Anytime a school board goes looking for a new superintendent, the local editorial page rightly calls it a crossroads. The last two times (both in the past decade) that the school board at Oak Park and River Forest High School conducted a search, the school was at a crossroads: It was looking to replace sincere but ineffective leaders who had not done nearly enough to address critical challenges.
This time, as by a narrow margin, the school board has given Supt. Attila Weninger the gate and put the school again at a crossroads. What’s different is that now, the board has bounced the first superintendent in a generation who actually grasped deep-rooted problems and was systematically, though largely out of public view, taking them on.
Firing Weninger – don’t be confused by the talk of retirement – is a grave mistake. It’s easy to do, as Weninger can be a hard person to warm to; as a result, he’s had no natural constituency offering support. He does have an effective opposition made up of at least two identifiable parts. One, a small group of activist blacks and special ed parents is gloating, though they don’t understand they’ve just lost an unknown ally. The second group, entrenched and powerful elements of the faculty, is publicly silent, having accomplished their clear goal in seeing Weninger’s backside and doing it without leaving fingerprints.
It’s more than curious that while Weninger was never able to win over the small but vocal group known as APPLE (African-American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education), the core of his support on the board during contract negotiations was from the board’s three black members. Why is that?
Simple. Jacques Conway, John Allen and Ralph Lee all understood that among many issues Weninger was tackling, in an orderly way, a central one was the achievement gap. They know it is at the core of the cultural divide that keeps OPRF from being a great school, the right school for all its students. What had Weninger accomplished toward that goal? Here’s the list:
Student discipline: In two years, he took a system that had been a chronic embarrassment and lightning rod on all sides and reshaped it by focusing less on suspensions and expulsions and more on heightened expectations for good behavior. It’s working. Part of that solution was a bold remaking of the school’s system of deans and counselors.
Data: This school has spent 15 years arguing about what its inadequate data says about discipline and achievement. But, rightly, no one trusted the information because there really wasn’t a system to collect it. Weninger fixed that. Going forward, there will be solid information.
A new principal: Weninger gets credit for hiring Nathaniel Rouse, a widely regarded educator who is black, as principal.
Hiring: Weninger understood early on that a core of faculty had undue influence on decisions at the school. The ability to push forward on such complex issues as the gap was linked to a superintendent’s ability to hire division heads open to change. By signaling last spring – in blocking the hiring of a math chair – that he wanted more control, Weninger made plain his determination to move forward on genuine change at OPRF.
The school board, in spending eight weeks debating a contract extension, made perfectly clear a narrow majority wanted Weninger gone. He acceded with his resignation.
Watch now how the board allows or curtails the superintendent’s power to fill five key positions – four division chairs and the HR head – before he departs next summer. This is the drama. This is the future of OPRF.
Next week: The search for Weninger’s replacement.