The chair of the board of Intergenerational Schools in Cleveland said Wednesday that the group of charter schools has removed the principal at Lakeshore Intergenerational School in Collinwood after a chaotic series of events this fall session.
The news came Wednesday evening during Intergenerational Schools’ board meeting, after teachers collectively called off Wednesday, causing the school to be closed. Parents showed up to the board meeting with signs expressing concern and solidarity with the teachers.
Lynn Carpenter, chair of the board of directors, said the board hears parents’ and teachers’ concerns, and said school leadership needs to do better. She said Beth Hampton, who had been hired on as Lakeshore Intergenerational School’s principal over the summer, is “not going to be the principal” there any longer.
“We can’t get into details,” she said. “Suffice it to say, the school was not going in the right direction.”
Robyin Craig, a concerned parent of two students, said leadership at the school had been largely absent since school started this year.
Fights have broken out among students, with no accountability from administration and little communication to parents, even when students got hurt, she said. Teachers were also unable to control their classrooms, through no fault of their own, due to a lack of support from the administration, she said.
Plus, Craig said her children haven’t been learning much, partially due to a significant amount of staff turnover and new staff coming on-board who don’t have much training.
“My child’s not getting any work done, he’s not bringing any homework home,” she said.
Brooke King, executive director of Intergenerational Schools, said during the meeting that Lakeshore Intergenerational is facing significant headwinds with staff recruitment.
“We are dealing with a national teacher shortage,” she said. “We’re dealing with many new staff that need a lot of training and that work continues.”
During the board meeting, King shared slides showing that at the beginning of the school year, only 27% of teachers at Lakeshore Intergenerational returned from the 2021-2022 school year, a rate far lower than the other Intergenerational Schools in Cleveland.
Board Chair Carpenter apologized for the issues that parents, students and teachers face and said the school’s leadership will need to rebuild trust, which will take time.
“We know that we've lost your trust,” she said. “That's not going to change in one day or with the snap of a finger. We understand that. And the only way it's going to change is if we demonstrate different behavior and different communication.”
Craig welcomed the board's communication with parents, and the move to remove Hampton.
“I’m not against you,” she told them during the meeting. “We are not fighting each other. We are in this together and I am here to help.”
King said in a statement sent to parents Wednesday that she will “step in temporarily” as the school begins a search for an interim school leader, followed by a full search for a permanent principal.
