‘Blame game’ intensifies on Classen SAS school name
Litigators live for the moment when a witness “opens the door” to cross examination on issues the attorney could not raise before they were mentioned. But it is unusual for such a tactic to be employed at the beginning of an Oklahoma City Public Schools board meeting, especially when everyone knows the evening is bound to be acrimonious.
That’s what happened at the OKCPS board meeting Monday, June 10. As soon as OKCPS chief of staff Rebecca Kaye completed her presentation on preparations for the next school year, board member Charles Henry, an attorney, cited some of Kaye’s words as the grounds for raising a tense issue: the name of Classen School of Advanced Studies High School, which will be moving into the Northeast Academy building. Some alumni of Northeast want the school to be called Northeast Classen SAS, while some alumni and parents of Classen SAS argue the existing name carries weight with nationally renowned universities. They believe the proposed “Classen SAS High School at Northeast” name better preserves the branding of the district’s flagship application school.
As I sat in the audience, I thought the ensuing anger was the predictable result of the board’s expansion of the Pathways to Greatness plan beyond the necessary pain of school closures and into an effort to advance data-driven governance. In addition to unpredicted challenges of dealing with their computer system’s recent hacking, the need to take over Seeworth Academy and the need to address graduates’ college remediation rates, OKCPS is also reorganizing its administration.
On the other hand, hope for a compromise emerged during the evening, and maybe the CONTINUE READING: 'Blame game' intensifies on Classen SAS school name