Howard “Gene” Taylor’s brief resignation as the head of North Atlanta High School called attention to deep-rooted difficulties facing city principals when they try to improve their schools, parents say.
Things were so bad Taylor couldn’t even hire a science teacher weeks after the school year started, with substitutes and other teachers having to handle daily instruction in that class, according to his work emails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through the Georgia Open Records Act. He also couldn’t get prompt responses from the Atlanta Public Schools central office, and the hall floors of his new $147 million school weren’t being cleaned.
Taylor felt micromanaged and powerless to make necessary improvements, he wrote in a letter to parents, teachers and the community after changing his mind and resuming the principal’s job last week.
“If we have a level of dysfunction at our central office that would drive principals to the point of feeling like they can’t do their jobs, then we should stand up and take notice of that,” said Mike Everly, chairman of the North Atlanta High Local School Council.
North Atlanta High was supposed to be one of the city’s flagship schools when its new facilities opened this school year — an investment in the future of education as the school system sought to move on from a broad cheating scandal.
But parents said the drama surrounding Taylor’s job, the removal of the school’s former principal last year, and an investigation of alleged racism in the school showed how difficult change can be in a school system with a 51 percent graduation rate and lagging academic achievement.
The North Atlanta principal “was having a hard time just getting things done,” said Lori Smith, whose daughter is a freshman.
Taylor rescinded his resignation last week after Superintendent Erroll Davis listened to his concerns. Davis initially sought to retain Taylor by promoting him to a job overseeing 22 schools, but the Atlanta Board of Education scuttled that move because it wanted a broader application process.
The Atlanta school district denied repeated requests for an interview with Davis, and Associate Superintendent Steve Smith said Wednesday Davis wouldn’t comment further on the topic. Davis said in a statement last week that he would work to improve communication between principals and the district.
Taylor didn’t return phone messages and emails, but he explained his motivations in his letter.
“Principals are often empowered to do little more than receive complaints and pass them along,” Taylor wrote. “I simply could not continue business as usual. … I am a ‘can do’ person and could not continue to work in a ‘You can’t’ system.”
Taylor, who took over at the school less than a year ago, thought when he was hired that he could turn the school around and would have the support of the central office, said Angela Church, co-president of the school’s parent, teacher and student association. And he was able to expand advanced placement classes, improve discipline and create a stricter dress code.
But he had a hard time hiring the teaching staff he wanted, Church said. He wanted more authority to choose his teachers instead of being forced to take on tenured educators who were transferred from schools where they weren’t wanted, Everly said.
“It was always bigger than North Atlanta,” Church said. “We’re hoping this sheds a lot of light on what needs to happen to give the principals power to do what they need to do.”
North Atlanta High has been a school in transition since last Oct. 5 — a day dubbed by students and parents as “Bloody Friday” — when Davis removed former Principal Mark MyGrant and his administrative team. The leadership change came after APS began investigating allegations of racism in the school. (An APS report released last week concluded there were “racial divisions” in the school, but educators didn’t discriminate based on race.)
With key administrators gone, students struggled to find help filling out scholarship applications and getting letters of recommendation, said Cameron Halter, who led a student protest of the changes. Halter, who graduated last year, said students got up from their desks and marched to the school football field to show their support for MyGrant before returning to class after more than an hour.
“North Atlanta High is a great school, but how APS is treating students and teachers, and how they’re managing everything, that’s the problem. It’s not the school itself,” Halter said.
The APS report on the racism investigation said a majority of students interviewed believed North Atlanta’s small learning communities were segregated based on race. However, current students said in interviews conducted in the school’s parking deck Tuesday that they don’t think the school is divided by race, especially after Taylor restructured the small learning communities this year.
Now, grade levels are emphasized more than academic programs, resulting in more racially diverse classes, they said.
“Maybe it’s a perception issue, but it’s definitely not reality,” said senior Rob Woolfolk, who is black.
Santiago Seals, also a senior, said students tend to make friends with those who share their racial background, but that’s their choice.
“When it comes to racial diversity, it’s all up to students,” said Seals, who is black. “If you want to stay in your group, you can do that. It’s not like it’s forced on you, but some students do have that perception.”
Not all parents were satisfied with the school district’s resolution of recent controversies.
Kimberly Headen, whose daughter is a sophomore, said Taylor hasn’t been responsive to parent concerns and her daughter is taking classes that still lack textbooks nearly two months into the school year.
“Building a facility that’s not properly staffed and doesn’t have the proper tools to educate students seems rather foolhardy to me,” Headen said. “The focus of that school is not on academics. It’s placed somewhere else.”
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