MCPS Broad Acres Elementary School

Transformation at Broad Acres Elementary
A Union and Management Collaboration in

Restructuring the School System’s
Lowest Performing School
Introduction
In November of 2000, the teachers’ union president got a call from the MCPS
Associate Superintendent for Human Resources, asking him to attend an
urgent meeting on the future of Broad Acres Elementary School. Apparently,
the Superintendent had decided to “re-constitute” the district’s lowest
performing school before the State did. In this era of No Child Left Behind,
the State of Maryland was targeting severely underperforming schools for
takeover and the pressure was on school system leadership to take dramatic
action. Montgomery County had 17 schools that stood out as needing
intervention, Broad Acres having the lowest scores. In the district’s view, it
was time for decisive action.
The teachers’ union had a different view of the Broad Acres situation and the
interventions needed to turn this school around. “Re-constitution” sounded
to the union like giving up on the faculty of the existing school when, in fact,
that faculty was working hard and had outstanding qualities that could be
developed in ways that would improve school performance. The union was
familiar with the school and saw the school’s internal strengths and the staff
and administration’s commitment as assets on which to build.
Background
The School
Broad Acres Elementary School (BAES) is a pre-K to 5th grade school serving
480 students in the southeast corner of Montgomery County, Maryland, near
the District of Columbia and Prince Georges County. The staff includes 29
teachers, 15 support staff, a principal and assistant principal. The school was
built in 1952 and renovated in 1974. By 2000, the facility was clearly
inadequate. For example, there were approximately 12 portable classrooms
in use.
Scores on the MSPAP state test given in 3rd and 5th grade in 1999 were stuck
at 14% meeting standard in reading and 5% in math. That level of
achievement wasn’t new for BAES, but rather had come to be expected.
Student achievement had remained low for decades, seemingly unaffected by
extra resources in the form of added staff, “linkages to learning” health
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Case written and developed by Mark Simon, Tom Mooney Institute for Teacher and Union Leadership,
2007. A teaching tool, it may be used freely with attribution. Questions, call 240-603-6450.
services, and head start. Broad Acres had, for some time, been the lowest
performing elementary school in the district.
Broad Acres is the highest poverty school in the district, with 90% of the
students on free and reduced lunch and a 30% mobility rate. Virtually all of
the students belong to ethnic minorities: 67% Hispanic, 21% African
American and 11% Asian, with a large percentage of all ethnicities recent
immigrants. The school had just one white student in 2000.
Broad Acres Elementary School

Profile of Students
FARMS* Mobility**
90% 30%
Hispanic African Asian
American
67% 21% 11%
The District
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is a large and relatively well-to-

do district just north of Washington DC. With 140,000 students in 195
schools, it employs over 10,000 teachers, almost 600 administrators, and
7,000 support staff. Ninety percent of MCPS high school graduates go on to
college. District-wide, the student population is 42% white, 23% African
American, 20% Hispanic and 15% Asian, with 25% of its students on free
and reduced priced meals, the measure of poverty. Over the course of the
1999-2000 school year, schools with persistently low test scores stood out.
Seventeen high-poverty, low-performing schools were identified for special
attention, and of those, Broad Acres was the neediest. Out of 195 county
schools BAES had by far the neediest population and the lowest scores.
The Union
The County’s teachers are represented by the Montgomery County Education

Association (MCEA), NEA’s 4th largest local, staffed by one full-time released
president, an Executive Director, and eight Uniserv professionals. Their
offices are called the MCEA conference center because of the daily trainings
and meetings that take place there. It is governed by a 16 person Board of
Directors and a 200 person Representative Assembly that meets monthly. A
two-week strike in 1968 led to collective bargaining, which had become a
fairly routine process until the union expanded its agenda in 1997 into the
realm of improving the quality of teaching and learning.
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MCEA had taken NEA president Bob Chase’s call for a New Unionism very
seriously. At the union’s initiative, but with some reluctance on the part of
the BOE, a new pattern in labor-management relations was taking shape in
MCPS. In the summer of 1997 the union proposed and the BOE voted by a
contentious 4-3 vote to accept using interest-based bargaining for the first
time. The processes and terminology of interest-based negotiations started
to permeate the relationship between the union and management, making
every interaction a problem-solving exercise. The 10,000 member local
championed, and negotiated, peer review, site-based decision making, and
the creation of an extensive professional growth system for teachers. In just
two years between 1997 and 1999, the local had become a driving force
behind many reforms aimed at improving the quality of teaching and
learning.
To some, the union’s powerful quality agenda represented a threat to

management prerogatives. Principals felt their control eroding, and the
School Board, too, was divided over whether the expansion of the bargaining
agenda and the role of the union in issues of curriculum, assessment and
instruction was a good thing.
The Superintendent
In the summer of 1999 the Board of Education hired a new, dynamic
superintendent, Jerry Weast, most recently from North Carolina. Immediately
upon his hiring, Weast seized the moral high ground with a powerful sense of
urgency and greater honesty about the performance gap between high
poverty, high minority schools and the more privileged schools in the rest of
the County. The union supported this emphasis and worked with the new
superintendent’s team to help craft and draft a challenging strategic action
plan: “A Call To Action.”
Weast turned the central office into a data-disseminating machine. The

67,000 students in the highest poverty schools were designated as “Red
Zone” schools, nearly half the school system’s total enrollment. In the Red
Zone 75% of students were minorities, 37% received federal Free and
Reduced-price Meals System (FARMS) assistance, and 14% were enrolled in
ESOL. By comparison in the rest of the schools, known as Green Zone
schools, 38% were minorities, 9% received FARMS assistance, and 5% were
in ESOL.
Jerry Weast moved quickly on an agenda aimed at “raising the bar” and
“closing the gap.” It included:
• All day kindergarten in Red Zone schools
• Lower class size in Red Zone schools
• Diagnostic assessment of all kindergarten students
• Curriculum “blueprints” aligned with state standards
• “skillful teacher” training
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• Creation of a computerized student and school data analysis system
• Intense pressure on principals to produce results
Under Weast, the District was also becoming increasingly centralized – a

centrally aligned curriculum back-mapped from the state standards,
alignment across all schools on what teaching materials and texts could be
used, and new formative and summative assessments beyond what the state
required that were designed to support instructional improvements, including
standardizing the content and determining the pacing of instruction. A new
grading and reporting policy and system aimed to make grades more
meaningful, allow less variation among teachers, and increase the frequency
of communication to parents was also introduced in 2003.
At Broad Acres Elementary School, the system-wide development of a

standards-based curriculum seemed to some to be starting to have a positive
effect. The new principal, Jody Leleck, together with teacher instructional
leaders, had obtained the draft curriculum blueprints in math and language
arts before they were out for use system-wide. Beginning in the summer of
2000 the staff had been engaged in hard work rethinking the school’s
approaches to how to organize instruction. While benefiting from the system-
wide reform efforts, the work being done a BAES was home-grown, focused
on teacher instructional leadership, and highly collaborative.
District Perspective
The Superintendent knew that he and the system would be judged by one
thing, and one thing only. A rise in student achievement scores, particularly
those of minority students and in chronically underperforming schools would
allow the schools to justify larger budgets and would win the praises of media
pundits, parents, and the politicians who held the purse strings. Chronically
underperforming schools, on the other hand, justified intervention by the
state, and Superintendent Weast was determined to avoid any state
intervention in MCPS. In addition to the natural tendency to resist outside
intrusion, there was some personal friction between Weast and Nancy
Grasmick, the Maryland Superintendent of Schools.
In the Fall of 2000, the Superintendent had decided to act on the chronic
underperformance at Broad Acres. He believed dramatic changes were
necessary and had asked his Associate Superintendent for Human Resources
to request a meeting to get the union’s blessing for “reconstituting” the
school. Specifically, he wanted to remove the new principal, Jody Leleck, and
bring in a new teaching staff.
This was not a precipitous decision. Test scores had been flat or declining for
decades. The staff had been relatively stable under the previous long-serving
and widely respected principal. Some modest steps had been taken. The
school system leadership had tried the year before bringing in an outside
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consultant to train the faculty to narrow and focus the curriculum, and more
uniformly adopt teaching guidelines. This approach didn’t seem to work.
Therefore, to Weast, re-constitution seemed like an unavoidable next step.
That would mean that yet another new principal would be brought in and a
new teaching staff would be selected. Existing teachers and the principal who
had been brought in less than a year earlier would be invited to re-apply for
their jobs at BAES, but only those teachers deemed to be up to the task
would be selected.
Weast knew that getting the union’s blessing for an unprecedented and
drastic step like reconstitution was essential. There were contract issues as
well as concerns about sustaining a collaborative relationship with the union.
Union’s Perspective
The union agreed that something had to be done about the achievement
issues at Broad Acres and embraced the challenge of becoming centrally
engaged in the project. However, the union’s diagnosis of the problems and
prescriptions for improvement were fundamentally different from those of the
management team. The teaching staff and principal, the union maintained,
were not the problem. On the contrary, the school had excellent teachers.
This was the principal’s first assignment, but she was evidently highly skilled
and well respected by her staff. The existing staff, they maintained, was
capable of a successful home-grown restructuring. The union opposed the
idea of reconstitution.
From the union’s perspective, Broad Acres had the potential to become a
model of a collaborative school, where the teaching staff was trusted and
supported, and a professional climate contributed to school success. It
became important to the union to challenge the assumptions behind the “test
and punish” approach, and to create and document a model of what
investing in the teaching staff looked like.
To the union, Broad Acres looked like a school that had started to do the
right things that year. Together, the staff and relatively new principal were
working incredibly hard and smart. What they needed most was recognition
of the additional time spent for teaming and collective analysis of student
work. The people on the ground, the union felt, deserved support, not
replacement.
The problem was not the faculty and administration, but rather the lack of
recognition of the challenge the existing staff faced in achieving very much
better results. The union’s counter-proposal: offer every teacher and the
principal a chance to participate in the challenge of dramatically improving
student achievement at BAES. Design the re-structuring with the staff,
respecting the staff as, potentially, the solution, not the problem. Intensive
efforts to get significantly below grade level students up to standard was
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going to take an extraordinary effort and teachers simply needed quality
professional development and the support of the system for the unusual time
commitment it was going to take. It follows logically that if significantly
more work was going to be expected, then there would have to be higher
pay for the time.
Fledgling Efforts Deemed Worth Support at BAES

The union had been paying close attention to the efforts underway at BAES. ,
Over the summer of 2000, at the beginning of her tenure as BAES, principal
Leleck had traded in 42 para-educator hours to create 3 part-time teacher
leadership positions: a math content coach, an instructional support teacher,
and a reading specialist position. All of these teacher leaders still taught their
own students for half the day. The principal and a handful of teachers had
constituted a reading strategy team that was training the staff to use a
“reading recovery” model with labor intensive “running records.” The
progress students were making had started to be posted publicly to the staff
every other week on the school’s online data system, making each teacher’s
student achievement public knowledge on the staff. A similar diagnostic
approach was being taken to align math instruction to gaps in what students
knew. The old math “ISM” system was being phased-out, deemed too
subjective. Under that system almost all the students had routinely been
deemed to be on grade level, and little attention had been paid to math
instruction. There was a lively debate and discussion on the staff about what
to replace the ISM system with, and the principal encouraged the
collaborative engagement in the search of a solution. The staff development
teacher was an accomplished teacher and highly respected by the staff. His
job was to organize school based staff development. In short, the union felt
that the ingredients for a lively, collaborative, professional learning
community were in place.
The Resolution
The union began to work on a specific proposal to be presented to the
administration as a formal memorandum of understanding. As they went
back and forth to reach consensus with the superintendent’s representatives,
it turned out to be easier than expected to agree on components of a plan –
a minimum three year commitment from staff for anyone who stayed so
that the investment would be worth it and the school would have stability;
staff-wide training during the first summer to establish a common
language to talk about teaching;
increased time required each week and during the summer that would
justify additional compensation. These things constituted changed
working conditions and would require a waiver to the contract.
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The union assigned their vice president, who was now in a full-time position
at the union by mutual agreement with the administration as co-chair of the
Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program, to start spending time at Broad
Acres and to ensure that the proposal reflected what the staff could live with.
For the union, the proposal needed to feel like something attractive, and not
a punishment. The question was how attractive a package could the
administration swallow?
The union’s view on salary was a tough sell. Management was open to paying
teachers more, but argued that it should be a flat dollar amount to attract
teachers to such a school. To the union that sounded like “combat pay,” and
they opposed it. The union proposed a salary supplement based on the
employee’s daily rate of pay, added to the retirement-eligible annual pay, to
acknowledge the added hours expected of this job. The union hoped that this
proposal would give teachers an incentive to stay and make a commitment to
Broad Acres for the long haul, not as a way-station to the softer kind of job
teachers might see as a career. The administration was concerned about
establishing any kind of precedent for significantly higher salary that would
make the plan prohibitively expensive to replicate in other schools.
In the end, after much back and forth, both parties agreed to a unique job
description with a salary supplement for each teacher premised on six days
training in the summer to participate in the Studying Skillful Teaching
professional development training, and 15 additional work days. How those
days would be used was to be determined by the staff. After some
discussion in the leadership team and with affirmation by the entire staff,
including supporting services, it was decided that everyone would work two
additional hours -- a longer work day -- every Wednesday, all year. The
supplement would be set at four different levels based on the average rate of
pay at four bands on the salary schedule at the bottom, top, and two middle
levels. The annual salary supplement would count toward retirement. The
teachers would have to agree to stay for a minimum of three years. A
memorandum of understanding describing unique work hours, compensation
package, and three-year commitment was written and signed by the union
president and the superintendent. It was now ready to be offered to each
teacher at Broad Acres Elementary.
A Strategy is Unveiled
With agreement on the memorandum of understanding, but still slightly

different agendas, a meeting of the BAES faculty was called. To the
Superintendent’s staff, this was viewed as a public unveiling. They had
seeded an article in the Washington Post for the following day. To the union,
the audience was primarily internal: the BAES staff, and they were unaware
of the contact with the Post.
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Early, before school on a February morning in 2001, the BAES staff was
called together to a meeting with the Associate Superintendent for Human
Resources, the Community Superintendent and the union president. The
meeting was brief. It was supposed to simply inform the staff that there was
going to be a restructuring at Broad Acres, that both the union and
management were involved, and that each staff member would be met with
individually, but few details would be discussed.
Once again, perhaps due to inadequate planning, the different views of

management and the union were on display. From the HR associate
superintendent, according to teachers present, the message was “We’re not
making it here.” “Things have to change.” “For many of you it may not be a
good match here at Broad Acres.” “You’re all going to have to re-apply for
your jobs. Many of you may not have the right skill sets.”
According to one teacher, “That initial meeting was god-awful. The tone –
You don’t know what you’re doing and we need to get people who do – had
been set.”
The union felt betrayed. In the next week high level meetings were held
between union and management in which the union secured an agreement
that no one would have to reapply for their jobs, but rather would be able to
choose whether to stay at Broad Acres or not. “The ground-rules had
changed. But for many teachers, the tone had been set in that initial
meeting,” recounted one teacher. In addition, when the article appeared in
the Post, the public perception was that the school was being re-constituted.
Trust would have to be earned back.
The Principal
Principal Jody Leleck had arrived at the end of the summer of 2000. She
described the school she found as, “a pretty comfortable place. There was
low staff turnover. Title I money had been spent on field trips and cultural
arts. The kids weren’t in the classroom.”
Leleck knew that if the school was going to succeed it was going to take an
unusual, Herculean effort on the part of her staff. Neither being their best
friend, nor being a tyrant would win their “buy in” to what it would take to
turn the school around. Instead, she would have to provide two things they
needed – protection from having to spend time doing anything not valuable
to them and their students, and belief in and support for their ability to
figure out what needed to be done. She would be their constant instructional
guide and mentor, and she would not compromise her expectations for
improved student achievement.
The district, the union, and the principal all realized that re-gaining the trust
of the staff was key. Leleck commented on what made the difference in re-
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establishing trust: “Bonnie Cullison (the union vice president) was masterful,”
she reflected. “The focus that Bonnie presented on behalf of MCEA was ‘this
is about the kids.’ The teachers saw Bonnie, (Associate Superintendent)
Susan Marks, and me as equals and equally invested in their success.”
Leleck continued, “People already knew who didn’t want to be part of that
culture. They knew it – this was going to be a very strong professional
learning community because that is what needed to happen to increase
student achievement. Either you chose to be a part of that or you didn’t,
before committing to the three years.”
Implementation
Over the next few months, union vice president Bonnie Cullison and Kimberly
Statham, the community superintendent in charge of Broad Acres met with
every teacher--inviting each teacher to stay, but clearly describing new, joint
expectations in terms of teaming, planning, and the requirement for teacher
leadership. It was also an opportunity for staff members to ask questions and
talk about their perceptions of the process. The principal was intentionally
not involved in these meetings. The decision to stay or leave was going to be
up to each teacher. Two thirds of the staff elected to stay, and one third, for
a variety of reasons, elected to leave and get preferential transfer status.
Over the next year, the MCEA vice president made Broad Acres her second
home, spending more time there than anywhere else, helping to facilitate the
implementation of plans developed by the principal and staff on what the
reorganization would look like.
The next three years, from Fall of 2001 to the Spring of 2004 constituted an
experiment in union-district collaboration to invest in the district’s lowest
performing school and that school’s staff. Teachers were paid more (the
equivalent of 20 extra days the first year and 15 thereafter), and put in more
time, but the hard work wasn’t done for the money. The extra commitment
was modeled by the principal and strong relationships were founded on
mutual respect.
Every member of the staff underwent 6 days of training together in the

language of the “skillful teacher.” Wednesdays were team and work group
meeting days until 6 PM. Using a block schedule, teachers had teaching
partners who shared a group of children, with each teacher providing content
specific instruction. This allowed teachers to plan both as vertical content
area teams and as grade level teams. Teachers met two days a week during
common planning time. School based curriculum content specialists
(positions that were full-time in many schools) taught students for half their
time, contributing to their legitimacy as teacher leaders in the school.
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According to 5th grade teacher, Cindy, “You couldn’t point to any table in the
staff lounge and not see a leader… Every teacher was leading something.”
Every member of the staff served on at least one teacher-chaired structure

group which made decisions about the organization of teaching and learning.
The structure groups included: Curriculum Implementation Sessions (by
subject discipline); Study Groups (on 3-5 different teacher-initiated topics
and outside reading books at any one time); Examining Student Work
(vertical teams by discipline and grade level teams); Professional
Development; and Walkthroughs (teacher-only Learning Walks).
Teacher-led study groups read Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children, Ruby
Payne’s books, Richard Rothstein, Jonathan Kozol, and more. Mary, the
reading recovery teacher, described with excitement the “powerful, amazing
discussions” that ensued.
Broad Acres charted its own path to improvement. The school ignored or
turned upside down many countywide initiatives. The school decided to
departmentalize instruction, more of a middle school approach. The principal
called it creating “teaching partners” along curricular content lines, but the
fact is that in MCPS it was considered heresy for an elementary school. The
principal was initially opposed to the suggestion from her staff to do this, but
she bowed to strong sentiment among teachers, who maintained it would
help them to focus their skills.
The rest of MCPS used formative assessments called “tuning protocols.”

BAES staff tried it, but after a year switched to a protocol of “examining
student work” that was less rigid. The structure committee examined
different models and made a recommendation to the staff, and they made
the switch.
Learning “Walkthroughs” were also turned on their heads the way BAES
implemented them. In the rest of the County, walkthroughs were an
opportunity for district administrators to walk into classes throughout the
school to get a snapshot of instruction. At BAES, no administrator
participated in walkthroughs. They were teacher led and only teachers
participated. This too was “heresy” for the principal not to participate. At first
the walkthroughs were timid events. But then the staff-led walkthroughs
began to focus on the tough stuff: student gender differences, or unpacking
what was going on in the classroom based on the data on Hispanic boys. As a
result of training that the union helped to organize with the University of
Pittsburgh Institute for Learning (IFL) during the summer of 2004, teachers
began to focus learning walkthroughs on a rough approximation of
components of the IFL’s principles of learning.
Math instruction diverged from the county curriculum. BAES chose to use
Saxon Math as a text, teaching more to the voluntary state curriculum. No
other MCPS school did it that way.
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While other low-performing elementary schools were being pressured to
adopt Reading First and Horizons, BAES stayed clear of scripted approaches.
The union-management collaboration on this experiment and the growing
credibility of the principal, who was achieving results, protected the pattern
of decisions made uniquely at Broad Acres and protected them from the
political pressure on principals to accede to scripted programs.
Meghna, a 4th and 5th grade teacher explained, “Jody instilled a sense of only
doing what made sense, not jumping because someone said jump. We were
honest with ourselves about things we were doing that weren’t working.”
The result, after three years, was a school community of teachers and
administrators making instructional decisions together, tailoring instructional
decision making and planning analysis of student work. The school earned a
reputation for long work hours and unusual dedication, and by the end of the
third year, to unprecedented academic achievement.
Results
By the end of 2003--the second year of the BAES collaborative experiment--,
second grade reading scores increased by 18%, language 28%, language
mechanics 29%, math 30% and math computation 25%. The following year,
2004-05, saw significant further gains across the board except for a slight dip
in reading in grade 5. Among 4th grade African American students the
number achieving math proficiency rose to 93%. The three-year trend
meant Broad Acres had achieved AYP. Math score improvement was better
than any other school in the County.
2003 2004
Grade and Subject % Grade and Subject %
Increase in Students
Scores Achieving
Proficiency
3rd Grade
2d Grade Reading 75%
Reading +18% Math 67%
Language +28% 4th Grade
Language Mechanics +29% Reading 67%
Math +30% Math 82%
Math computation +25% Math (AA students) 93%
5th Grade
Reading 60%
Math 54%
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In 2004 the Broad Acres faculty voted to affiliate with the union’s non-profit
training and development arm—the Center For Teacher Leadership—as part
of the Center’s NBPTS project. Encouraged by the support they would receive
through the Center’s Montgomery County Network of National Board Certified
Teachers, 13 of the 36 BAES teachers decided to go for National Board
Certification. After a year, 60% of the BAES candidates achieved National
Board Certification on their first attempt, almost double the national average.
Conclusion
During 2004-05 the district and the union were basking in the success of the
BAES restructuring. It was a success on many levels. According to Principal
Leleck the lesson was clear: “The reason Broad Acres succeeded was teacher
leadership; and everyone holding themselves accountable for every student.”
Looking forward, the union and the district were primarily focused on the
implications of Broad Acres success for other schools and extracting the right
lessons. How would the Broad Acres history be framed and written? How
would the “model” be described? What would be the “lessons learned’? How
would the Broad Acres experience inform interventions and professional
development in other MCPS schools? Would the district try to replicate the
Broad Acres strategy? How would the district’s extra financial commitment
be explained and sustained? How would momentum at Broad Acres be
sustained now that the sense of urgency had passed and some success had
been achieved?
At the school level, personnel were tired and concerned about the future.
Now that the three-year lock on teachers leaving was over, what could be
done to minimize teachers leaving? How would they sustain their
momentum? What kind of continuing support would they derive from the
district? What would they need to continue to close the achievement gaps
while working in a way that was sustainable for the long term?
Activity: Write in your journal answers to the questions just posed above.
Consider your perspective as a union leader in your responses, but consider
also how the superintendent of schools would answer the same questions. In
the end, your answers should be designed to meet the interests and needs of
both the union and the school system management.
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Part Two
District level
Telling the Story
In the autumn of 2004, the union considered developing a research project

to document the Broad Acres experience--to conduct interviews with the
Broad Acres staff that describe the unique joint school improvement model
and lessons learned. The principal and members of the staff had attempted
themselves to do some writing but it was harder than they thought and came
to nothing. They welcomed the offer of outside help from the union and it’s
Center for Teacher Leadership. This question of how to tell the story emerged
as the next stage of the drama between the union and management.
The superintendent had similar ideas about controlling the implications of

BAES success, and early that Fall started talking with Bonnie Cullison, now
the union president, about creating an “Institute for School Change” in the
district to draw the lessons of Broad Acres and other successful schools.
What management seemed to fear most was endorsement of a significantly

higher cost model, including a higher rate of pay, as the baseline cost of
success. They wanted a model descriptor that did not include the extra cost
to the system of having to replicate what Broad Acres had received.
Cullison decided to cooperate with the superintendent’s plan, but insisted

that any study of successful models involve independent, external
researchers mutually agreed upon. The superintendent agreed to contract
with the union-proposed external investigator to head up the project, but
insisted on a steering committee comprised of the superintendent’s executive
staff and the three employee union presidents to oversee the project. The
study would lead to the creation of an Institute with full-time “school change
coaches.” A small cohort of schools would be invited to join the Institute to
be coached by a team that would help them build learning communities. Each
year there would be another cohort affiliated with the institute.
The superintendent and the union president agreed on one fundamental

point, which became the philosophical basis for their collaboration. Both the
union president and the superintendent shared a hypothesis that successful
schools seemed to have in common a school culture of distributed leadership
and shared vision. There was a mutual interest in a process that would
support, train and encourage collaborative principals who could engage in
distributed leadership in their schools. The principals’ union, MCAASP, was
very much a player in these deliberations. The MCAASP president had her
own hypothesis about Broad Acres. Her view: a strong and creative principal
made success happen. It all depends on the leader.
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Instead of a case study of the Broad Acres experience, the superintendent’s
plan proposed a trio of case studies done during the 2004-05 school year to
draw lessons from “successful schools” and to lay the foundation for what
was to become the Professional Learning Communities Institute. Three
successful schools were identified for study: Broad Acres Elementary, Viers
Mill Elementary (less low income and without any union involvement), and
McNair Elementary (higher income and also without involvement of the
union). The superintendent’s public relations manager was assigned to
oversee the writing of the case studies. The independent lead investigator
promised by Weast was never used, as planned, in the writing of the studies.
Upon her review of the case study drafts, she communicated with the
superintendent her concerns about the lack of rigor in the case studies, and
the minimal mention of the role of the union in Broad Acres’ success.
Despite these concerns, MCPS published the case studies internally during
the summer of 2005, and established the Professional Learning Community
Institute in the fall of 2005, selecting 11 schools to participate in a year-long
process of study, discussion and “professional growth” to develop learning
community practices. The principal of one of the other case study schools
was selected to head up the PLCI. No other staff—school system
administrators or teachers-- were assigned to work with these eleven
schools. Days before the PLCI was to begin its inaugural year, the
Superintendent and teacher’s union president reached an agreement that
MCPS would place one “teacher on special assignment” into an instructional
specialist position at the PLCI to support the PLCI director. The union’s
recommended candidate—a member of the union’s Board of directors, a
nationally-certified NBPTS teacher, and school staff development teacher—
was appointed.
Implications for District Interventions and Training-

Broad Acres is now used in the PLC Institute in MCPS to help other schools
draw lessons for themselves. According to Jamie Virga, director of the Professional
Learning Communities Institute:
The PLCI Broad Acres case study provides important lessons about the power of shared
leadership, high expectations, frequent monitoring of student performance, and focused
professional development. In the PLCI, leadership teams from over 20 schools read,
analyze, and discuss the Broad Acres case study. The case study serves as a platform
for reflection, self-assessment, and action planning. School teams see the results
achieved at Broad Acres and begin to ask themselves "How could we change what we
are doing to get better results for our students?"
Nowhere in the conversation with other schools through the PLCI about how Broad
Acres achieved its success is the additional pay or extended time mentioned. Schools
are encouraged to figure out how to replicate Broad Acres results, but not by replicating
the changed working conditions laid out in the union’s memorandum of understanding.
By identifying three schools that exemplify success, the uniqueness of Broad Acres and
the financial implications are eliminated from the lessons. No other school has been
offered the Broad Acres package described in the memorandum of understanding.
_________________________________________________________________ 14
School Level
A New Year at Broad Acres
Meanwhile, back at Broad Acres ES, the opening of school in 2004-2005 was
smooth. There had been very few departures from the staff, in spite of the
fact that the three-year requirement to stay had ended. The offer of intensive
support for National Board Certification candidacy through the Center for
Teacher Leadership had been a new little sweetener for some.
But principal Jody Leleck herself was talking burnout. “Jody made everyone
feel like they could do it. She lived it, 24-7, and we were all behind her.” said
Cindy, a 4th and 5th grade math teacher. The sentiment was echoed by the
other teachers interviewed. In fact, what Jody had done was to empower the
staff by creating structures, resources, and an expectation that they could
design change themselves. Each teacher served on multiple decision-making
teams. Each teacher was provided with extensive data-books on their
students. All this principal had done was equip the teaching staff well with
the resources they needed for the challenge of the mission. The principal had
herself stepped back while always making sure the staff had what they
needed.
Then, just two months into the school year a bombshell was dropped when
the principal announced that she had accepted an appointment in the central
office as a Director of School Performance. In this role, she was to work with
other principals to coach them on the strategies she had used successfully at
Broad Acres. However, she was in this position for only 4 months before she
was appointed Associate Superintendent for Curriculum and Instructional
Programs. The search was on for a new principal. The person chosen to take
the helm, Suzette Chagnon, was a former Catholic school principal from the
same neighborhood as Broad Acres. She arrived in November, 2004.
The glow of BAES success continued when Montgomery County’s teacher of

the year, BAES teacher Kim Oliver, was selected as Maryland teacher of the
year and then national teacher of the year in 2006. Teachers were
apprehensive about the transition to the new principal, but Chagnon
reassured the staff that she wasn’t going to mess with success.
At the end of the 2004-05 school year, however, three key instructional
leaders – the reading specialist, the gifted and talented coordinator and the
math coordinator – followed Jody to the central office to continue working
with her. Broad Acres lost part of it’s core instructional leadership group.
But the superintendent and central office’s attention to Broad Acres had
shifted. It was no longer on the state watch list. The union also appeared to
shift its focus to other priorities. So it caught everyone by surprise in April,
_________________________________________________________________ 15
2006 when ten successful teachers, a surprising number, put their names on
the transfer list out of Broad Acres.
Heather, who started her teaching career at BAES just five years earlier and
one of several teachers who had decided to transfer out that Spring put it
this way. “It used to be fun to come here. We were recognized and
appreciated. What made Broad Acres unique was the trust within your co-
workers. There was an open door policy – no secrets.” “There’ve been a lot
of changes. It’s the lack of structure, the lack of communication. Now if you
have a problem with a kid, you hear it from the kid not an administrator or a
colleague… It bugs me that you hear people in the halls saying I’m staying
for the money. That bothers me.”
Julie, who also decided to leave in 2006, spoke of her disappointment. “It
was all about expectations. They were set high. We rose to the occasion and
we succeeded. Instruction changed. It was more aligned. Teachers planned
together. Now the staff is bitching all the time. The administration doesn’t
see the big picture of where we’re coming from or going to. Things feel
cliquish and inequitable and it feels like we can get away with anything.”
The experiment at Broad Acres continues – the higher annual rate of pay, the
structure groups, many of the same teachers. A major renovation of the
physical plant took place during 2005-06, and the students and staff moved
back to the newly renovated school in the Fall of 2006 -- a new, significantly
larger facility. It’s a good thing the building is somewhat of an attraction,
because in many ways, sustaining the level of success that the first three
years achieved will be more difficult, even with a staff and new
administration with the best of intentions.
Teachers are free to transfer from Broad Acres now. Approximately half a
dozen left at the end of the 2004-05 year when Jody left, and 10 more left at
the end of the 2005-06. Those leaving and those staying were anxious to talk
about how things have been going. They all really care about the school.
They liked Suzette, the new principal who replaced Jody, as a person.
However several teachers interviewed indicated that they’re not always sure
how decisions get made any more. Several teachers said that no one is
working quite as hard as they used to, with mixed sentiment about that.
Some talk about inequities and arbitrariness.
Beginning in the spring of 2005, neither district management nor the union
devoted the number of hours they once did nurturing the school. It was
viewed and talked about as a success. Broad Acres teachers held their heads
up proud at district meetings and training classes. Some teachers
interviewed for this case study acknowledge that the collegiality and
dynamism of those first three years are hard things to sustain. Teachers
privately worried that the next round of student achievement data expected
out in the summer might show a decline.
_________________________________________________________________ 16
Postscript [September, 2007]— The test score data made
available to the staff at the end of the summer in 2006 indicated that Broad
Acres failed to make AYP that year, for the first time in several years. They
failed in two categories, 4th and 5th grade Limited English Proficiency reading.
Initially, not much was said. None of the staff we spoke with had been shown
the scores yet -- a month or two after returning to school in the Fall of 2006.
During the year, the dip became clear, and though not talked about very
much, all the data was posted on the web as they would be in MCPS for any
school.
In the middle of the 2006-2007 school year, principal Chagnon left and was
replaced by Michael Bayewitz. The assistant principal was also replaced. The
union, the director of Human Resources and the community superintendent
in charge of the BAES cluster of schools recognized that things had been
allowed to stagnate at Broad Acres. Teacher turnover was up since Jody had
left, and the administration was perceived as weak. The MCEA president once
again became informally involved in the selection of the new principal and
assistant principal, and in meeting individually with staff members at the
school. It was clear that attention was once again required.
When last we checked, things were looking up again at Broad Acres. They
had met AYP as the 2007-08 school year began, and more importantly, the
faculty seemed to be once again getting the support they need. Broad Acres
has been through tough years and years of shining success. The strength of
the school, according to teachers interviewed, was the belief that “teachers
can do it” – the same positive message even in years when results were not
so good.
Ultimately, the story of Broad Acres holds many lessons that we students of
history will have to decipher. We hope that in drawing those lessons from
this actual history students of this case can appreciate the complexity of any
school turnaround process and a few of the necessary components of
success.
Activity:
What do you think of the union’s decision to become deeply engaged in

turning around the district’s lowest performing school? Were the ways that
the union was involved appropriate, necessary or sufficient?
The union and management both seemed intent on summing up the lessons
of the Broad Acres experiment. How important are the differences in their
views?
Jamie Virga summarized the lessons as they are taught in the PLC Institute.
How would you describe the lessons of Broad Acres’ success?
_________________________________________________________________ 17
What were key factors contributing to the teachers’ commitment to Broad
Acres in the first three years? What does Broad Acres tell us about the
ingredients in building teacher commitment and sense of professional
community? What does it tell us about instructional or educational leadership
in schools?
Who dropped the ball? What changed? What do you think of teachers
specific descriptions of what changed in the culture at Broad Acres? What
does that tell us about the ingredients of a professional learning community?
What does it tell us about the ingredients of a successful career in teaching?
Could the union have done anything differently to prevent developments that
jeopardized the success?
What do you think are the lessons for union locals in the Broad Acres
experience—what did the local do that worked and what should the local
have done differently?
Are there lessons about labor management collaboration? Would you call the
collaboration on Broad Acres a success at this juncture?
_________________________________________________________________ 18

MCPS Broad Acres Elementary School

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Transformation at Broad Acres Elementary

A Union and Management Collaboration in

Broad Acres Elementary School

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is a large and relatively well-to-

The County’s teachers are represented by the Montgomery County Education

To some, the union’s powerful quality agenda represented a threat to

Weast turned the central office into a data-disseminating machine. The

Under Weast, the District was also becoming increasingly centralized – a

At Broad Acres Elementary School, the system-wide development of a

Fledgling Efforts Deemed Worth Support at BAES

With agreement on the memorandum of understanding, but still slightly

Once again, perhaps due to inadequate planning, the different views of

Every member of the staff underwent 6 days of training together in the

Every member of the staff served on at least one teacher-chaired structure

The rest of MCPS used formative assessments called “tuning protocols.”

Telling the Story

In the autumn of 2004, the union considered developing a research project

The superintendent had similar ideas about controlling the implications of

What management seemed to fear most was endorsement of a significantly

Cullison decided to cooperate with the superintendent’s plan, but insisted

The superintendent and the union president agreed on one fundamental

Implications for District Interventions and Training-

A New Year at Broad Acres

The glow of BAES success continued when Montgomery County’s teacher of

What do you think of the union’s decision to become deeply engaged in

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