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Former Boston Latin headmaster named interim headmaster
By adamg on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 12:21pm
Chang discusses new positions as Walsh listens.
School Superintendent Tommy Chang this morning named former Boston Latin School Headmaster Michael Contompasis interim headmaster until a new permanent headmaster is chosen.
At a noon press conference, Chang and Mayor Walsh said Contompasis, who served as headmaster between 1976 and 1998, would bring stability to the school as school officials launch a national appointment for a permanent headmaster, who would start next March.
Also named today: Jerry Howland as associate headmaster and Alexandra Montes McNeil as the school's instructional superintendent.
Chang said that in coming weeks, he will name two co-chairs of a search committee that will include representatives of various school interest groups, including parents.
Chang said the two men - both also BLS graduates - will help BLS through the transition to a new headmaster. Contompasis, 76, served two years as BPS Superintendent before the appointment of Carole Johnson.
Howland and Montes McNeil also both have extensive experience in BPS.
Walsh said that work into dealing with racial issues at BLS will continue. He pointed to the expansion of both a program to provide preparation for the ISEE test that helps determine BLS admission and of the two-year advanced-work program for fifth- and sixth-graders as evidence of how the city is reaching out to minority students who now make up a much lower percentage of the BLS enrollment than their numbers in the overall BPS system.
Walsh and Chang said they did not select any administrators at the school for the interim role both so they could continue the work they are doing and apply for the headmaster position. Walsh predicted Boston will get a large crop of highly qualified candidates from across the country and in BPS, because the BLS headmaster role is the "crown jewel" of any educational career.
He added there's no way former Headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta and assistant Headmaster Malcolm Flynn are coming back. "We're well beyond that," he said. Even City Councilor and BLS alumnus Matt O'Malley, who expressed deep distress at Mooney Teta's resignation, attended the press conference to say it's time to move forward and do what's best for BLS students. Walsh and Chang were also joined by several other BLS alums, including City Councilor Andrea Campbell, state Rep. Nick Collins and School Committee Chairman Michael O'Neill.
Contompasis did not attend the press conference because he was out of town on a family matter, Walsh said.
Chang reiterated his previous statement that he did not leak information about a student disciplinary matter to the Globe last week. Walsh professed ignorance as well, and asked the assembled reporters to ask themselves who the source was.
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Comments
Funny thing is, I don't exactly think "progressive"
When I hear the name Contompasis, but I think he'll keep the boat afloat. We were never exactly the best of friends, but that was my fault, not his.
Who gives a ________
If he's "Progressive" , the guy successfully ran the school for 20+ years.
Just so long as he knows the laws
Special education laws
Anti-bullying laws
etc.
Mike the Cop
Former headmaster, interim superintendent. Also head of discipline in the good old days under DR. Wilfred O'Leary. The Mayor and the Superintendent trying to calm the disgruntled BLS parents and Alumnae. Me thinks they Mayor realizes now he made a rather large error in angering the BLS community.
Just like I said
Bring back Mr. C.
I remember Contompasis from the early 70s...
He must be over 100 by now!! Seriously, how current do they expect this guy to be?
76
And while he retired from BPS, he's been running an educational consulting firm of late, so it's not like they're pulling him up out of Del Boca Vista, phase III.
It's always "Me, Me, Me"
I hate phones sometimes
I posted my initial one-sentence story via my phone. Fixed, thanks.
Caption contest
What's behind that baleful stare?
Why Does The Mayor Always Wear Such A Mad, Angry Expression?
No matter what's going on, he always appears to be seething inside. It makes one wonder what he's really thinking — as if he's always preoccupied with internal struggles that are constantly making him very unhappy. It's sad to see someone who never cracks a smile.
It's just his RBF
I use to think the same thing, but after seeing him a few times in person, I am sure it's his default and he doesn't even know it
Even RBFs Lighten Up When They're Not Resting ...
... occasionally smiling at or with others — but not him.
It could be a challenge for reporters/photographers or just anyone with a camera:
Can you catch a picture of Mayor Walsh smiling?
Mad? Try Mike.
If you want angry expressions, hang around Mr. Contompasis.
Two of my sons are BLS grads, the younger one into Cornelia Kelley's time. Many of us parents can tell tales of when Mr. C. lost it. I remember two assemblies where he felt the students were disrespectful, as in not quiet enough. He switched from his stone-cold look to screaming. His whole head turned red and purple...scary. He seemed to have sublimated far too much too long.
Kelley projected arrogance and ego, but I never saw her turn colors. I was there one time when a firetruck came by so the firefighters could make sure a trashcan inside had been extinguished. She literally stomped her feet repeatedly while we were all on the front steps and swore that she would find and punish the student involved.
By the bye, when Contompasis showed all that color, the students found that all the funnier.
Contompasis is from an earlier era of educators
Contompasis comes from the era when educators and administrators did that. They yelled and screamed and railed at students in assemblies and elsewhere. I saw O'Leary and his long forgotten assistant lackey Devore (or whatever his name was) go off the rails a few times in the early 70s, though he was much too bloodless to turn many colors.
They yelled? Um, Good
I got into trouble for something bus related Sophomore Year. Mr. C yelled at me, which is what he should have done, not hugged me and told me that acting like an ass was part of the overall learning experience. I learned a lot from Mr. C yelling at me a lot more than I did on the bus.
As far as Ms. Kelley, who was my Comp. Greek teacher, she is a wonderful woman. I cannot for the life of me see why she was concerned about a fire at a school, wait, isn't that what we call arson? Who would want find out who was doing that? Ha ha, those kiddies and their pyromania.
You administer the education of 2,400 teenagers a day and get back to me about needing to yell and scream, ok?
Puerile modeling
Amusing comment, reminding me of pro-corporal punishment folk who say they are better adults because parents beat them with paddles or belts...
Who was supposed to be the adults here, the 12 to 18 year olds or the middle aged with titles? Honestly if Headmasters C. and K. were unable to model mature and rational behavior, that shows both self-indulgence and poor example. Bullying and being role models are not the same.
Who said I was beaten?
Perhaps a few lessons in reading comprehension might help? I said they yelled. Are you one of those words hit as hard as a fist crybabies?
My, my, read please
Note that I wrote your comment reminds me. Your projection to something I never wrote serves only you.
Your odd pride at being what you consider appropriately scolded loudly for misbehavior is what reads like justification. To me, if Mikey C. had to yell to make his point, he failed. On the other hand, if you are using "yelled" hyperbolically, that's another issue. We've taken these small points too far already.
I found Contompasis overly emotional on more than one occasion. I expected better of someone in his position. I won't make excuses for his lack of control or immaturity on those occasions. Maybe he was rational and mature some 90%-plus of the time, but I know it wasn't 100%.
If would have been swell if we as parents could have expected school teachers and administrators to be good examples all the time. We knew better and did our part to teach by word and example as well. We did not find Headmaster C. or K. to be flawless.
Oh, we're aiming for flawless, are we?
Come on. We're talking about human beings here, not your steak dinner at Grill 23. Flaws are to be expected. Even by your overly high standards (you really expect no yelling ever? By the headmaster of 2400 students?) a 90% is still an A-A-.
BLS appointments
Interesting, MC worked at the school years ago when similar issues and incidents happened. He certainly knows how to keep things hidden and out of the press, good choice BPS! Chang doesn't have a he and probably Walsh doesn't either, but asked the alumni, they can tell you lots of stories that never made it to the newspapers.
oh mahty.....
stop with that look!
Best decision they could have made.....
I do not think the problems at BLS rose to the level of leaders leaving. And I also believe there are a reasonable number of problems - superficial and unde the radar.
If you are going to bring in someone to improve the situation, bring in someone with district experience and a level head- and a person who actually seeks out the thoughts of the community- students and parents included- Mike Contompasis is the right pick.
"It's time to move forward and do what's best for BLS students."
Oh cool, we're going to buy them bus tickets to a city with better schools?
City with Better Schools
Find one. Just try.
How about every Boston suburb?
I mean, that's why we bus kids there now, right?
Etymology is your friend
Maybe you should look up the etymology of the word "suburb" so that you don't sound like an ass.
Here one, maybe you've heard of it
Cambridge!
snark comprehension failure
I was snarking on Mr Tulip's reply where he claimed "every Boston suburb" was a better city school as he said in his earlier comment.
But, just to humor you and show you the fallacy of his argument, the City of Cambridge is not a suburb so it fails to satisfy his reply and the Town of Brookline is not a city therefore it fails his initial comment. I was just pointing out the shift in his argument as he was actively moving the goalposts. Your comments mean nothing to that point.
Brookline
Is one!
Yes and no
Brookline has better schools, but it doesn't have a better school.
To put BLS on a level playing field.....
It excludes many kids who can't get in, other suburban high schools don't do that.
That being said, you don't know how the top Latin kids would do at Newton North High School if they went there or vice versa.
Is kid #26 at BLS more qualified than kid#16 at Newton North who also got into Harvard? Or is it just because kid #26 at BLS comes from a larger pool of students (600K compared to 90K population)
Find a school outside of BLS
Find a school outside of BLS in the 128 suburbs that graduates ~30 kids per year to Harvard and is also nationally ranked as one of the best in the country. Oh, wait, you can't. Sumus Primi.
I think it was 26 this year
But in any case, yes, BLS typically sends more students to Harvard than any other high school in the world (I think there's a comparable high school for Stanford out in the Bay Area somewhere).
Yeah!
We can call it busportation, or bus-transit or busin -oh. Oh my.
He said
BLS students, not BPS students.
Get with the program, tulip.
Wait, Latin's not a public school?
Then why is the mayor showing up to introduce the headmaster?
Did you not study...
... "set theory" in elementary/middle school math?
I'll type slow so you understand
Boston Latin School is a great school. It is a public school in Boston.
Try and name a nearby city with a better school.
I'll give you a hint: you have to look outside this state.
If they're great
Which I believe they are, if you say so, then why do so many schools in this city have such a bad reputation? If BLS has the best teachers and classes, then why not webcast their classes to the other schools in the city? Do they do that now?
Because idiots like you
Idiots like you badmouth the schools rather than look up the facts - facts that Massachusetts has the best schools in the nation, and Boston tops all major cities.
I really believe
You actually want to understand this. So I'll try again.
BLS is a great school. By many accounts, it is the top public high school in the state. Note that, as it is one school, we use the singular.
Not all BPS schools are as great - most consider none of them to be as great as BLS. Some BPS schools are even considered to be lousy. When we speak of this multitude of schools, we use the plural.
When a person says, "it's time to move forward and do what's best for BLS students," he is speaking of the students at a single school, not a plurality of schools.
Likewise, one can say "BLS is the best public school in the state," without saying "All BPS schools are the best schools in the state."
Knowing that BLS is considered to be better than all other BPS schools should help explain to you why there is such a fuss about it.
Will's Ideas Are Bad.
It's been shown time and time again that raising the class size lowers the educational value of the class. And that's when they are IN THE SAME DAMN ROOM. If those other schools aren't as good, maybe the kids aren't showing up to them in the first place to see this glorious Cable in the Classroom. Maybe they only respect the class as much as they respect the school itself. What if the people in the remote classes just talk the whole time? Is their audio going to be piped into the main classroom? So now the teacher needs to tell the kids to shut up through a webcam? What if the teacher wants to call on a student from the remote locations? Is she going to have a Best Buy showroom display set up to see all these other classrooms? And now she has what, dozens of other students who are technically in her class? How will the teacher have time to monitor their progress individually? Meet with their parents? Score X more homeworks? There's a lot more to teaching than just listening to a teacher lecture. Are the parents cool with their kids not having an on site teacher? These were all concerns off the top of my head about this idea.
Jerry Howland is a terrific
Jerry Howland is a terrific educator who will be an asset to the school, faculty and student body.
Contompasis thinks you can discern merit from the result of standardized tests, as can be seen from his position on the Board of Directors at Achievement Network, an outfit which sells test prep to BPS schools. In a late May article in the Globe, he was quoted:"You can’t argue with meritocracy”, as defined by test scores, that is. Not exactly a change agent, more like a return to the past, i.e. almost 20 years ago.
And while it's great to bring in Montes McNeil to the school as someone who knows the building in more modern times, why has there been a third position added to replace two resignations? The BPS as a whole is underfunded - why does BLS get another admin position, even as it looks to instructional cuts?
Save your BTU spin
This is good news to anyone who knows and cares about BLS, And Mayor Marty, who your BTU crew supported, can find whatever money he needs, or have you not learned that yet? Too bad that million dollar investment at election time didn't exactly pay off for you folks.
Not from BTU
But I'm smart enough to know that test scores are a great measure of a parent's wallet thickness and damn little else.
Not really
... plenty of poor kids with good test scores out there. If test scores are overvalued is an interesting topic, but not the same thing at all as what you're trying to sell.
And no smarter?
You never once wondered if there's a reason that poor scores on standardized tests correlate with poverty, beyond boo hoo it's unfair?
And does it occur to you
That using the results of inequality to enforce inequality of opportunity in a public school selection process is blatant bullshit, especially when these wallet quality exams are known to be a poor predictor of future success and actual aptitude?
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-incom...
http://issues.org/18-2/atkinson-2/
Or is it always just special time in privilege land for you? Patting yourself on the back for special superior genetic contributions, are ya? Go back to reading the Bell Curve at yourself in the mirror.
Somehow, I can't see you looking at "degree to which student outperforms the grand wallet test" as an acceptable grounds for admission over "I got mine fuck you hahahahah". Just like Stanford did in the early 80s, when I blew the fucking top off the wallet test from the bottom quartile of income and they wouldn't send me an application to a trailer court mailbox. Somehow, MIT, Caltech, and Harvard had no such issues (and now Stanford is making up for lost ground on high achieving, but poor students).
You have been spewing racism, classism, and ableism all over these threads on BPL. I'm sorry that you feel both inadequate and fearful of fair competition, but you need to get some science and grow up. You are not special. Your kids are not special. BLS is a public school, and it is NOT special and is NOT immune to the laws governing fair access, anti-bullying curriculum and responsibility and absolutely not exempt from laws regarding people with special needs. Period.
Lol
I got smurfette mad.
You never waste an opportunity to tell us how very special you are. Do you need us to clap for you, dearie?
And do you have any support for that weak little argument that pokes out between your impotent bluster and your ad hominem shit flinging?
I doubt it. It's just the usual, a liberal white suburbanite up on her high horse, needing to feel herself virtuous while she tells other people how they may and may not conduct themselves.
Well, you have nothing but your venom, may you choke on it.
Poverty is stressful (and no, you're not the only one here who has known it). Chronic stress is damaging to the developing brain. That is a major source of the test differential, and the solution is in social support for the very young, not tokenism at the high school level.
We in Boston get to have exam schools, like in all other big cities, and all your sophomoric platitudes won't change that. You don't even get a vote in the matter.
Goddamn Swirlly have a talent
Goddamn Swirlly have a talent in taking arguments that have some merits (pointing out something how correlation of wealth and test scores) and somehow leave a distaste in my mouth. This most recent one with so many levels.
I think it's all the "isms"
Because those always make me a little queasy.
An aside
re the "special needs" or er..."ableism" issue. Can anyone read that cringe-worthy article in the Dig and explain to me how the administration of any school should have responded to a student whose "disability" caused them to repeatedly skip school, skip classes, not do her work, and eventually to drop out of another school (the O'Bryant which somehow escapes the Dig's scathing condemnation)?
I read it.
I think the school may have failed that student, but that kind of thing happens in every high school. Parents not happy with how their child receives services at a school.
I think the issue with Latin (I wouldn't call it a problem), is that the entire school is basically an entire student body that is tracked into an AP/honors program, and that is what makes the school so great. Other school systems may have more support/programs in their specific school, but they also may place students into other outside programs inside the district themselves. Some schools do better than others but I wouldn't say this kid would have done the same thing in Newton or Brookline. But those places also have more support within the school itself, since many of the students aren't tracked into the highest level only.
Brookline High School has about 7 programs that may have benefited a child like the one mentioned in this article (meaning she wouldn't have been able to attend the AP classes at BHS either)
http://bhs.brookline.k12.ma.us/services-programs-and-supports.html
http://www.brooklinecenter.org/bryt
http://bhs.brookline.k12.ma.us/sws.html
Brookline only has one high school though too, so Boston can't support every BLS kid in that one building. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Boston is simply a larger school system.
Exam schools
The argument about whether BPS does sufficient outreach to minority communities to encourage application to our city's exam schools is different from the question of whether exam schools should exist at all, which seems to be what you're driving at, in this and other comments, Pete.
Boston isn't the only place in the country with exam schools. BLS may be the first and oldest, but it's part of a larger set. There are about 165 exam schools across 30 states. Other places also see the need for schools where the district can present a more advanced curriculum geared to a group selected for academic ability.
This may sound like argumentum ad populum, but I do believe it is helpful to know that Boston is not the only place exam schools exist - or cause controversy. Examination of the ways that other exam school systems have wrestled, or not, with similar problems could provide helpful ideas of ways to address the problems we see in our system.
I don't really have a problem with it Sock Puppet.
I also went to an exam school and think they serve a purpose.
But I think that in the world of public education, and knowing the history of public education (separate but equal, affirmative action, etc), public exam schools have some legal flaws and loopholes that don't always fit into the theory of public school "equality".
Would BLS have the right to eliminate all criteria for entering except for test scores?
Criteria
Pete, exam scores are all that NYC uses for its exam school entrance criteria. So if the Boston School Department, which sets the policy for admission to BPS' three exam schools, wanted to set the test only as the policy, it could. I don't know why it would want to.
Just a quick google search on my phone:
shows that a complaint/lawsuit was filed back in 2012, but I cannot find the results of that complaint.
http://www.naacpldf.org/files/case_issue/Specialized%20High%20Schools%20...
I get a sense that NYC has some problems, but also has some non exam schools that seem to be "great" schools where minorities actually do pretty well.
I've seen what lawsuits have done with exam only police tests (courts have ruled them unfair), so I can only imagine that public school entrance exams would find the same results. In NYC though, it looks like there are suitable alternatives to the exam schools where in Boston there are not.
Complaints
Pete, the NAACP would sue a ham sandwich if they thought it had too much mayo. That doesn't mean it's against the law.
The whole complaint rests on the "disparate impact" concept, which has a shaky legal history. It was successful in Griggs v Duke Power Company, the Supremes came down against it - or turned it the other way - in Ricci v. DeStefano.
I don't know of any case where "disparate impact" has been sufficient to sustain a legal challenge against public exam school admissions criteria. The key difference is the demonstrability of applicability of the aptitude test; a test may have "no demonstrable relationship to [the] successful performance of the jobs for which it was used," in a physical employment setting, but learning information and passing tests is a big part of a schoolkid's work.
What's happening with this right now is the shysters up in Albany are figuring out how to screw over the Asians who dominate Stuyvesant in favor of rich white kids, while pretending to care about blacks. They'll do that by creating extra categories in admission, like extracurricular activities, that rich parents can buy for their kids, and poor Asians don't get.
Like in NYC, this will get settled by politicians, not lawyers, and the result will favor... the politicians' kids, or kids like them. Count on it.
I see and agree with what your saying.
But I'm still surprised that no one has tried the disparate impact argument in a lawsuit against these schools, especially since schools themselves are putting less of an emphasis on tests and testing in general, at least at the highest level.
This goes back to the Asian situation, where it seems that Harvard (and other schools) are putting less of an emphasis on test scores, and more emphasis on other things (not because Asians can't afford it though). These standards put Asians at a disadvantage in other areas (Harvard and the Ivy league have their own separate formulas for athletes getting in).
Yes, we've been here before
In 1926, Harvard moved away from strictly academic, objective criteria for admissions, and included more subjective criteria, including a number of qualifiers in the area of "character," also requiring a passport-type photo. The purpose was to restrict the number of Jews; legacy admissions were instituted for the same purpose. Today, some say they do similarly hinky things behind the scenes to address TMA.
In terms of the disparate impact argument against objective standards for exam school admissions, the argument just isn't very strong. It's possible to argue that standardized test scores, grades, etc, are not related to job performance or business necessity for a cop or firefighter, but it just doesn't pass the laugh test to say that grades and tests are irrelevant to the work of a student.
Maybe if the school were a kind of holistic type school, without grades and tests and rankings, you could make that argument, but that description is pretty much the opposite of BLS.
It will be very interesting to see if a disparate impact suit is brought on behalf of Asians against whatever cockamamie scheme they cook up in Albany to replace the SHSAT.
But Sock Puppet..
You have many top ranked schools (I know Bowdoin and Holy Cross off hand) that don't even require a test at all. If a top ranked school in the world doesn't use a test at all, can't you make an argument that the test isn't a mark of high academic standard? (playing devils advocate here).
Also Asians might have more of a chance at the NY public schools than they do at Harvard, taking the public/private factor into consideration, but I also assume title 9 effects Harvard as well.
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/20/408240998/is-harvard-showing-b...
Interestingly enough, this is a "complaint" too, instead of a lawsuit.
Admission Criteria...
to BLS and the former GLS has varied over time. When Leonard Bernstein went to BLS, admission was based on teacher recommendation. Students were simply selected by their elementary teachers and sent to BLS.
When I attended GLS, admission was based on test scores only.
Grades were added to the formula later on to level the playing field a bit for kids who were good students but didn't perform their best on standardized tests.
I suspect that the admission criteria might change again soon.
There you go again
With your have-to-do-the-work-ism. So unfair.
This is the key quote here Sally
Right from the article, and I think it pretty much makes your point.
Source of "the leak"
Wasn't it just the parents of one of the students involved? They are on facebook, I think, and are not really hiding their child's involvement in the incident.
Smart pick
Contompasis will steady the ship and is widely respected. I hope he can cut through this and get to the bottom of what is really going on there. We have armchair quarterbacks on all sides preaching gloom and doom about the end of BLS, thinly-veiled racism, and outlandish attacks on anyone who has touched this matter. I hope Contompasis is able to work through that.
As interim is the Latin adverb "meanwhile"
and Latin is an ancient European language the appointment of an interim headmaster is a clearly a micro aggression.