Partnership with a Shared Mission - Page 1

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A principal and a partner organization work in tandem to lead improvement in a New York City high school.

Located in a Gothic-style building in Brooklyn, overlooking New York Harbor, the School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology was designed to be a school for the twenty-first century. As its name implies, it has a heavy emphasis on technology, with a television studio, its own Web server, and technology infused throughout the curriculum. It has also been recognized for its global education program and humanities curriculum, and it is part of the Transatlantic School Innovation Alliance, a partnership with schools in London that is supported by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

Under a system established by the New York City Department of Education, the school has formed a partnership with New Visions for Public Schools, a local nonprofit organization, to provide support and assistance. The school’s principal, Philip Weinberg, spoke to Voices in Urban Education editor Robert Rothman about the partnership and his role as school leader.

Q: Tell me about your school.

WEINBERG: We’re located in Brooklyn, New York. There are about 1,250 students in attendance. We serve grades nine through twelve. We’re pretty representative of the borough of Brooklyn demographically, or at least socio-economically. We’re relatively poor; there’s a high percentage, and in our school especially, of Latino students. Seventy percent [are eligible for] Title I.

Q: What kinds of partnerships do you have with community organizations?

WEINBERG: The chief partnership right now is with New Visions, which is a new way the Department of Education is running schools. Other partnerships have been on much smaller scales, with local community groups down in Sunset Park, who worked with agencies we could refer students to for everything from employment to health services to general family counseling and stuff like that.

Q: What is your role as a leader in a system with partnerships? How might that be different from a system in which you are only responsible for your own building?

WEINBERG: In a crude sense, the biggest difference is that I have to figure out how this partnership can benefit the larger school community and make sure that we’re aligned so that the work of the partnering organization supports the mission of the school.

The difference in the kind of partnerships the Department of Education has created now is that the partner fulfills some of the role of the person who used to be my boss, who was the superintendent. By disempowering the superintendent and, in name at least, empowering the principal, the partner has to take on some of the jobs of the superintendent without any of the regulatory power the superintendent had. It’s been interesting to watch the partner try to negotiate that difference, try to be the support organization without having any regulatory authority. They’re great at it in some ways. But it must be frustrating if you can see a way a school can get better or do the right thing and they choose not to do it.

Four years ago a superintendent would have said, much like a parent, I don’t care if you don’t want to do it, you have to do it, because I know what’s best for you. Now that interaction can’t exist. It would be interesting to hear from a group like New Visions how they’re negotiating that aspect of working with people.

Q: How do you go about aligning the work of the school with that of the partner organization?

WEINBERG: Like most things in most places, it really is about people. And so the sooner we get to understand the folks with whom we work and their strengths and the things that they can offer our community, the sooner we can negotiate a good working relationship and a relationship that’s beneficial to the school.

Q: Did your preparation as a principal provide you with the skills to do that?

WEINBERG: It depends on what you mean by preparation. The academic training I had to be a school leader, as most folks would say, was not about being a principal. Academic programs for school leaders are really just certificate programs.

The training I really had was with the previous principal of our school, when I worked as an assistant principal. One of the things that I think he was masterful at was knowing the folks around him, both inside the school and outside, and figuring out how to make sure that we were well positioned to work well with them.