By Cody Mello-Klein | cmelloklein@alextimes.com
Several former members of Alexandria City Public Schools’ leadership staff have criticized Superintendent Dr. Gregory Hutchings Ed.D.’s behavior, leadership and handling of the recent ACPS organizational restructuring.
These departed senior administrators allege that Hutchings mishandled the reorganization, which eliminated the positions of several department directors and Chief Operating Officer Mignon Anthony. They contend the moves compromise ACPS’ ability to achieve its long-term goals and have decreased already low staff morale.
According to these departed staff members, the restructuring typifies a broader pattern of behavior from the superintendent since he started the job in 2018: a refusal to listen to or communicate with his leadership team and favoritism toward those who support his vision for ACPS without question.
Some educators and members of the community continue to support Hutchings’ vision for the future, especially as the school division kicked off its first all-online fall semester in the midst of a global pandemic on Tuesday. However, these former senior employees expressed concerns that skepticism, apathy and fear of deviating from that vision have grown since the restructuring.
Evolving structures
When Hutchings first presented the restructuring to the school board in December 2019, he pitched it as a necessary step toward ACPS’ long-term goals.
“To be effective and efficient in delivering its goals, an organization’s structure needs to be aligned with the objectives it is trying to achieve,” Hutchings said in an email. “This restructuring was put in place to ensure alignment to the proposed goals for the next strategic plan (ACPS 2025: Equity For All).”
Former COO Anthony wrote a letter to the editor published in the July 2 Alexandria Times refuting that goal. The constant shift in leadership over the years – “the ACPS musical chairs,” in Anthony’s words – results in a lack of continuity and an inability to make any progress on long-term goals, Anthony said.
Much of the criticism around Hutchings’ handling of the restructuring comes not from the restructuring itself, but the way by which the process was carried out and the motivation behind it.
“[We] weren’t surprised it was going to happen,” Joe Mackolandra, former ACPS chief of human resources, said. “… But [we] were rather taken [aback] by the rather abrupt process.”
Hutchings maintains that he informed his senior leadership team in September 2019 that he would share his decision regarding a reorganization later in the year and had informed the community about his plans even earlier.
“Coming in as a new superintendent, you don’t want to make a major decision, like a reorganization, without understanding the actual community and the staff issues and that type of thing,” Hutchings said. “You don’t want to be impulsive. You want to understand the community first.”
Several former department heads said that they were unaware of the reorganization until Hutchings presented it to the school board in December 2019.
“I can’t really tell you that I was ever informed about it. It just kind of came about,” James Bartlett, former ACPS director of safety and security, said.
Another former member of the leadership team, who spoke with the Times on the condition of anonymity and will be called “John” in subsequent references, learned of the restructuring only when it was revealed what positions had been eliminated, including his own.
Those whose positions were eliminated due to the restructuring, including Anthony and former Director of Transportation Charles Stone, generally ended their time at ACPS in June, before the new structure took effect on July 1.
Poor communication with senior leadership was a problem with Hutchings that extended well beyond the restructuring, former staff members said.
“I think that’s an area of [needed] growth,” Mackolandra said. “It’s that whole understanding of why people are making the decisions they’re making. The whole communication piece is critical when you get to that level.”
“I’ve never been in such a chaotic situation,” John said.
“Personnel matters”
Several former staff members allege that the restructuring was designed around further elevating those who agreed with Hutchings’ vision and eliminating the positions of those who had disagreed with the superintendent’s decisions.
Those staff members said that Hutchings began seriously considering the restructuring in October, when an incident with ACPS transportation employees sparked a rift between Hutchings and certain staff members, including former COO Anthony.
In early October 2019, ACPS transportation employees were threatening to strike, primarily due to wages being lower than other divisions in the region. The employees also complained about Stone’s leadership of the department.
Due to the complaints, the superintendent placed Stone on administrative leave, which lasted for 45 days. When Stone returned to work in November 2019, he was reassigned as a contract-based director outside the transportation department. His contract was then terminated upon completion.
Hutchings and Anthony disagreed about how the situation had been handled, Stone said. Two months after the transportation employee crisis, Hutchings announced the reorganization, eliminating Anthony’s position altogether.
Anthony cited the incident with transportation employees in her letter to the editor, where she also referred to the reorganization as “a hastily generated restructuring plan.”
Stone also asserted that the reorganization was quickly put together as a form of retribution against Anthony, himself and those who didn’t fall in line with the superintendent.
“This is a personnel matter and ACPS does not comment on personnel matters,” Hutchings said in an email when asked about the incident.
However, Hutchings did push back on the allegations that he decided to restructure ACPS because of disagreements with personnel. He asserted that any disagreements he has had with staff have been purely professional.
“I believe in VIP: vision, integrity and passion, integrity being one of the most important things,” Hutchings said. “That is something that I live by every single day, in respecting people in their profession. Even when I disagree, I still believe in being professional and respectful.”
Several staff members alleged that the incident with Stone wasn’t the only reason Hutchings eliminated Anthony’s position.
“The operations department had, under the guidance of Mrs. Anthony, become very influential and the reorganization diminished that influence,” Stone said.
The department managed improvement and modernization efforts, including the capital improvement projects budget, and Anthony had started to create and execute a long-term plan for improved facilities business processes.
In addition to Stone, Mackolandra, who started working for ACPS human resources in 2017, claimed he was put on administrative leave from December 2018 to May 2019 after he butted heads with Hutchings.
“Dr. Hutchings said he had lost faith in my abilities,” Mackolandra said. “We had some disagreements on the ways some things should be handled, some personnel issues.”
Mackolandra did not return to ACPS at the end of his administrative leave.
The treatment of experienced staff like Anthony, Stone and Mackolandra represents a pattern of retaliation and a refusal of the superintendent to listen to his team, according to former leadership staff.
“If I had to give [Hutchings] advice, I would say, ‘Listen to the people around you more because they’re experts,’” Mackolandra said. “You can’t be an expert in everything, but you have to rely on those people to be the experts in their field.”
Three former staff members have filed legal complaints against ACPS related to the culture at the organization. The staff members declined to share details of their complaints for legal reasons.
Shaker Heights
Many of the complaints leveled against Hutchings by several former ACPS staff members – lack of communication, lack of collaboration, sidelining of leadership staff and what former staff members called “immaturity” or “narcissism” – had surfaced previously in Hutchings’ career.
Hutchings faced similar criticism during his time as superintendent of Shaker Heights Schools in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
When Hutchings was hired as Shaker Heights superintendent in 2013, to many he represented a welcome change after his predecessor’s lackluster attempts to address racial inequities in the school system, accord- ing to a 2019 Washington Post story by Laura Meckler. Hutchings set about addressing the inequities in the Shaker Heights school system, much like he has done in ACPS.
Under Hutchings, Shaker Heights implemented an explicit open enrollment policy meant to address the “informal systems that landed white children in advanced courses more often than black students,” Meckler wrote. The equity task force ended up recommending a “targeted universalism” policy that set high standards district wide but allocated resources in order to ensure that students could meet those standards based on their needs.
Although Shaker Heights staff largely supported Hutchings’ goals, some staff complained about Hutchings’ approach to the job and his behavior in pursuit of those goals, according to the Post.
One teacher referred to his listening tour with staff as a “lecture tour.” Other teachers felt Hutchings was blaming them for the deeply rooted racial inequities in the district.
When Hutchings announced he would be leaving Shaker Heights to serve as superintendent in Alexandria, his hometown, many community members were concerned all the work he had done to further equity efforts would fall by the wayside, according to Meckler.
Some expressed similar sentiments to those ex- pressed by members of the ACPS community who have accused Hutchings of using his job in Alexandria as a means to an end: “Some had long thought he was using Shaker as a stepping-stone and said the announcement confirmed it,” Meckler wrote.
Hutchings, who at 43 years old has already worked eight years total as a superintendent, refuted these claims.
“One day, yes, I will aspire to do other things,” Hutchings said. “I have a goal of being the U.S. Secretary of Education, but I can tell you that Alexandria’s not the stepping-stone to get there. … I was very happy where I was, but I chose to uproot my family and move them to serve the community that helped me. That’s why I’m here.”
Friends in high places
Hutchings’ connections to Shaker Heights remain a point of contention among ACPS staff, particularly when it comes to Chief of Staff Stephen Wilkins, whose position was created when Anthony’s was eliminated.
Hutchings and Wilkins have a relationship that spans the superintendent’s time in Alexandria and Shaker Heights, a bond that began during Hutchings’ first stint at ACPS.
When Hutchings initially started working at ACPS in 2010 as director of preK-12 programs, Wilkins was in charge of the system’s HR department. When Hutchings moved to Shaker Heights, he brought Wilkins on board to over see facilities and operations.
In June 2019, after Hutchings had been ACPS superintendent for about a year, he brought Wilkins back to Alexandria as chief of HR after Mackolandra had been removed from the position. Less than a year later, Hutchings promoted Wilkins to the newly created chief of staff job as part of the restructuring.
The restructuring eliminated the COO position and instead created a chief of staff who reports to the superintendent. The chief of staff, in turn, oversees the executive director of facilities and operations and executive director of human resources.
Some staff members were suspicious of Hutchings’ hiring of Wilkins.
“I think Dr. Hutchings is shifting power in the organization to his liking and within his comfort zone and removing those who don’t fully support his actions,” Stone said.
Hutchings said he hired Wilkins for his qualifications.
“Our chief of staff, he has a very unique background,” Hutchings said. “… His background is HR and facilities and operations. That is kind of like a unicorn.”
Long-term impacts
It’s unclear how ACPS’ most recent change in leadership structure will impact the division. But some former staff are concerned that Hutchings’ attempt to change course could compromise some of the long-term plans Anthony had been working on with the city.
“ACPS’ commitment to continuity and improved facilities business processes – which includes protecting and efficiently executing the audacious city-supported $500-plus million capital improvement program over 10 years – is now struggling and uncertain,” Anthony wrote in her letter.
Anthony was hired as ACPS COO by former interim Superintendent Lois Berlin after Anthony participated in the joint city-schools task force, which met during 2017 and was tasked with finding ways for ACPS and the city to operate more collaboratively on budgeting, facilities and operations.
The final report, presented to City Council in January 2018, months before Hutchings took over as superintendent, represented an ambitious new vision for the school system. The plan was focused on facilities modernization projects and new business practices, and it was one that Anthony was largely in charge of implementing.
It was a vision Hutchings didn’t initiate but rather one he inherited.
After taking the helm of ACPS, Hutchings began developing his own vision for the system, which prioritizes issues of equity. Changing course like that in a school division like ACPS is not an easy task, especially in the middle of a pandemic, Mackolandra said.
“If you know anything about school divisions, it is very much like moving an aircraft carrier. You gotta start the turn a mile before you actually are going to make the turn,” Mackolandra said. “… It is going to be difficult to maneuver forward in the same direction with what the board had planned and actually not just the board, the council.”
With the metaphorical aircraft carrier still changing course, many former staff members acknowledged that it’s too early to render a verdict on how effective Hutchings’ restructuring will be.
But, the change itself is, in many ways, beside the point for these former staff members. They believe Hutchings’ behavior combined with his handling of the restructuring have created an air of cynicism and distrust that may have lasting impacts.
“People aware of the wealth of experience either demoted or removed have said or thought that the only way to be successful here is to adopt the motif of ‘Yes sir, three bags full’ and not make any waves,” Stone said.
