04/24/2024
Tonight, SBEU delivered a Vote of No Confidence for the current CEO of Downtown College Prep, Pete Settlemayer.
Teachers, ed socialist, instructional coaches, along with members of our para educator, operations team, and members of management have presented the school board with numerous counts of failure brought on by this individual.
Statement below :
Members of the Board, today we will be presenting to you a petition that is Vote of No Confidence for our current CEO, Pete Settelmayer. DCP needs a leader who the community may not always agree with but respects. Pete does not have the trust nor respect from those he is serving. Over 90% of SBEU unit members (teachers, ed specialists, and instructional coaches) have signed the Vote of No Confidence. Additionally, non-SBEU members have backed this petition, including managers, operations, and paraeducators.
The signed statement reads: We, the undersigned, are initiating a vote of no confidence for DCP’s CEO, Pete Settelmayer.
Our top three concerns are as follows:
Despite having access to longitudinal enrollment and financial data that signaled a deepening financial challenge for the organization, he failed to communicate a timely, transparent, specific, and action-oriented message to DCP staff and families about steps that would need to be taken to avoid drastic cuts to staff, programming, and schools.
After inviting all DCP staff and teachers to an org-wide “town hall” event that he billed as an opportunity to ask questions, he tried to close discussion after only a few questions had been asked. When people began to repeat or reword questions in a search for more clear, specific, and concrete answers, he became openly hostile and repeatedly sought to shut down the conversation. The entire session with staff was over within an hour, as he ended the meeting abruptly and invited people to talk to him individually if they had more questions. There was time available for the meeting to extend to up to three hours, given the original agenda. At no time did he communicate in writing that the session would be shorter than the allotted three hours posted on the staff calendar.
When he was asked in public settings about why the DCP community was not informed of the potential for a school closure and other drastic cuts, he said that we “should have known” and both directly and indirectly indicated that the fault for this declining enrollment and financial shortfall was a shared responsibility, despite a complete lack of transparency about data, need, and opportunities to be involved. A similar message was delivered at the February board meeting, when he referenced the high levels of community engagement present at the inception of DCP at its formation, failing to acknowledge the difference between recruitment needed for starting a school where everyone knows what the goals are and vague invitations to be involved where no one has been informed of specific enrollment targets or specific opportunities to be involved, and where the organization has an established history of nearly 25 years.
In addition to the signed statement, it is clear that our concerns are also represented in the results of the Culture Amp survey, which you will see today, and which show huge drops in confidence in DCP’s leadership. As a result of conversations with our colleagues, we believe that many of these drops are due largely to Pete’s leadership. It would be dismissive to the community’s feedback to read the Culture Amp results as simple frustration and sadness about the Alum Rock High School closure. This mistrust is not motivated by a desire to point a finger to make someone the “bad guy”, but from deep concerns about the future of our organization and the potential of our CEO to provide what is needed as we grapple with ongoing issues.
The irresponsible manner in which Pete handled the Alum Rock High closure has had an impact across all of our school sites, and yet we’ve seen very little attempt to acknowledge and repair harm. DCP represents itself as a restorative practice institution, yet these practices are deeply lacking in our leadership. How can we expect to grow in our capacity for Restorative Practices if our leader does not demonstrate this value?
As far as enrollment, veteran DCP members are no strangers to the importance of families choosing our schools. Throughout the history of our organization, we have worked together to canvas neighborhoods, develop a partnership with Rocketship schools, and even had staff invite their own families and promote DCP to their own groups outside of work. There was a common thread to these efforts: the Executive Director was at the head of this planning and worked with DCP leaders to provide concrete steps and timelines. This is one of, if not the, most important roles the CEO position requires to keep our organization alive to continue serving low-income and first-generation families. The absence of urgency, organizing, coaching and transparency of our organization’s economic situation is unacceptable and puts our entire organization in jeopardy
Thank you for your time and attention to this serious matter.
