New school

Incoming Tulsa Public Schools superintendent Dr. Deborah Gist is a policy innovator with a proven track record. But some Tulsa educators fear her approach is too heavy-handed.

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Whether you’re a parent, an educator or just an observer, the appointment of Dr. Deborah Gist as the incoming superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools affects you. The superintendent has a huge impact on the school system. Public schools shape our kids’ lives and help us attract world-class workers and companies. According to urban economics and city dynamics research, our school system matters more than the condition of our streets, our tax rate or our company relocation efforts.

Gist, a Tulsa native, accepted the position by phone during a Feb. 2 school board meeting, prompting a mass walkout by the teachers in attendance. Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association President Patti Ferguson-Palmer told the Tulsa World the teachers walked out because they felt the board had ignored their concerns in appointing Gist. 

Educators in our state face staff shortages, wages far below national averages and the specter of continued cutbacks. In such a climate, it’s no wonder teachers are leery of Gist, whose past reform efforts have included more rigorous teacher evaluation and heightened student achievement standards—policies some view as anti-teacher. But is the fear surrounding her appointment warranted? One thing is certain—Gist hasn’t shied away from addressing the concerns.

More: Q&A with veteran Tulsa educator Dr. Ebony Johnson

Battle tested

Gist is the first Tulsa Public Schools leader to come from the hot national landscape of school reform wars. Currently Rhode Island’s education commissioner, she has also served as state superintendent of education in Washington, D.C. In 2010, Time named Gist among the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and The Atlantic recognized her as a Brave Thinker. 

She’s also a leader in teacher development circles for her support of the still-evolving “teacher autonomy” movement, which affords educators more independence in what they teach and how they teach it. And nearly a decade before she held any administrative or leadership post, Gist spent eight years in the classroom. 

As Rhode Island’s education commissioner, Gist promptly (and controversially) raised incoming teachers’ minimum test score requirements, which had been among the most lenient in the nation. 

Rather than caving in to accusations of elitism and threats of teacher shortages, Gist voiced confidence in future teachers’ ability to rise to the challenge. She also agreed to ease into the new standards and waive the requirement for low-scoring candidates who were otherwise excellent. She received no waiver requests over the first three years of implementation, and the pool of teaching candidates diversified.¹ 

Gist advocates for technology that enriches teaching and learning. In Rhode Island, she led a statewide Wi-Fi initiative that provided every school employee and most kids in the state with essential unlimited wireless access to school servers and desktop systems. 

She also helped secure two highly competitive grants from the Obama administration’s embattled $5 billion “Race to the Top” contest, which seeks to elevate school standards, teacher accountability, technology and school innovation with multi-million-dollar prizes. Rhode Island received a $75 million general-purpose grant and $50 million for an early learning challenge initiative Gist and her colleagues developed. 

Collaborate and listen

Gist plans to start July 1 and work with the board on a smooth transition that includes her predecessor, Dr. Keith Ballard. She said her first move as superintendent will be initiating an inclusive process to build a new Strategic Plan for the district. The current plan expires this year. 

“What I’m not planning on doing is coming in and, the minute that the wheels hit the ground, to start telling everyone what’s going to happen,” Gist said. “I want all of us together, as a city, to say, ‘This is what we’re going to do together.’ Because we’re going to be more effective when this plan is widely supported, people are aware of it and know about it—and have had their voice as a part of the work.”

Gist said her visit to Tulsa schools was eye-opening about the challenges that await her when she moves home later this year. 

“I was aware that there were issues related to teacher salaries and teacher morale, and the challenges around retention and recruitment,” Gist said. “But I think the volume of those challenges is something that has really been brought to my attention very clearly this week, in terms of the number of vacancies that still remain in the district, the number of teachers that need to be hired every year, some of the turnover, some of the challenges at schools with not having a qualified teacher. I was just at McLain, and they’re missing some math teachers. And that’s a huge problem in February. I’m leaving to go back to Rhode Island with a very clear awareness of the fact that that’s going to have to be pretty high on the priority list.” 

Gist’s involvement in the 2009 turnaround of Rhode Island’s chronically struggling Central Falls High School is a source of anxiety for some Tulsa educators. The short of it is that Gists’s role probably isn’t quite what many have heard or feared, and also that turning around a struggling school demands some drastic measures that aren’t always easy to swallow. Here’s the long version, as Gist tells it: 

The Central Falls School District superintendent (not Gist) involved the teachers union and other stakeholders in creating a plan to turn the school around and retain existing staff. The options were either to jointly agree on the plan with the union or use the turnaround model prescribed by No Child Left Behind. 

“As required by federal law [with the turnaround model], you have to replace the leadership, and you can only hire back up to 50 percent of the teachers,” Gist said, noting that this requirement was later waived by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

To complicate matters, Rhode Island law requires an additional year of pay for employees pending potential termination who are not notified by March 1 of preceding the school year. 

“Because of that law, they had to notify everyone that they might not come back, so they could decide who was going to come back.” Gist said. “A lot of times people say everyone was fired, and it was like we blamed them or something like that. It was actually that they were all notified, and then they were reapplying.”

After the staff was notified, the teachers union agreed to the original plan. 

“The superintendent was thrilled,” Gist said. “I brought in a mediator, they sat down, they worked it out. Everyone got their job back. Today their graduation rate is 70 percent. … Things have really changed at the school, and it’s because that team came together.

“So people don’t always hear the whole story, and they don’t understand that the decision was actually made by the teachers union president. It’s not what the superintendent wanted, not what the school board wanted, not what that community had planned to do. They had a different plan. But they couldn’t carry it out without the teachers union as a partner. So that’s what happened at that school.”

As for requiring staff to reapply, Gist said “that’s actually something that happens pretty regularly” in failing schools. 

“It isn’t about assuming the people there aren’t doing what they need to do, but it’s about making sure that it’s the right fit for each of them—that if you have new leadership coming in, they need to be able to choose a team that’s going to buy into this shared goal of turning the school around.”

Don’t hold your breath for reassurances—Gist was noncommittal regarding specific plans for TPS reorganization. But she emphasized inclusiveness and collaboration on any trajectory. 

“I can’t promise anybody right now what we are or aren’t going to do in terms of [staff changes], but I want people to know that I’m not the type of person who assumes that people aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do,” Gist said. “I’m not the type of person who assumes that if there’s a problem at a school that it’s anybody’s fault. There are a lot of things that can contribute to a school’s struggling over a period of years. 

“I have every intention to do this together. 

“It is fairly scary, because people don’t know me, or all of the context included in it. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. I’m not suggesting that the actual information isn’t also scary, I’m just saying that there’s a lot of stuff out there that doesn’t have all the information included.” a

(1) The Smartest Kids in the World (2013) Amanda Ripley (Simon & Schuster)