By Rick Outzen
Last year was to be the school year Warrington Middle School turned around. In fact, that is what Superintendent Malcolm Thomas called the West Pensacola junior high–his “turnaround school.” He declared the school, which has teetered between “C” and “D” status since 2000, would become the highest-achieving middle school in the district, and he committed to investing millions of stimulus dollars to make it happen. The superintendent told parents, faculty and the public that he personally would oversee the transformation by having the school administration report directly to him rather than district staff. A three-month investigation by the IN has revealed the first year of Thomas’ turnaround was much harder than the newcomer ever thought. It was a year filled with allegations of Principal Sandra Rush redirecting nearly $7,000 in school funds earmarked for the classrooms to office furniture and decorations, of her high school aide running an apparent fundraising scam, of sexual misconduct by students on a bus with no adult chaperone, and of assaults on teachers and other violence going undocumented by school officials. All the allegations were investigated by district officials. Many were found to be true. Others may never be fully resolved. Few of the details were made public, until now. The IN made over a dozen public record requests of the Escambia Public School District, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office
and the Florida Department of Education. Meetings were held with WMS Principal Rush, district officials and ECSO. The IN reviewed the investigative reports and interview notes of District Investigator John Dobbs, the offense reports filed by the four school resource officers (SRO) that worked at WMS during the 2009-10 school year and the internal audit report. Conclusion: Malcolm Thomas may have bit off more than he could chew with this one. The school may turn around, but at what cost? Did the firing of former Principal Christine Nixon and her entire staff exacerbate the challenges at the school and put it further behind? Has there been a conscious effort on the part of Thomas and school officials to hide the problems at WMS? This report brings into question the safety of the students and teachers in the classrooms across the District. The IN found the District had reported less the 40 percent of the crime and violence on its campuses to law enforcement, while the overall state percentage for the same type of incidents is 84 percent. Warrington Middle reported less than 3 percent.
RESTRUCTURING FROM THE GROUND UP Four months into his first year in office, Superintendent Thomas announced that he was starting over at Warrington
Middle School. The principal and the whole faculty were being replaced. It was an unprecedented, bold move by the new superintendent, especially since the latest Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test grades hadn’t been released.
be removed from the threat of state sanctions. However, Thomas had already set his transformation of WMS into motion. Principal Nixon and her assistants had been reassigned and the faculty was given the option of reapplying for their jobs. Thomas had hired Sandra Rush to be the new principal. Rush had been the principal of Montclair Elementary from 2007-2009. Prior to that, she was the principal of Brownsville Middle School from 2000 until it was closed in June 2007. “Middle School is all my life,” Rush told the IN. “When Brownsville closed, I wanted to go to another middle school, but there were no openings.” She went to Montclair Elementary, where she took the school from “F” to “A” status in one year. Her last year at the school, its grade fell to a “D.” “Warrington gave me an opportunity to go back to my first love,” she said. “I know I drove some of the teachers crazy at Montclair. They would send two kindergartners, just babies, to me that had been fighting. I would sit them in my lap, rub on their kids and love on them.” Rush was intrigued by the challenges at WMS. “You got to select your staff and start from ground works. I have always liked a challenge.”
By February 2010, rumors surfaced that the turnaround at WMS wasn’t going smoothly. The IN heard from reliable sources that the school administration was under investigation. Thomas told the media that if WMS failed to get a “C”, the state would mandate the replacement of the school administration and reassignment of teachers to other schools in the district. He needed to act in April to give him time to restructure the school from the ground up. Malcolm Thomas is a lifelong Escambia County resident who taught special education at Tate High School for eight years. Like his predecessor, Jim Paul, Thomas never was a school principal. He has spent much of his career at the district level. Thomas, who has a master's degree, was Paul’s Director of Evaluation Services. In June, WMS learned it had earned a "C" school grade, its first since 2006, and had enough gains in reading and math to
INDEPENDENT NEWS | april 07, 2011 | WWW.INWEEKLY.NET |
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