Same As The Old Boss--In My Case, Anyway

[Maya is the only one in costume at the office]
Maya Gallo: That memo about dressing up, I'm the only one who got it, aren't I?
Dennis Finch: By the way, you got another letter from corporate. Next week is Topless Tuesdays.

—Just Shoot Me, "The Mask" (10/27/98)

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So here's the news I've been foreshadowing the past couple of days. A press release was sent via email to BCPSS employees around 5:30 pm yesterday (nice timing, that), indicating that, per Board approval--which happened later that evening--Irma Johnson was named Executive Director of Elementary/Elementary Middle Schools.

The other move they made was appointing Michael Sarbanes as "Executive Director of Partnerships, Communication and Community Engagement". I met him during his mayoral campaign, and GF actually did a little campaign work for him, but the fact is that the Sun, in putting his appointment first in the newspaper story (and Sara? You need more verbs in the third paragraph. I'm just saying.), missed the bigger picture.

The Elementary and Elementary/Middle Schools in Baltimore City are currently broken into four groups of 20-25 schools each, known as "Areas". The areas were geographic in nature up until about 2001, then they were split based on mysterious criteria. Last year, they were reorganized so that Areas 1 and 4 were strictly Elementary, while Areas 2 and 3 were all K-8 schools. Irma Johnson was the Area Academic Officer for Area 1 (and my boss' boss, therefore my boss as well). Now she's the director of ALL 93 SCHOOLS in Areas 1 through 4.

The upshot of this is that, ultimately, all of the schools with Elementary or Middle students (with the exception of the Middle-only schools) now come under her jurisdiction. This means that the areas themselves will wind up getting rearranged into one big area. Since Ms. Johnson works with my boss, and my boss works with me, all of our boats have floated a little bit higher organizationally. Good news in that, but it also means that without some serious coordination, we're also going to be working much harder. Fortunately, my boss is the sort of guy who excels at that sort of thing.

At some point between now and the end of the year (I presume), offices are going to have to be moved about to consolidate all the areas into a single location. Since Areas 1 and 4 are already together, the likelihood is that 2 and 3 will come to where we are (at the Lake Clifton campus). Frankly, I think all four areas should commandeer a corner of the Professional Development Center on Northern Parkway, where we can tailor a space to some very specific needs.

Any way you look at it, there are big changes ahead. It sounds crazy but I'm rather looking forward to it.