The Celebration Chronicles

by Andrew Ross, Ph. D.

  While SAC meetings were open to the public, they were sparsely attended by parents, at least for the first twenty months. Residents occasionally showed up to voice a grievance, as they did on the first evening I attended in November. By that time, dissatisfied parents were beginning to question SAC’s objectivity, insisting that its members were too close to the school to see the warning signs. At the meeting’s outset, council member Brent Herrington expressed his opposition to SAC being viewed as a “tribunal for complaints,” especially if they were “unfiltered, unsynthesized problems.” But having two angry parents, the formidable Linda and Tom Dyroff, sound off a few feet away put paid to that suggestion. After an hour or so of patient listening to the proceedings, they let fly: “We were promised everything would be hunky-dory here this year, and our high schoolers are still not getting what they need. This is Celebration School, and we expect better. Please help us before we take our children away.” The Dyroffs had been ardent participants in every Celebration event I had attended, and I was not surprised to see they were as outspoken as they were physically active. Tom, a pharmacist and a weekend hockey coach for the town’s kids, told me he “worked hard for twenty years, seven days a week to get here,” and he clearly was going to ensure that all of his time and effort had not been wasted.

  On this occasion, the Dyroffs’ specific concern is with the shortage of math and science teachers at the upper school. Herrington, shifting gear, decides that these complaints may be an appropriate SAC matter after all, since they involve the allocation of funds. Dot Davis, the principal, slowly tilts her lean Modigliani profile and summarizes the difficulty she has had recruiting teachers—“there are no warm bodies willing to teach for this kind of money.” Terry Wick, TCC’s energized liaison officer, explains that “this is frustrating for us all, and we are trying to push the legal limits to additionally fund the teaching staff. It was only two years ago that the company discovered it could not pay more than an Osceola district wage.” But the Dyroffs are not about to be placated softly. Linda launches into a second rebuke against “inappropriate reading material” on a teacher’s reading list. It depicts “homosexuality and rape in graphic detail that would make you all turn white.” (The offending text, I later learned, was a novel called Kaffir Boy about a black male youth’s coming of age in South Africa.) “This is out of order,” she protests, and demands a better system of “checks and balances.” The response to this second outburst is less sympathetic. No one on SAC wants to get mired in morality talk, and the meeting diplomatically winds down.

  The Dyroffs believe they are delivering a wake-up call, and there will be many repeat performances from them and others. The desperate tone of their appeals is typical of the climate of fear and frustration that has worked its way into many parents’ lives. By the time the discussion of the MENSA group’s concerns comes around in January, some SAC members are of a mood to debate the issues. Herrington, again, is a key voice, arguing that there are “folks in the community who feel that they are not being heard, that no one is listening.… We can’t let these people feel they are underdogs, or they will run to the media.” Charlie Rogers, the SunTrust bank manager, regarded by many as the town’s alternate “mayor,” agrees: “If we don’t allow the forum, this group will bring in the press, and Dot will be subjected to all hell.” “If it is advertised as a public forum, the press will show up anyway,” suggests another member. At this point in Celebration’s history, the prospect of press coverage enters into almost every discussion of the town’s affairs.

  Leonard Timm, an especially active citizen (he had successfully petitioned TCC to redesign bridges, sidewalks, and playgrounds to meet federal requirements for the disabled), is more belligerent: “We will always have splinter groups with philosophical differences. The philosophy of this school is more or less set in stone, and we all bought into it. If folks don’t like it, they should go elsewhere.” Appreciative of Timm’s fighting spirit, Herrington raises the stakes: “We have to have the courage to stand up and defend the curriculum. It’s not a flaky religion thing that can’t be defended.” He reminds us that SAC’s job is to “uplift, and not to encourage trashing, along the lines of ‘This school sucks!’ ” Jim Whelan, SAC’s sole friendly witness for the MENSA group, takes exception to this remark: “You won’t hear comments like ‘School Sucks’ from members of MENSA.” Herrington reaffirms his support for the forum, suggesting that it will give the school’s critics “an opportunity to stand up and evangelize. Just like the Oprah Winfrey show.” Whelan strenuously objects again, this time to the spirit of the Oprah reference: “These people are sincere, as sincere as you and me, and they speak for a majority.” The council concludes with a loose consensus to convene some kind of forum, and to commission a survey of parents, teachers, and students’ attitudes toward the school to help with the school improvement plan.

  This forum did not take place, largely because there was no appetite for it on SAC and not enough push, at this early date, from MENSA. The survey at hand was conducted, however, and came up with mixed results. Most teachers and students who responded were fairly comfortable with the methods of instruction and assessment. Only a fifth of the parents responded, and almost half registered strong dissatisfaction with the school. The rumor mill alleged that some of the more damaging returns had been pulled by SAC. But the results suggested a gap between parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of the school. Not even SAC members, widely perceived to be “in denial” about the scope and depth of parental unrest, could ignore this evidence. Among my interviews with residents in their own homes, I had already found widespread discontent with the school, presumably among the silent majority who did not respond to the surveys.

  Increasingly all-powerful in public life, survey polls are drastically limited in the information they offer, especially about changing the status quo. They tend to tap into people’s short-term interests, but are less worthwhile when it comes to gauging opinions about complex issues. Regardless, their results are easily spun into the weave of given wisdom. A year before, a controversial national survey conducted by Public Agenda, a public interest group in New York, suggested a fundamental gap between what teaching professionals think and what the public thinks about education. The professionals are more concerned with the process of learning itself, and see the classroom as a place where teachers and students are active, collaborative, lifelong learners. Getting the right answers is much less important than making habitual use of the cooperative methods. By contrast, the public’s priority is safe, orderly schools that will graduate students with basic skills and work habits. The gap is greatest between education professors—resolutely opposed to methods of competitive testing, reward and punishment, and memorization—and parents interested in quantitative results and discipline. Teachers, on the front line, are naturally torn both ways, philosophically in step with the professors, but bound in practice to the will of the community where they work. Among the public surveyed, there was little enthusiasm for knowledge that offers no immediate practical use. Some part of this response can be attributed to the native pragmatism of American life and some part to the notorious anti-intellectualism that often goes along with it. Most parents surveyed thought that well-educated people are socially clumsy, impractical, merely “book smart,” and generally just “too big for their britches.”3 The survey results suggested that, in matters of education, a deep split ran through American society. Whether or not it corresponded to the same division indicated by the survey, there is no doubt that Celebration School was sitting directly on a fault line. The tremors that shook it were violent, and the damage was amplified by the local geography. The only surprise was that, so far, the carnage had not been greater.

  THE LAST STRAW

  Before the school year ended, the contracts of several teachers were discontinued. Among them was Troy Braley, a dynamic science teacher in Upper 4, who had found favor among dissatisfied parents by distancing himself from the nontraditional metho
ds. Braley was not afraid to voice his skepticism—“We’ve been lying to students all along”—or to register his impatience with what he called the “verbal diarrhea” of the teaching mission and the “touchy-feeliness” of the teaching methods. His dismissal was perceived as a rebuff to the concerned parents who were more and more persuaded that their concerns were falling on deaf ears. At the end of June, a group of residents met to discuss the continuing problems faced by the school and to urge concerted action. To avoid being labeled as “bad parents,” they gathered outside of town, at the Radisson hotel across route 192. Two nights before, irate residents had met with Town and Country, the builders, and there was a strong sense around town that residents’ pent-up frustrations were finally breaking out into public showdowns.

  As I entered the meeting, I could see that some of Celebration’s most notable furies were present, cooking the air inside the hotel conference room. Pinned to the walls all around the room were lists of grievances against the school collected over the past two years. Scott Biehler, who had boldly organized the meeting, announced that it was unfortunate such a gathering could not yet take place within Celebration, and urged a free and frank airing of views. Among those not present were several parents who had expressed their interest privately but, as Disney employees, did not feel they could attend, or speak openly. The opinions of those who were present ranged widely, from those who fundamentally opposed the school’s philosophy to those who simply wanted some cosmetic reform. There were hotheads who had personal grudges to settle and friends of the school who believed things had gotten off track. Larry Rosen, surprisingly, had been invited. As the architect of the school’s philosophy, he was regarded as an enemy by several in the room. But the Stetson professor, speaking first, conceded that the curriculum had not been fully developed, owing to lack of resources, and that it had been further hamstrung by Disney’s decision to “back off”: “Normally, 65 percent of parents are happy with a school,” he reported. “We always said that if we had more than 10 percent unhappy here, we’d be in trouble.” With this crowd, Rosen was coming in from the cold, but the parents needed his professional credentials to mount a credible opposition, and this was his chance to reestablish a personal connection with the school he had conceived.

  Among the thirty-five who attended, accumulated bitterness at being ignored welled up:

  “There have been too many attempts to divide and conquer us.”

  “Why have we spent so much to get in here and still have no power?”

  “We do have some power, but we don’t know how to use it.”

  “We’re tired of hearing people say that they are ready to leave town, and of being told to leave if we’re unhappy.”

  “SAC is in profound denial that there is a problem. They think we don’t get it and that this is a reflection of our intellect.”

  “The only thing that interests Disney is whether the school is good for the bottom line. They just want to sell houses and hush everything up.”

  “We’re well-off, we live in Celebration, we should be able to do something about this for our children.”

  “The teachers should stop whining about being underpaid. They knew what the salary was when they took the job.”

  “We can afford to live here, they [the teachers] can’t.”

  “These teachers are kids. Kids are teaching our kids.”

  “We’ve been too nice for too long. I say, ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy,’ it’s time to be loud and public.”

  “We’re pissed, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

  “If we call the press and announce a massive protest, it will destroy Disney. If a hundred ‘For Sale’ notices go up on Saturday, we’ll get their attention.”

  “When they spin and lie, what are we going to do, will we sue?”

  These last two sentiments fed into a plan of action based on threats that no one really intended, or wanted, to follow through on. If enough parents in the community could be mobilized behind a list of concerns, the group would threaten to embarrass TCC by taking their concerns to the press during the upcoming events surrounding the launch of Disney’s Caribbean Cruise Line. Talk of a class-action lawsuit was more muted, but circulated anyway. In the first use of the cyber network for an independent communitywide initiative, Biehler posted several memos on the general bulletin board, including, “What Brought Us Together,” an explanation and summary of the meetings, a long list of “Parents’ Concerns,” and a call for an “Open Meeting with Parents and Concerned Citizens.” A committee, comprising Rosen, Biehler, and Jack Howard, a sweetly reasonable Herman Miller furniture salesman drafted from nowhere to chair the committee and keep the peace, met with principal Davis and vice principal Ruth Christian. They happily discovered that the school’s summer teaching and planning workshops had been aimed at many of the same objectives and reforms favored by the concerned parents. Less fortunately, they also learned there would be strong resistance among some of the teachers to implementing the full diet of reforms.

  On July 9, over 170 parents showed up for the open meeting in the school cafeteria. Residents were used to attending meetings called by Town Hall, the Foundation, or the PTSA, but this would be the first independently organized public assembly in Celebration, and attendees were more than aware of its historic significance. While this was an open forum, and while it gave parents a chance to vent in full, it was also skillfully managed by Biehler and Howard, who had shaped the outgoing message: “ ‘Concerned parents’ are those of us who support the school’s progressive model of education, but want to see a number of traditional measures adopted.” Apparently, the school’s administration wanted the same thing, but one obstacle stood in their way, and many of those present seemed to know all about it. At the outset of a long speech that surprised many by its diagnostic candor, Patrick Wrisley, the town’s imposing Presbyterian minister, went straight to the point. He denounced the “parading of educational fundamentalism” among several key teachers at the school, and expressed his “concern that there are faculty that do not understand their own principal’s and their own administration’s desires. Why do they have that much weight?” This question, backed by the minister’s authority, was taken as an open invitation for others to berate the teachers in question. Margo Schwartz declared that her “biggest concern is that there is a non-inclusive clique that still runs the school and we are not getting through to them.” Others fixated on the resistance of this clique to change: “No clique is going to stand in the way of the mass of parents. If the clique stops us, if Dot Davis can’t stop them, we’ll go down to the grand opening of Caribbean Cruise Lines and confront the top brass.” Very soon, names were named. Prominent among them were Donna Leinsing and Carolyn Hopp, two of the original shapers of the school’s mission. More than a whiff of sacrificial bloodletting lingered over the proceedings as the meeting drew to a close. It was a chilling spectacle to witness, not least for a fellow educator like myself. For this community to heal itself, some of its number would have to be cast out.

  Within a week, three teachers, including Leinsing and Hopp, had been “reassigned” for budgetary reasons and effectively informed, in their account, that it was in the best interests of the school for them to consider leaving. Hopp was the charismatic team leader of the much-assailed senior neighborhood of Upper 4. I had been following, and occasionally assisting in, her classes throughout the year, and had watched her hold up under immense pressure from parents. Her doggedly loyal students considered her the emotional and intellectual core of the upper school, and, as a non-Osceola teacher, recruited from the Northwest, she had brought national clout to the faculty. She was also the only African American teacher left on staff (the other, her daughter, Wanda Wade, had been let go in the spring). Hopp was clearly startled at the alacrity of the decision, but had rationalized it. “We took a stand, and there was no room for disagreement. We were perceived to be the people with a conscience, and therefore would always sta
nd in the way, and so integrity and honesty would have to be sacrificed.” In a less personal vein, she noted, “It comes down to a dollars and cents thing. It’s easier for the company to sell houses when they can say that the school really does listen to the community.”

  Rather than stay on part-time, Hopp resigned and entered a doctoral course of study at the University of Central Florida. Her departure, along with other teachers of color who had earlier resigned or been terminated, meant that the school’s faculty would now be virtually all white. For her part, Leinsing expressed less shock at her reassignment (to in-house suspension duties), noting that she had been viewed for some time as a “resister.” Rather than stay and “play the martyr,” she had accepted a teaching assistantship, also at UCF. Now numbered as official casualties of the Celebration School wars, both veteran teachers were convinced that the administration had reneged fundamentally on the school’s bedrock principles.

  Members of SAC, the PTSA, and other parents close to centers of power were aware of the “dismissals,” some even before the teachers themselves. Among the folks I spoke with, the general attitude was, “I don’t want to know too much about it.” The departures were seen as the price to pay for peace in the community. In addition, many of these parents had privately harbored their own criticisms of the school, but in their public stance as “positive parents” had been unable to voice them. News like this usually spreads fast on the Celebration grapevine, but I found that, in this case, the details took several weeks to circulate generally. Truly, this was information that no one really wanted to hear about, nor was there any enthusiasm for being interviewed about it by me. While I picked up some general dismay at seeing more teachers let go, there was no mistaking the consensus—this was for the good of the community.