are never made clear to any stakeholder, including, it seems, her own cabinet. When decisions that affect communities are neither clearly explained nor rationally justified, the implication is the people making decisions do not feel they have to justify their actions to anyone. The recent administrative shift tells the tale: Dr. Zendejas announced these changes to just a couple of the schools listed above; her cabinet members delivered the bulk of the bad news. Their presentations only managed to further obfuscate an already murky situation.

In the first objective and honest assessment of a Zendejas decision to be reported by the Mercury News, Jon Fortt wrestled this revealing statement out of the beleaguered superintendent: ``I want to make sure that the principals who are at the schools are going to buy into how we're doing business differently,'' Zendejas said.” (read the whole article here: ) Echoes of The Godfather aside, the “way we do business” comment gives us a hint to Zendejas’ dictatorial management philosophy. Many in ESTA and CSEA claim she was hired to “divide and conquer”. But that view is far too narrow. It implies she was given a predetermined objective to meet and that, when completed, she would move on to fulfill whatever task her new school board bosses demand. There’s also the implication that our School Board had enough intellectual foresight to play the divide and conquer card. Team Unruly believes spontaneous change is the core of Zendejas’ managerial philosophy, and to a School Board that narrowly defines “change” in terms of its relative worth to their own political resumes, hiring Zendejas merely represented a new way of conducting business.

In a business environment, spontaneous change can be effective. If market share drops, or stock prices dip, reorganize corporate management. Want to take a company in a bold new direction? Bring an engineer, a marketing expert, and a programmer together from different teams, and you might get a product that puts the company in the Fortune 500. In education, spontaneous change proponents believe reconstituting management teams on a regular basis will bring fresh innovations and new perspectives to schools eager to rapidly increase success rates. They equate change with success. In this type of environment, the rank and file lose their input on local curricular decisions. Site administrators function like the guys who drive the district maintenance truck: go in, find the problem, fix it, and move on. The immediate result is increased district control over the direction and vision of the schools. In these adherents’ minds, constant change increases the market share of student success rates and raises the value of the API stock.

The converse of this philosophy is the team building approach, one that recognizes that effective change only happens when trust exists and input from all stakeholders is valued. The emphasis is on building relationships and developing a history that gives stakeholders a broader reform perspective over a substantial length of time. Its adherents recognize that when people feel valued for their input, positive reforms can be initiated. One could simply characterize these opposing philosophic views as a debate between stability and instability. Dr. Zendejas’ approach encourages instability. It’s a view that guides her governance, and the evidence can be found in her past employment history.

The Unruly Advocate’s crack research team has uncovered a state auditor’s report from Zendejas’ days as the Superintendent of the Brownsville school district in southern Texas. In the commendation section, the lion’s share of acknowledgements goes to the schools and the innovations they have instituted (editor’s note: two eerily familiar commendations given to district management: Zendejas’ weekly detailed reports to the Board of Trustees, and Brownsville’s creation of a 24-hour cable access channel devoted to information about the district). The first item in the recommendations section demonstrates her adherence to this philosophy, and provides a clue as to just how unsuccessful this practice is:

“District Organization and Management - The organizational structure of BISD is very unstable and not logically grouped. Positions and responsibilities fluctuate on a regular basis, and several temporary assignments are being made to fill voids in the central office. School-level personnel are unclear as to central office roles and responsibilities.” (Read the whole report here: http://www.window.state.tx.us/tpr/tspr/summries/brownsvl.html)

After leaving Brownsville, Dr. Zendejas headed to Indianapolis, where the story of her problematic reign is now legendary among ESUHSD employees. (If you haven’t read the story yet, just click here: ) Another article about an urban elementary school in Indianapolis, written after Zendejas left, reaffirms that where Zendejas goes, instability follows: "Zendejas - she is now one of the system's several former superintendents - had a way of moving principals without ever telling them why." (see our “skeletons” section for the link).

Stability or instability: which means of doing business leads to greater success? The best way to measure the quality of leadership is to look at the legacy of the leader. Did the organization thrive under the leader’s management? Did the leader’s initiatives establish a strong foundation upon which future leaders could build? In Zendejas’ case, the evidence can speak for itself.

Last month, Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Duncan Pat Pritchett, the man who replaced Dr. Esperanza Zendejas seven years ago, announced his intention to retire in June. As the IPS School Board prepares to search for a replacement, Board President Kelly E. Bentley made this interesting comment to the Indianapolis Star: "We are not going to hire someone who is polarizing. We are not going to hire someone who's going to do a slash and burn." Why make this comment? The paragraph that follows shows a lesson learned from a trying experience: “The IPS School Board last hired a superintendent from outside the district more than decade ago when officials picked Esperanza Zendejas, a controversial leader who quit after just two years in 1997.”

The article also offers a characterization of Pritchett’s legacy, which will depress East Side employees reading this article, but perhaps alert at least one attentive ESUHSD Board member: “Pritchett's legacy may be that he stabilized the state's largest district at a critical time. IPS was beset by several problems, including low teacher morale and the lowest wages of Marion County's 11 public school districts.

"Pat has done a majestic job,’ said Perry Township Schools Superintendent H. Douglas Williams. ‘IPS was a wounded district, and it was getting beat up by the business community and the newspaper. Pat was the right person to come in and heal those fractures." (read the whole article here: )

Creating fractures and lowering morale. That’s the end result of promoting instability. That’s the legacy of Dr. Esperanza Zendejas.