The Wendy Gudalewicz Debacle: Righteous Indignation or Modus Operandi?

On Wednesday, September 7, Independence High School principal Wendy Gudalewicz surprised her staff by announcing her resignation at a morning meeting. Soon rumors spread across the district as employees near and far speculated on the cause of her departure. By the end of the day, employees also discovered that Carol Blackerby, the former principal of Piedmont Hills who resigned in protest over a Zendejas edict last January, was coaxed back to serve as IHS’s interim principal. At the following night’s board meeting, a parent and a student angrily condemned the board for making yet another abrupt administrative shift. Some feared the administrative shuffling lessons of the past two years went unheeded.

There is more to Gudalewicz’s resignation than meets the eye, however. One of the few actual Zendejas hires, Gudalewicz was brought to Independence to replace the controversial Carrie Vaeth. Vaeth’s autocratic, hard line reputation had long been a source of contention. The change in principals was not all that unwelcome. Gudalewicz had a full year to improve employee morale and build a base of support. Though the events of last spring made that task daunting, it is interesting to note that not one teacher rose to Gudalewicz’s defense at the board meeting. The two people who did speak on her behalf showed related issues in part fueled their indignation. The parent, for example, lamented over the number of administrative changes Independence suffered in the past four years. Their condemnation caused board president J. Manuel Herrera to promise to seek community input the next time an administrative change was made.

Of course, neither the parent nor the student would know if a managerial crisis necessitated the resignation, though the rapid appointment of a disgruntled administrator who appeared unwilling to return to the district was enough to raise suspicion in even the most casual of observers.

It is safe to say that general opinion on Gudalawicz’s performance is mixed. She had only been in the district for a year, she worked at a school so large that some teachers could go weeks without seeing her on campus, and the more pressing issues of Zendejas, the budget, and the unnecessary layoff were forefront on people’s minds. Some of Independence’s employees saw her as more personable than her predecessor, a feat about as difficult as finding some type of hamburger on a McDonald’s menu. Others were suspicious from day one simply because a semi-professional ventriloquist hired this outsider to manage one of the largest high schools in Northern California. And still others found Gudalawicz to be as autocratic as the superintendent pulling her strings.

The Unruly Advocate kept tabs on Gudalawicz’s performance over the last year. Students liked her, and she worked at making students feel welcome. We know that after her first principal’s meeting with Zendejas, she told an administrative colleague that she didn’t realize Zendejas was so condescending. Warning flags appeared, however, when a boastful Gudalawicz told a cut-hungry budget task force that, in her days as an education consultant for WestEd, she saw many schools function quite well without counselors. But the real problems started over the summer, and thus, in the final summation, like the person who hired her she fell victim to her own incompetence.

Over the summer, assistant site principals build master schedules based on enrollment projections and the number of teachers necessary to educate incoming and returning students. District administrators generally give sites fewer teachers than they actually need. The challenge is to make sure classes are balanced as best as can be expected in the summer so that when students show up in August, the school can reassess their needs and hire or surplus teachers to other schools to meet contractual obligations. Given that the district and the union agreed to temporarily raise class sizes by three, it was not uncommon for a few teachers this year to walk into classes of up to forty students. But at Independence, some teachers entered rooms packed with close to eighty students. Still worse, hundreds of the school’s students spent their days roaming through Independence’s villas because they had no schedule at all.

The cause of these problems has been a matter of speculation for a few weeks. Most people zero in on the irony of Gudalawicz’s “eliminate all counselors” suggestion. Our Independence correspondent informs the Advocate that conventional wisdom on their campus places all the blame on Gudalawicz, who purportedly spent her summer dictating shortsighted changes to her subordinates as they attempted to build one of California’s most complex master schedules.

Gudalawicz was not fired for these incompetencies, however. In a move reminiscent of a familiar Coto practice, board president J. Manuel Herrera told the public that Gudalawicz was offered a position at the district office. Gudalawicz chose to resign. To understand why, one needs only look into her past.

Prior to her stint in East Side, Wendy Gudalawicz was a teacher who rose up the ranks to administrator, eventually becoming principal of Gilroy High School. An affluent group of parents wanted the school to offer freshman and sophomore level honors classes. They argued that children needed accelerated courses in the early grades to remain competitive with college bound students in other schools, though some critics felt these parents wanted to separate their students from the general school population. Gudalawicz countered that separating students in the early grades would create two disparate tiers, and instead the school should strive to raise all 9 and 10th grade class standards to an honors level. ( You can read what she had to say about it

Gudalawicz’s position had merit. However, making the plan a reality required inspirational leadership to encourage support from skeptical parents and reluctant teachers. Instead, Gudalawicz took an adversarial stance, publicly arguing with parents, teachers, board members and the community at large. As the debate wore on, hubris prevailed over substance. Gudalawicz threatened to resign if the measure passed, without seeming to realize that those in the community she alienated welcomed the possibility of her leaving the district. The measure passed, and Gudalawicz resigned. (Read a more detailed version of these events

A strong educational leader is resourceful in persuading all stakeholders to support a common cause, but even the strongest of leaders faces setbacks. The results in policy debates play out in one of two ways. Either the leader possesses the ambassadorial panache to win over critics, or realizing the futility of prolonged debate, cuts his or her losses in the “win some, lose some” reality of public policy. Strong leaders, however, do not throw in the towel after one major setback. Gudalawicz’s history shows she takes the “lose some” part of the axiom a little too personally. Though there might be more behind her decision to leave East Side, the pattern of her modus operandi shows that when the going gets tough, Wendy Gudalawicz goes. Her decision to resign says more about her leadership skills than her short Independence tenure could ever reveal.