Wow, where to start. First of all, they make it a practice to lie to potential new hires during the interview process. DO NOT believe a word they say to you. When I started I immediately realized my hiring description and work expectations do not match. There is absolutely no training or support and if you speak up about any issues you're experiencing it's assumed that it's a personal problem with you. There is absolutely no room for feedback and leadership refuses to include teachers and lower level employees in decision making. Ultimately , the CEO at the top is the one calling the shots. The irony is that she never steps into the classroom or really interacts with teachers and students. They hire under the premise of community empowerment and eliminating the educational opportunity gap, however, they blatantly take advantage of and exploit that problem. As far as covid safety protocols go, there was absolutely no enforcement. No one followed up about wellness screenings and employees were encouraged by leadership to disregard covid quarantine protocols because of low in person staff numbers. Leadership is young and inexperienced, which makes them super defensive, unprofessional, and unwilling to accept feedback. They cultivate a really toxic work environment where they refuse to take responsibility and continue to push more and more work on to teachers. They target individual teachers to bully and then gossip and share personal information about them with other employees. The workplace is super clichey and honestly just feels unsafe. As far as safety of students go, it's deplorable. There are constant fights, even during covid with small class sizes, and an absolute failure of mastery of literacy skills. There are no systems of consequences for students, which leaves the only solution as reward systems. This means that students with poor behavior are essentially bribed into complying and then other students are encouraged to replicate that behavior in order to get the same attention or prize, ultimately wearing off on the whole class in a negative way. There are constantly kids sent out into the hallways and left to run free around the hallways or sharpen pencils all day. Reading levels are so bad that they're graduating kids from elementary school that are reading at 1st or 2nd grade levels... their proposed solution to this for the upcoming school year was to replace read alouds with year long test prep. Also there is no support for teacher in case of emergency - you're basically stranded alone on your own island if something goes wrong. Also last year, there was a shooting across from the school during dismissal and no one was informed about it - students were allowed to dismiss as normal despite the potential danger and police presence. Don't get me started in the disparity in how employees are treated also - there is such a divide. I've had white male coworkers come up to me shocked about how leadership has spoken to me, admitting that they've never been treated in such a way. Oftentimes, minorities are targeted in the organization and forced out and are constantly tone policed and disrespected. It's appalling. All they really care about at the top is the donors and constant network expansion - there is no room for honest reflection, collaborative problem solving and improvement, or student and teacher voices. It's a sad, toxic work environment. The school was created by the privileged elite as a vanity project to help pad the ego and pockets of the founder. They exploit their populations and disregard the community. It's toxic and they refuse to learn from their community members, staff, and students. Ultimately, their voices are a threat to the false reality that they've created and scares off potential new donors. The people in charge refuse to get on the ground level to truly understand the problems in the community that they're trying to address. It's such an intimidating, toxic culture. The high turnover underscores the problem, but is also part of their business model so that they can pay employees less and indoctrinate new, naive hires.
