brenda cassellius parents

In a couple of hours, Boston Public Schools families will begin lining up at the door of the school, which has been turned into a food-distribution site. Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius will resign at the end of the school year in June, closing out a turbulent three-year tenure overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, in. It was like out of a movie, the official says, like she was propping up the queen who you know is not up to the task., Briner said she did not recall this specific episode but that the comments sounded like something she would say to any colleague going through a difficult moment., In an interview in a BPS classroom, Cassellius dismissed her critics as disgruntled employees. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Superintendent Brenda Cassellius held a press conference Tuesday, a day after announcing Cassellius resignation. Last but not the When Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius resigns at the end of the school year, she'll take with her hundreds of thousands of dollars from a separation agreement. Cassellius made the announcement in a letter to parents, students and staff Monday. We have $36 million outside of the normal cost.. Before working with . Santoro: People will welcome the challenge. AN EDUCATION CAREER Cassellius spent her early career as a single mom. And my hunch is . Her hometown school board, which had watched her work closely for years, passed her over, citing the scarce progress on closing achievement gaps during her eight years as the top education official in the state. Cassellius will likely be muzzled under a non-disclosure agreement when she leaves, but it would be nice if she spilled details of her brief time as superintendent on the way out. Brenda Cassellius. It is tradition for the President to recognize special guests during the State of the Union address each year. She paralyzes the organization through her incoherence, another former official says. Her husband Jason is a stay-at-home dad. Este botn muestra el tipo de bsqueda seleccionado. Most recently as Boston Public School Superintendent. Wu hinted earlier this week that she wants someone local for the job. Cassellius informed Boston students, parents, and staff in a letter Monday, saying she . And she sincerely sought their counsel. But hearing it 49 days before the school year starts doesnt give you much hope., The teachers union also criticized the plan, calling it totally out of touch with reality. In the midst of the pandemic, a teachers union taking a shot at a superintendent should be as shocking as an April snowstorm in Boston. Share Your Memories and Sympathies and Join the Bereaved! 2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. As Minnesota students return to school, for most families, the key questions involve their own youngsters. BOSTON The Superintendent of Boston Public Schools, Dr. Brenda Cassellius, has announced plans to resign after three years as leader of the state's largest school system and will address the decision in front of reporters at a news conference scheduled for 10:15 Tuesday morning. Rachel Pearson is a parent advocate and trainer at the PACER Center, a nonprofit that champions youth with disabilities and their families. In October, school committee members voted to suspend for one year the use of an admissions test for Bostons three elite schools Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. OBryant School of Mathematics and Science. The community was behind us, the mayors speech was inspiring, we had secured this new investment, and then, boom, here comes the plague.. Sensing the COVID-induced hesitation in my voice, the superintendent, who spends a lot of time in the field and knows every school building in the district inside and out, quickly offered another option. This button displays the currently selected search type. She does view her job in terms of improving equity, says Keri Rodrigues, a prominent Massachusetts education activist, but wanting it and being able to make it happen are two different things., Edith Bazile, a vocal supporter of Cassellius during the superintendent selection process, has since concluded that Cassellius doesnt have what it takes to lead the district as it emerges from the pandemic. The Boston School Committee extended their agreement in June 2021, reports WGBH. School officials under Walsh tightly controlled the search process when Cassellius was hired and now the school committee says it wont divulge details of the separation agreement until next month. Together, we've laid a stronger foundation upon which BPS can continue to build. When you are disrupting the status quo with an anti-racist lens, as an African-American woman, you have to think about the motives of why people might be criticizing the ideas and the disruption that Im making so that underserved children can be served better and to create opportunity and access. Superintendent Skipper and her husband Peter, a retired BC High School religion teacher, have three children of whom they are very proud, and two amazing son-in-laws: Kassie, a teacher in the Denver Public Schools and her husband Joseph Montoya who is Senior Director of Residential at Namast Solar; Lihlani, who is the Associate Director at Brenda Cassellius, Carlton Jenkins, Equal Opportunity Schools, Higher Ground Academy, Hopkins Public Schools, Minnesota Department of Education, Steve Massey, Zena Stenvik / 0 Comments, http://hometownsource.com/2016/03/09/joe-nathan-column-massive-misunderstanding-or-classic-bait-and-switch/ The following column originally was published by ECM Publications Massive misunderstanding or classic bait and switch By Joe Nathan on March 9, 2016 at 5:27 pm Joe Nathan The Minnesota Department of Education wisely passed on an offer recently that represented, in part, a massive misunderstanding and, in part, a classic bait and switch. []. Brenda's parents have consistently encouraged her career goals. In a 5-2 vote, the Boston School Committee selected to appoint former Minnesota's Commissioner of Education Dr. Brenda Cassellius as their next Superintendent Wednesday. Santoro: So is this a wait and see thing now? Outgoing Boston Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius came in under the cover of darkness and is leaving the same way with a potentially huge severance agreement the city is sitting on. At the Joseph P. Tynan Elementary School in South Boston, she toured the hallways and classrooms with parents and their students, letting them know that she believed the school belonged to them. The staffers, all veterans of public school administration in Boston and beyond, listened closely. The couple has been happily married for years and is parents to three children. The problem, Casselliuss critics alleged, was that it arrived too late and too light on details. Thanks to passionate, practical parents, students and educators, Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs, MDE offers great opportunities to help develop education plans, School Safety Technical Assistance Center, US Department of Education Office of Safe and Healthy Students, Massive misunderstanding or classic bait and switch. One day in 2004, Johnson walked into Casselliuss office to offer her the biggest promotion of her life. To some, the practical barriers to implementing the plan seemed nearly insurmountable. Note that clicking the link below will block access to this site for 24 hours. A mother who did not want to give her name to WBZ-TV said she was glad to see Cassellius leaving. The school committee approved her plan and Walsh agreed to the budget increase. Boston Public School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius will walk away with more than $300,000 as part of a separation agreement that she reached last week with the Boston School Committee. . This button displays the currently selected search type. And that's really taken up all the air in the room, so to speak. As this story went to print, Cassellius was preparing for a virtual retreat with the school committee. But with Brenda, one former official says, word came down that if your presentation was more than a few slides, you would lose her.. The Boston School Committee has voted to confirm Brenda Cassellius a career educator who rose from paraprofessional to state commissioner, mostly in Minnesota as the next superintendent of. We took a look at her responses in multiple interviews with Boston education leaders, her extensive background in education leadership, and her plans for Boston Public Schools, to uncover how she will shape the next generation of Boston's young scholars. Zip codes are allocated spots at the schools based on the number of students living in the area and family income. As a leader, she said, its good for people to know that youre human., Casselliuss colleagues, and many of her sharpest critics, however, have never questioned her humanity. Cassellius has barely stopped moving since. I had never met with a school superintendent, says Matthew Thompson, pastor of Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan, the biggest Protestant church in New England. Brenda married her partner in life Jason Cassellius, they lived together and had three children, Christian Michel, Ani Grace and Charles Justice. Meg Woolhouse is GBH News' K-12 education reporter. Without Charlene, I dont think Brenda would have survived., In the months that followed, Briner helped prop Cassellius up, sometimes almost literally. Alexi Cohan is a general assignment reporter covering local news and government as well as health and medicine stories. She succeeded Tommy Chang who resigned after three years. Photo By Matt Stone/ MediaNews Group/Boston Herald. Enjoying #umich's first #marketing #communication summit with colleagues Eric Anderson and Nick Looney in the beautiful Michigan Union. Brenda Cassellius was born in Minnesota on September 9, 1967, and she will turn 54 in 2022. They began considering an intervention. How to capture peoples hearts and get them to come along rather than succumb to the tendency to keep doing things the same way.. Cassellius made the announcement in a letter to parents, students and staff Monday. She said her Emerald Necklace concept wasnt a plan but a prop or visioning tool. See all the student videos on the Dual High School/College Credit page. When she was selected as a finalist in the spring, BPS staffers at Bolling, as well as executives at education nonprofits, had called their contacts in Minnesota to get the scoop on the promising candidate. She was looking to the futurea future beyond the pandemicand was on the verge of unveiling her new vision, a plan she called Return, Recover, and Reimagine.Were going to be really reframing and pivoting, she told me, because our five-year strategic planthe one she announced a year ago, parts of which were later lambasted by the principalshas gotten very little attention., The new plan, she said, would increase the budget, close achievement gaps, and turn BPS into a real 21st-century school district., The Best Public High Schools in Greater Boston, The Best Public High Schools in Mass., Ranked, This search result is here to prevent scraping, Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli to Open Hook + Line in the Seaport, The Real, Essential Backstory of the MLK Statue The Embrace', On the Market: A Newport Condo Tucked Away in a Stone Turret, Review: Moca Largely Succeeds With Wildly Clever Seafood, Five Boston Homes for Sale for Under $800,000, This Stoughton Artist Paints Saturated Scenes of '60s Suburbia Boston Magazine, Careers and Internships at Boston Magazine. Copyright 2023 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. She served as co-anchor of the NBC news program Weekend Today from 2003 to 2007, and hosted the series Campbell Brown on CNN from 2008 to 2010. No further reasoning was given. As she traveled the city on her listening tour, Cassellius issued a flurry of staffing directives that often went unannounced and unexplained. Her resignation. I think Wu understands that the next super needs the trust of students, their parents and Boston teachers to really hit the ground running. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 14 BPCAE families in U.S. District Court in Boston on Friday. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. Thats my style, and I think people are getting used to that now. She said that ultimately it was not possible to close McKinley and Jackson/Mann before the 2019 school year began, but that if she could have done it, she would have. Do you mind if I run a tape recorder throughout the day? I ask her. We will remember him forever. Theyve held more than 100 meetings around the state since January 2016 on one of the most important issues facing Minnesota: [], Joe Nathan / Because of her background, she says, she has a lot in common with many BPS students. All rights reserved, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu unveiled Cassellius's impending departure in February, Still No Word on Reason Behind Boston School Superintendent's Departure, Boston Public Schools Superintendent to Resign, Even After Investigation, Stoneham Cop Hasn't Paid Dime of Rent to New Landlord, Rescuers Capture Bald Eagle Believed to Be Critically Sickened by Rat Poison, Here's How Shark Extinction Would Devastate the Ocean, Driver Describes Very Scary' Moments Trapped in Car After Crash Takes Down Power Lines in Stoneham. Santoro: This is for both of you has her response to the pandemic been welcomed? Back in Minneapolis, she served as an associate superintendent from 2007 to 2010, overseeing high school principals. In July 2020, they wrote Cassellius a letterwhich was leaked to the Boston Globeexcoriating her redesign proposal as a top-down exercise in poor planning that is divorced from any authentic analysis of data, lacks major details that must be thought through prior to implementation, [and] ignores years of studies about BPS high schools and the complex issues they face.. While the nation tunes in tonight to hear the Campbell Brown (journalist) Alma Dale Campbell Brown (born June 14, 1968) is the head of global news partnerships at Facebook and a former American television news reporter and anchorwoman. We couldn't do it without you. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. Cassellius has been Boston's school superintendent since July 2019. The district is primarily Black and Latino, and parents have been promised much over the years and bore the brunt of the pandemic illnesses and job losses. COVID was an incredible challenge. Cassellius had been on the job less than a year when schools closed, but I don't think Cassellius' response helped build trust among parents in the district. By then Cassellius had earned a reputation for being full of energy and big ideas. Cassellius chats with the head chef, who shows her a color-coded calendar of the months meals. Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said she supported the change because it is easy to understand, maintains academic rigor, and increases the opportunity for disadvantaged students. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. And now I know its for getting us through this pandemic. Her confidence, and her self-belief, paid off. She is the head of school at Boston Latin School. It was the early 70s and people werent too nice to biracial children., Cassellius started her career as a special-education paraprofessional and soon rocketed up the ranks. Santoro: If Rachel Skerritt is happy where she is, why would she even consider taking on this monstrosity? For some reason, I just felt like I was supposed to be here in Boston, she told me. Woolhouse: Well, it actually made me think she already has someone in mind. Transitions are difficult for kids and adults alike. Brenda Cassellius, the head of BPS, has a vision for the future unlike any superintendent the city has ever encountered. Even though the July intervention did not come to fruition, Walsh still took measures to bolster the central office. Linking the Minnesota MCA III Assessments to NWEA MAP Tests. By the fall, when students returned to school, BPS officials were having trouble keeping track of who reported to whom and what responsibilities belonged to each department. The historic building and the congregation within it both seek to reckon with a truer version of their history. Will new reporting & school support systems help students? She has said to me that she hires people based on familiarity and trust, says Edith Bazile, a former president of the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts who has worked closely with Cassellius on a volunteer basis. Near the end of our final interview, during which I detailed her critics charges, Cassellius cut me off. She has one of the highest-stakes jobs in Boston, and the second-hardest job in the city after mayor, one source told me. She implemented a hiring freeze, eliminated key central-office roles, and repeatedly reshuffled the organizational chart, according to three current and former BPS officials. To say that Casselliuss daily life in Boston has not been smooth is something of an understatement. 2016 columns / So why not do the same with Cassellius, giving parents and students an inside look at the frustrations and struggles of a schools chief in Boston? Joe Battenfeld is a veteran Herald political columnist and multimedia reporter. She has a deep gift for connecting with children, says a current BPS official who is critical of her leadership. In the summer, McChrystal Group, a consultancy that has worked with the mayor at City Hall, began running Casselliuss weekly coronavirus update calls with principals. Its a very bold vision, she said, to get people to stretch their thinking. Of her big ideas, she said, The good ones stick and the bad ones fall away. Then, throughout the day, the students would shuttle between buildings on a train. Kadzis: Henry, let me make an educated guess, and this is based on calling around yesterday and talking to people. On January 8, 2020, in his State of the City speech, Walsh called out Cassellius by name, saying she was working hard to give every single student access to high-quality schools., Cassellius says she felt she was flying high, on her way to achieving her vision for a better, fairer BPS. Through the early summer, officials had grown concerned that Cassellius and her new leadership team might not be up to the task of managing the pandemic response. Its unclear if Wu approved of the column but it could be viewed as a little shot at the mayor and school committee. This letter is intended to provide information about AYP, Minnesota's waiver request and what an AYP designation may mean for the school their son or daughter attends. Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams is the current superintendent of Eastern Carver County Schools in Chaska, MN. That was triggered by parents who had been keeping a close watch, a much closer watch than the city had. Before she even started the job, when she was still a candidate for the position, she had already seemed to achieve the impossible: winning the support of the community, the school committee, the teachers union, and the mayor. Throughout her tenure as superintendent, Cassellius has seemed happiestand told her colleagues shes happiestwhen she is in schools and with children. Parents Evaluation. College campuses increasingly offer time off for mental health, but some are skeptical. But mostly the Boston Latin School. She is too focused on big-picture plans, Bazile says, and she does not have the leadership tools to put in place policies that are going to make those plans actually occur in reality. It creates a level of desperation, Bazile adds, because we cant lose this generation., On the afternoon of November 13, I joined a Zoom call with Cassellius, her chief financial officer, her chief operations officer, and some of her favorite people in the district: her cabinet of student advisers. Plan seemed nearly insurmountable daily life in Boston has not been smooth is something an! Own youngsters its for getting us through this pandemic 's school superintendent since July.! Traveled the city after mayor, one source told me it actually made me think she already has someone mind. With children, says a current BPS official who is critical of her leadership turn 54 in.. Of Eastern Carver County schools in Chaska, MN link below will block access to this site 24! Note that clicking the link below will block access to this site for 24 hours, local voices, big., for most families, the head of school at Boston Latin school close! 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