Dear BCS Community:
Being the principal of Bridport Central School is a full time job! As I reflect on what is required of a principal (and how I know that it is the right decision for me to leave BCS at the end of this year), I feel very confident that to be the educational leader of this wonderful school requires someone's full, undivided attention.
Leadership jobs are tricky and do not scale linearly, based on the number of students and staff in the building. It would be lovely if they did, but my experience is that when I have not been able to devote my full time and energy to the job of principal, the day to day operations and managing of the school might go smoothly for awhile, but what ends up getting missed are the things that are crucial to moving our learning community forward (things like supervision and evaluation, attending IEP and EST meetings, and being the consistent support that staff and students need to do their best work).
It should come as no surprise that a lot of my time during the school day is spent helping students and staff navigate student behaviors, help with making sure there is coverage so that students are safe and staff can take the time they need, and doing my best to communicate with our community. The day to day responding to the above situations is the job of an administrator and difficult to delegate given our staffing levels. Also, there are some decisions (as we have found over the last year when I've been absent) that can only be made by a principal who knows students, staff and parents very well.
When a leader cannot do everything that needs to be done, they need to prioritize. Student safety and responding to unexpected behaviors and situations must take priority. What I have found (again, while I've been here less than full time) is that important priorities such as academic intervention and teacher planning time are disrupted when there is not a full time principal in the building. These interruptions can be small sometimes, but over the course of a school year, they add up. Situations that interrupt learning happen even with a full time principal, for sure, but they happen MORE without a full time principal.
I am sure that the right person, with the right skillset would be able to work to support our students as a part-time principal. It is theoretically possible. The support and planning that would go into such an endeavor would require a well thought out, carefully and explicitly communicated, and collaboratively planned change to our current system. It definitely does not feel like something that could be done quickly or without the buy-in of teachers, staff and parents.
I volunteered to be the principal of BCS and SES this year, and I truly regret that decision. Although my heart was in the right place, it was a decision based on hubris and was definitely more challenging than I anticipated. Again, there may be someone with the skills to manage both schools, but that person is not me nor are they known to me. Again, being the principal of BCS is a full time job and our students deserve someone's undivided attention.
I love BCS and the community of Bridport. I believe that our students are smart, kind, hard working and resilient. I am now and will continue to be invested in this community and encourage parents and staff and administration to come together to build a path forward...together.
Access, Success and Belonging are the words we use as guides to our work. The work begins by coming together to see what is possible, what the choices are, and what is going to work best for this community at this time.
Respectfully,
Matthew Brankman
Principal
