Problem: How a principal’s limited leadership abilities within a highly coupled, culturally diverse organization led to an increased feeling of isolation, unappreciation, and alienation by a group of staff members, all of whom shared a common identity, by which they believed themselves to be grouped, secluded and ignored by the rest of the staff members from the administration’s decision making process.
September 27, 2010
While the differences in the identities of the staff members, and the socio-cultural complexity of the institution could have promoted an environment of tolerance, understanding and cultural exchange, inadequate management exacerbated socio-cultural differences between the members of the staff and led to a breakdown of trust and communication. This contributed to a decrease in the quality of instruction, voiced dissatisfaction by some staff members in regards to their employment, and an increase in turnover rate among the isolated group of staff members.
Hope Ranch Middle School is located in Ocala, Florida, and opened its doors as a public charter middle school in 2008. The school promoted the increased use of technology in education, the importance of afterschool academic programs in math and science, and the correlation between hard work and academic success. This science and math academy was very successful during its initial year, including finishing the school year as an A school as a result of its FCAT scores.
One of the most interesting aspects of the school was the composition of its staff members. The staff was evenly composed of both men and women and international and domestic teachers. The social science and the humanities departments were comprised of domestic female instructors, while the natural science and math classes were taught by foreign male instructors. Many of the international teachers followed Islamic beliefs, while the majority of the domestic teachers and students observed Christian values. However, at first, these differences did not detrimentally influence the quality of the institution, instead, as a result of good leadership, they contributed to the student’s educational experience. The success of the school was credited to a large degree to its principal, who promoted a feeling of openness and camaraderie among the staff members. However, due to an administrative decision by the consortium of charter schools, the principal was transferred to another school within this charter school conglomerate.
This decision proved to be highly detrimental to the school. After the principal changed, the new administration’s actions appeared to favor one group of staff members over the other. In addition to the general staff meetings, the new principal would meet with the foreign male staff members in his office during after school hours, where they discussed school policies in a foreign language and did not inform the domestic teachers about the decisions taken during their meetings. The poor leadership exhibited by the principal led to a fragmentation of the staff and increased dissatisfaction.
In an increasingly cosmopolitan world, this study hopes to contribute to literature regarding the impact of leadership in culturally diverse environments, tightly coupled institutions and the importance of increasing communication within diverse environments. This study is another example of how poor leadership can detrimentally impact and threaten the sustainability of a recently established educational institution. The findings could be applied to many other organizations, but are particularly relevant for institutions that are tightly coupled and/or have hierarchical, centralized structures.
