After overwhelming student and faculty opposition, Headmaster Deborah Holman revised her decision to consolidate leadership positions for Opportunity for Change (OFC), Winthrop House and ExCEL next year as part of her 2014 fiscal year budget proposal.

Currently, OFC and Winthrop House are led by dedicated coordinators.  ExCEL currently has an adjustment counselor and a teacher leader as its program leaders. Each of the three alternative education programs serves students with specific learning and emotional needs.

Holman notified staff and faculty members of the revision to her proposal to create a single coordinator responsible for all three programs in an email sent on March 11.

“After hearing and reflecting upon faculty and administrator feedback, I believe I proposed too much too soon,” Holman said in her March 11 email. “I also reflected upon the tight timeline I had been given to make the decisions and how that curtailed any proper process to share ideas and generate understanding. In a sense, I had jumped to step 10 of a developing vision, and not surprisingly, you all were left asking, ‘what happened to steps 1-9, and let’s talk about the vision.’ Fair enough, so let’s reconfigure.”

On March 4,  Holman sent out an email with her initial budget plan to faculty and staff that explained the guiding principles behind her decision; she aims to design a budget that is best for students, minimizes cuts to faculty who have direct instructional contact with students and that improves upon existing programs.

According to Holman, Superintendent Bill Lupini informed her that she had to design a plan for next year that would cut $250,000 and one curriculum coordinator from the high school’s budget, the equivalent of 4.4  full time (FTE) teaching positions

“My goal was to minimize teacher cuts,” Holman said of her initial proposal. “I was told 4.4 teachers, and I said those don’t have to be teachers. It might be, but they don’t have to be.”

The section titled “Efficiencies” in the FY2014 budget message released on February 28 details that the initiative to “consolidate curriculum coordinator roles” would save the Brookline School District $165,000. According to Holman, the coordinator cuts would result in a 1.2-1.8 FTE reduction.

Her revised budget proposal would make no changes to the Winthrop House staffing structure and would hire ‘’a new leader with an adjustment counselor background to direct the program’’ for OFC. At least 3 FTE will be eliminated.

While Holman has rescinded the plan to consolidate  the coordinator positions,  many faculty  members and students were shocked by the proposal.

“I was horrified,” OFC guidance counselor Kara Lopez said of her reaction to Holman’s initial plan to create a single coordinator for OFC, Winthrop House and Excel. “The OFC coordinator position is the core of our program and its functioning. I’m only able to do my job as well as our coordinator is here and functioning. The teachers are only able to do their job as well as the coordinator is here functioning. And when I say functioning,  there’s a lot of things that go into that. I mean his presence both prevents situations from happening and reacts to difficult situations that happen. And if that person isn’t here on a moment’s notice,  things can really turn out ugly.”

Current OFC Coordinator Brian Poon said that after he learned about the initial budget proposal he held a meeting with all of the students and faculty members of the program to break the news to them.

Juniors and OFC students Stephany Robles and Alyvia Norris were shocked by the initially proposed cuts.

“We were speechless, just speechless.”

“It was like finding out that someone you love is dying or something like that.”

“Like your heart’s been broken in half.”

Both Poon and Lopez said that Holman did not consult them or anyone in OFC in regards to her initial proposal.

Robles, Norris and sophomore Shannon Goodrich also said they wished that Holman had come to speak to the students in OFC about the cuts to the program herself.

“She has never taken the time to actually come to one of us about how OFC affects us,” Goodrich said.

In an all-school faculty meeting run by Holman on March 5, the faculty expressed their opposition to and concerns with her proposal.

According to English teacher David Mitchell, a number of faculty members spoke before the group, some with prepared speeches.

One such faculty member was Lopez, who spoke about Poon’s role in the program.

“It was extremely moving,” Mitchell said of Lopez’s speech. “She brought people to tears.”

Social studies teacher Mark Wheeler said that all who spoke out at the meeting had at heart how the budget would impact students rather than themselves.

Overall, Poon and Lopez shared the same sentiment about the faculty’s participation in the meeting.

“I felt blessed that the faculty cared so much about the programs,” Poon said.

Lopez and social studies teacher Malcolm Cawthorne, who also spoke, said they greatly appreciated the fact that Holman wanted the feedback and comments of faculty during the meeting.

At 2:30 P.M. on March 11 staff and faculty received the email from Holman that included her revised budget plan and stated that she had decided against creating the new sole coordinator.

“When thinking about our most vulnerable students, it is not just about caring for them (which we all seek to do), but it’s about serving them well,” Holman said in the email.

Science teacher Julia Speyer said she was pleasantly surprised with Holman’s decisions after the March 4 faculty meeting.

“I think it’s great that she listened to the teachers’ concerns and revised it when it seemed like a done deal,’’ Speyer said.

Poon said he felt better about Holman’s revised plan.

“I feel good that the students will have a full time leader of some sort,” he said.

Dean Anthony Meyer shared Poon’s sentiments about the new proposal.

“To me it’s not that drastic of a change from what I can tell, and a lot of that will be worked out,  I imagine,  with OFC staff, with the hiring committee, with administrators and faculty and Ms. Holman,” Meyer said. “I hope we’d all be involved in the design.”

Robles, Norris and Goodrich all agreed that having a strong leader in OFC is extremely important to them.

“He has you on your tippy toes for a reason,” Robles said of Poon. “He wants us to be pushed, to be motivated, to do the best that we can because he knows that we can do it. Just, we need that push. We need that person next to us.”

Anna Parkhurst can be contacted at [email protected].