Jenny Peek
Interim principal Annemarie Engdahl (left, with umbrella) greets students as they arrive for the first day of school at Sherman Middle School.
After a summer of tumultuous, high-profile transitions, Sherman staff kicked off the new school year by rolling out the red carpet.
With umbrellas in hand, about two dozen teachers and staff — including new interim principal Annemarie Engdahl — doled out high-fives, hugs and greetings to a stampede of groggy middle schoolers, while doting parents filmed the soiree on cell phones.
Embarrassment and eye-rolls aside, the energy was high.
Just three months ago, the school community was roiling over a blog post penned by teacher Karen Vieth about Sherman and its former principal, Kristin Foreman.
“I am leaving this district, because I cannot serve the children I love in the current climate,” Vieth wrote. “I have never seen a building as deeply in crisis as Sherman Middle School, yet my cries for help went unanswered for three years. I saw ‘Band Aid’ fixes and many more promises. I saw a principal being given chance after chance and three years of her being coddled and coached with no substantive change.”
The post spread like wildfire on social media. Parents, former students and teachers added fuel to the fire by sharing personal experiences and commentary on what they referred to as a school in crisis. Criticisms ranged from a lack of visibility to high turnover rates to blatant disrespect toward staff.
One Sherman teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, tells Isthmus that Foreman provided “little to no true leadership.”
Heather Banschbach, the mother of a sixth and eighth grader at Sherman, agrees that there were problems at the school. While Sherman didn’t have a formal PTO in the past two years, she says there was an informal parent group that met throughout Foreman’s tenure. Parents frequently vented to the group and Banschbach has about 100 emails from parents raising concerns about the school administration.
“I had a few families who had never been directly involved with the school come to me and ask for help advocating for their kids,” Banschbach writes in an email. “I can’t list all of the issues that came up. I just remember the big ones that were consistent were safety, staff morale, communication, policies, lack of parent involvement/input, and the overall culture of the school being toxic.”
In response to Vieth’s post, Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham called the incident a “public shaming of a principal of color.”
“We do not believe this type and tenor of dialogue represents who we are or how we want to solve problems in MMSD. While we fully embrace the feedback, it is important that our words and actions align with our core values of belonging, inclusion and racial equity,” Cheatham wrote.
For Banschbach, the response was incredibly disappointing.
“Not only did they not actually respond to the concerns that were being raised or take responsibility for how the administration (school and district) had failed the Sherman community repeatedly, but they painted the issue as a race issue,” she says.
“I don’t want to imply that no one was speaking out from a place of racism,” she adds. “However, I strongly believe that the vast majority of teachers and parents who spoke up were coming from a place of legitimate concern over the safety and quality of education the students were receiving.”
Foreman resigned her position a week after the blog posting and wrote to the school: “I have come to the conclusion that given the current context, the best decision for me and for Sherman is for me to leave my position as principal.”
Cheatham and the district accepted Foreman’s resignation, but offered her an administrative job in the central office. A permanent position is being fleshed out.
“We made sure to tell Kristin that we didn’t want to lose her,” Cheatham says. “We were quite honestly disheartened that Kristin couldn’t find a way forward because of what happened.”
Cheatham says Foreman’s strengths lie in her ability to create trusting relationships with the most vulnerable students.
“What happened was pretty tragic actually and unfortunate for everyone involved,” Cheatham says. She empathizes with how hard it is to be a school administrator.
“Every school leader, principals especially, perform their jobs under a microscope,” she says. “Every mistake we make as leaders is often dissected. And I believe that leaders of color are often held to even higher standards.”
Cheatham says the district had heard about problems at Sherman from both parents and Foreman. It responded by implementing a process called “collaborative problem-solving” and increasing support for Foreman. However, these efforts were implemented not long before the blog post came out.
In an email to Isthmus, Foreman says she’s hopeful that Sherman will thrive and she’s enthusiastic about serving in another role. “I learned immensely from my time at Sherman and I am even stronger in my resolve to work on behalf of all students,” she writes. “My hope and belief is that many of us have come together, learned, and improved our work on behalf of all students.”
The teacher who asked to remain anonymous says this was a “crushing moment” in her career, referring to an aftermath that has been confusing and toxic.
She wonders how the district plans to address the issues of race that have percolated into the conversation.
“In what way has this experience prompted reflective action upon and against a racially unjust community? Particularly for the district representatives who said they were ‘concerned’ about the content of the blog, especially because Ms. Foreman is black,” the teacher writes in an email. “Since the district came out with that statement, it is also their responsibility to say what they mean and bring conscious action to this issue if they really believe there are racial reasons behind the criticisms.”
Going forward, the teacher hopes Sherman can heal. “At this point, what would be amazing is to get leadership and guidance and healing from the drama,” she says.
That’s what interim-principal Engdahl hopes to do. After more than 30 listening sessions, a week of professional development, and a community service day, Engdahl is calling for a renewed focus.
“This is really about not an absolute renewal but certainly a refresh and a re-grounding in what makes the Sherman family a family,” Engdahl says.
She is excited to work on three goals for the year: making sure Sherman is grounded in the community, ensuring that all of Sherman’s students are supported, and conveying that Sherman is a special place.
“I’m not here on accident. I’m choosing Sherman and in some ways, Sherman is choosing me.” Engdahl says. “I feel a great sense of responsibility to ensure that our students and our families and even our staff are supported with a clear vision and some clear systems, so that’s really the work of this year.”
While Banschbach is optimistic, she says it’s still too early to tell how the change in leadership will affect Sherman’s climate.
“Sherman didn’t go from an excelling school to a struggling school in a day or a week. It took years,” she writes. “It will take more than a couple of weeks to change the culture at the school.
“Ms. Engdahl is in a really difficult place,” Banschbach adds. “She has a new staff, one that has a larger than usual portion of less experienced teachers. She has a student body that has to relearn school expectations and also needs time to trust the school/staff. She has parents who are optimistic, but still skeptical.”
And, since Engdahl was appointed as an interim principal, it’s possible she’ll be there only for a year, Banschbach says. “So, I think we have a long way to go before we can say the culture at Sherman has changed.”
