Conflict without Walls in West Tisbury

Passed over for the job of interim assistant principal, a star West Tisbury eighth grade science teacher is so unhappy about the decision that he has aired a rare public, formal grievance with the up-Island school committee, among other things threatening to leave the school. School administrators remain tight-lipped about the events that led to the decision to hire a Colorado teacher over Karl Nelson, a longtime educator and school leader whose students in the small rural elementary school scored highest in the state on the MCAS science exam last year. The person hired is reportedly not certified in administration, while Mr. Nelson does have the requisite higher education credits and certification to be an administrator. And he wants to advance to a leadership position in the school.

So what is going on here?

Good teachers do not necessarily always make good administrators, and Mr. Nelson had no inherent rights to the job. There was a search and in the end the decision rested with interim school principal Donna Lowell-Bettencourt, who clearly had her reasons for choosing another candidate. But as the story tumbled out last week to the surprise of much of the Island community, there were more questions than answers surrounding the controversy. Mrs. Lowell-Bettencourt is herself a freshman administrator who has been handed the job of leading the school while principal Michael Halt is serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Given her own limited experience as an administrator, was she given too much independence on this decision? Vineyard schools superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss has many years of seasoning and experience in matters of hiring, which can sometimes be easy and sometimes complicated. This one was complicated, but where was the sure hand and steady guidance of the superintendent, ordinarily very much in evidence, this time around?

The result may well be that now the West Tisbury School, which has changed and grown considerably since it was an experimental school without walls in the 1970s, loses one of its best teachers. And that in turn is a heavy loss for students. Could this situation have been avoided? The question lingers.