Looking for a New Principal

The last days of June and the first days of July were an extraordinarily busy and unsettled time. While the events that took place were disturbing, the final result was a triumph for MCSM parents and teachers alike, as both the PTA and the UFT collaborated and made their voices heard all the way to the top of the DOE.

Here’s what happened. Following the unexpected resignation of Principal Corinne Vinal in May, the Regional Superintendent authorized a C-30 process to search for a new principal. The C-30 Committee, which included seven parents, met on the evening of June 11 to interview five candidates who had been selected as finalists from a larger pool of 26 applicants. By the end of the evening, two of the five individuals were chosen for further evaluation by the Regional Superintendent and his staff.

Several days later, members of the teachers’ union and the MCSM PTA each separately discovered that one of the two finalists, Jolanta Rohloff, was the former principal at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn. Ms. Rohloff had been forced to leave her previous position in March amid a huge public outcry rose against her from Lafayette’s students, teachers, parents, and even alumni and local politicians. Not one word about Ms. Rohloff’s previous troubles had been mentioned in the C-30 interviews, a meeting in which parents and teachers alike were told they were not allowed to ask any direct questions of any of the five candidates.

On June 18, PTA President Steve Koss sent a private email to Regional Superintendent Peter Heaney expressing concern about Ms. Rohloff as a finalist for the MCSM Principal’s job. The email explained that the C-30 Committee members felt that they had been misled and asked Mr. Heaney for an opportunity for MCSM parents to meet with him and discuss Ms. Rohloff’s candidacy further. No reply to the email was ever received.

By the following week, news of Ms. Rohloff’s candidacy had become public, appearing first in the New York Post and, several days later, in the Daily News. Randi Weingarten, president of the teachers’ union, spoke out publicly against Ms. Rohloff’s candidacy. In addition, the PTA Executive Board quickly drafted a letter of protest and delivered it to Chancellor Klein’s office.