Tag Archives: Norma Gibbs

Minneapolis Parents Question Administrator’s Ties to Principal, Nonprofit

June 9, 2016

On the front panel of a closet door in Norma Gibbs’s bright, open office is a smattering of inspirational sayings, including this one, from poet Maya Angelou:

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel

This saying might prove to be an apt summary of Gibbs’ first few months as a Minneapolis Public Schools principal. Since February, she has been the head of Whittier International School, a K-5 IB magnet in south Minneapolis. Almost as soon as she walked in the doors of the school, Gibbs has found herself embroiled in controversy over a number of issues, including employee relations, parent concerns, and her close ties to her boss, Minneapolis Associate Superintendent, Lucilla Davila. 

Lucilla Davila

Davila invited me to Whittier to interview Gibbs, after a tense May 19 meeting–called by parents–brought many of these controversies to the surface. (Davila and another district employee, Deb Anderson, sat with Gibbs during our interview.) The parents who spoke at the meeting were upset over Gibbs’s alleged attempts to remove a popular community education employee, Jeff “Nacho” Carlson, as well as her handling of the mostly Latino parents who had tried to advocate for Carlson. 

Whittier parents such as Patricia Almaraz tell stories of being angrily confronted by Gibbs, simply for gathering in the school’s cafeteria to discuss soccer sign-ups and, they acknowledge, the latest news about Carlson. (The parents I spoke with say they were shocked to hear he had been told his work wasn’t satisfactory, a claim Carlson supports with district emails Gibbs sent in March, but a claim Gibbs did not admit to.) 

Almaraz is a Whittier site council parent whose story shows what a tightly woven community Whittier is. She says she knew nothing about what was going on with Carlson, a Whittier parent and employee who speaks several languages, including Spanish, until her sister called in early May to tell her that parents were standing outside of the school, gathering signatures on Carlson’s behalf. (Almaraz says she has known Carlson since 2004, when she was a high school student at Minneapolis’s Wellstone International High School. Carlson was then a classroom assistant.)

Almaraz says neither she nor her sister had any idea what was going on, and so they agreed to meet at the school the next day, to see what they could find out. What happened next is an incident that still upsets Almaraz. She says that, once she met up with her sister at Whittier, they proceeded into the school’s cafeteria to talk, and were joined by two more mothers, whom Almaraz says she did not know.

Here is Almaraz’s story:

We moved to the lunchroom, and around 5 minutes later, Mrs. Gibbs arrived. She saw us. We were sitting at a table, and she started saying, ‘I’m tired of this.’ Tired of what? parents asked. Gibbs said she was tired of ‘rumors, lies, and gossip,’ and said she knew we were talking about her.

She said her staff told her that there was a Latino group meeting to talk about her, and that, in her culture, this was an attack. I told her we were not going to fight with her, and that we were not talking about her. I did tell her that we were talking about Jeff, and she said she was tired of talking about him because he wasn’t her employee. She said he only worked five hours a week for her, and the rest for community education. She then said Jeff had been disrespectful to her, and that she knew he was telling us parents to come to Whittier and make trouble. 

That’s when I felt sad, because he never told me anything. I told Norma (Principal Gibbs) that I was there by my own feet. I told her that I don’t need anyone to tell me where to go, what to think, or what to say. I told her this and she said, ‘Come on. It’s so obvious.’ People asked me why I didn’t take out my phone and start recording this, but you are in your kids’ school. You don’t expect this. You don’t expect a principal to act this way.

Now I am supposed to be ready with my cell phone, to record her? We were kind of arguing, and eventually she said, ‘I have emails and more important things to do than waste my time with you.’ Then, she opened the doors for us, like, ‘Hey, go.’

I’m worried, because I feel bad if she thinks Jeff told me what to say and do. What is she thinking of me? That I’m not self-sufficient, or independent? Then, I wonder what she is thinking about my kids, my children?

They’re not smart enough to think for themselves?

Almaraz says she was stunned by Gibbs’s behavior, but during our interview, Gibbs chalked it all up to panic on her part. She said she was obligated to look at “any timecard issue,” as the Whittier principal, and that’s what she did with Carlson. When the community found out, she said her true intentions–making sure everything at the school was being done properly–were “lost in translation,” and that she was rattled by parent pushback (another group had presented her with a petition on Carlson’s behalf.)

“I am a new principal,” Gibbs admitted, with chagrin. She went on to describe her actions at Whittier as focused, thus far, on tightening up a school she says was disorganized–with kids coming and going, bathrooms getting plugged up during after school programming, and a security system with dismantled, and therefore useless, cameras.

But parents like Almaraz, as well as some Whittier staff members, point to a handful of issues with Gibbs’s tenure at the school. Here is a short list of those concerns, along with responses from Gibbs and Davila, who was present throughout our interview.

Parent/Staff Concern: Davila and Gibbs are friends outside of school. Does this mean Davilla had her placed at Whittier?

  • Response: Davila says that, yes, she and Gibbs are friends, but insists that she did not “handpick” her for the Whittier job. Gibbs was one of three candidates for the job (the candidate pool was first thinned by Davila), and was the unanimous choice for the position, according to a Whittier parent and staff committee of ten. (Davila acknowledged that another friend of hers was made principal of Sheridan Arts Magnet School under Davila’s leadership.)

Parent/Staff Concern: Gibbs has pushed to bring a new after school program to Whittier called WERC (Windom Enrichment Resource Center).

  • The conflict? WERC is a nonprofit Davila started several years ago, while principal of Minneapolis’s Windom Elementary School. WERC now operates at several Minneapolis Public Schools sites–including schools managed by Davila, in her Associate Superintendent role. On WERC’s most recent tax return, from 2014, Davila is listed as the full-time president of WERC, making $11,000 per year (Davila was moving at this time, from her principal’s job at Windom to her current associate superintendent’s role). Blanca Raniolo is listed as WERC’s secretary, making over $60,000. In the past ten days, WERC’s website has been taken down, for necessary maintenance, according to Davila. (Former Minneapolis school board member, Richard Mammen, is a WERC board member.)
  • Gibbs’s role: Minutes from the March 14, 2016 Whittier PTA meeting announce a WERC “taskforce,” designed to help implement the fee-based program at Whittier in the fall of 2016. (Gibbs’s husband is the principal of Minneapolis’s Kenny Elementary School, which also hosts a WERC program. The program appears to operate on grants and program fees, and not on contracts with the Minneapolis schools.)
  • Davila/Gibbs Response: Gibbs maintains that she is looking at bringing outside programming into the school, such as the nearby Joyce Preschool, that would help Whittier more fully implement its IB and language programming. WERC fits this description, according to Gibbs, because it can offer students more exposure to advanced Spanish instruction, especially for the school’s Somali students (Spanish is taught at Whittier). Although WERC programs cost money (up to $220 per week for summer classes, according to a 2016 brochure), Gibbs and Davila both say students are offered financial assistance through grant money.
  • Davila also says that she has minimized her role at WERC since becoming an associate superintendent for the district, and that WERC is used in non-Minneapolis sites, such as Annunciation K-8 School and Hiawatha Academy charter school. Davila also mentioned that WERC “helped close the achievement gap at Windom,” but did not elaborate.

These examples are either evidence of Davila’s ability to create and maintain close, successful relationships in the Minneapolis schools, or, as some parents and staff members have alleged, they are evidence of relationships that seem too cozy and convenient, if not perhaps, a direct conflict of interest.

So far, Davila has maintained that Gibbs will not be leaving Whittier, as some parents and teachers have requested.

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