This is the sorriest example of adults not being able to hold it together for the good of the kids that I’ve seen in quite some time. And I’m flummoxed as to how it came to this, as are many parents and their children who attend William B. Travis Academy/Vanguard and are involved in band.
You see apparently their principal, Mari Smith, doesn’t get along with their band director, Randy McCann. And their band director, Randy McCann, doesn’t get along with their principal, Mari Smith. As I was writing this, in fact, Robert Wilonsky posted up as well, pointing out that everyone pretty much is agreeing that there is bad blood between Smith and McCann.
Now here’s the bad part: the kids McCann directs were up for a pretty prestigious award – the Texas Music Educators Association’s Honor Band. But the rules state that if the band director leaves at any time, they are disqualified.
That performance was to happen Thursday. However, Smith requested McCann be transferred and after considerable back and forth, he was still transferred as of Thursday. So 78 kids didn’t get to compete for an honor that would’ve been a first for Dallas ISD if they won (they came in first runner-up last year), because they were disqualified.
Now, I don’t even know what started the fight. I’ve heard a few ideas, but since McCann and Smith are bound by district policy that precludes comment, I’ll just have to say I have no confirmation of what made things so untenable.
By many accounts, Smith and McCann were friendly at least at some point. But it will always chap my hide when two grown-ups and their needs come before the needs and hard work of 78 students. Always.
I talked to some parents (and one of McCann’s former students). They said they’ve been trying for weeks to get someone to think of the kids and not the grown-ups, to no avail. They’re mad, upset, and confused, and rightly so. A petition with 249 signatures was sent to me this week as well, all students voicing support for McCann, who will now be teaching at James B. Hood Middle School.
Shari North, a former Dallas ISD music educator and a parent of Travis students, said she is firmly in McCann’s corner, “I have worked in, around, and for the DISD for decades. This situation is the worst treatment of a teacher I have ever seen. Mr. McCann not only deserves his job back, Hinojosa should publicly apologize to him.”
Her daughter, Caroline, was a student of McCann’s until she moved on to high school — she now attends Booker T. Washington. “Entering Travis as a 6th grader, with little to no passion for classical music and unaware that I had any immeasurable musical talent all, Mr. McCann helped me personally as I blossomed into a successful clarinet player under his direction,” she said in a letter she wrote to Dallas ISD. “With his guidance, I was accepted into the DISD All City Band, TMEA All Region Band, and even Booker T. Washington HSPVA (where I will be a senior this fall).”
“While he might just be an insignificant band teacher in the eyes of DISD leadership, on campus, he brings a happy spirit nobody else replicates,” she concluded. “I assume DISD has some reason for inflicting this transfer, but I ask if it’s reason enough to separate a teacher from students who adore him?”
Her dad, John, also weighed in. “The timing of this move was, in my opinion, done over the summer to prevent any sort of appeal,” he wrote, adding that he believes the dustup began in 2013, when parents and Mr. McCann lobbied the district to be allowed to participate in a different band contest.
Parents and students even signed up to speak at a school board meeting about it back then. “The speakers eventually withdrew when a deal was made by the district to allow the band (under Mr. McCann) to take a long-scheduled trip to participate at a contest in Florida (an event they won),” John North said. “This was over the objections of current principal, Ms. Smith. An open secret on campus has been Ms. Smith’s desire to get back at Mr. McCann for his alleged disloyalty.”
“It is the parents belief that our principal is having him transferred for personal reasons,” Travis PTA president Dabney Jungerman agreed this week. “Our band parents do not believe this move is in the best interest of our students but is in the best interest of our principal.”
But I also talked to Stephanie Elizalde, the district’s chief of school leadership, at length today about the situation. The picture that emerges is one that was difficult, and hard to explain when you factor in the information the district can’t divulge when it comes to personnel matters, which always means there’s going to be a huge component missing from the story.
“I know this situation is emotional,” Elizalde said, adding that she spent time researching the options and talking to both career educators before arriving at a point where either decision she made would’ve been unpopular. She was, so to speak, between a rock and a hard place.
When Smith initially requested the transfer, parents complained and the Hillcrest feeder pattern executive director, Mark Ramirez, reversed the decision. But then Elizalde ended up involved in the matter, and ultimately, she had to make a tough decision to reverse the reversal.
“All of this sounds like if I wanted one more day, the kids would’ve gotten to compete,” she told me. “But that’s not really how it works.”
Elizalde said that she consulted with the district personnel in the visual and performing arts department to get the lay of the land about the TMEA rules. “I mean, of course, if waiting one more day would allow them to compete, I would,” she said. “I was looking at all of this as what was good for the kids.”
But as she researched the most pressing problem, the answer became really clear really fast. “The rules say that the moment the district knows the band director will not be there for the following school year, we’re required to notify them,” she said. “And I didn’t want to misrepresent the school or the district. I wouldn’t do that.
But even if I had, the moment the transfer went through, they would’ve been disqualified still.”
Elizalde said that even if the band had competed on Thursday, McCann’s transfer to another school would’ve disqualified them from performing next February. They would’ve won, but then not really because the honor would’ve been taken and given to the runner up.
“And that didn’t sound good for the kids, either,” she said. “I know some parents say they just wanted to see how far their kids would go, but to win, and then come February bring up all these wounds again by having to say, ‘Oh, that’s right, you aren’t going to be able to perform in San Antonio (at the TMEA annual conference) because Mr. McCann isn’t here anymore’?”
That wouldn’t have been fair either.”
Elizalde said she met with both McCann and Smith individually. And while she can’t comment on personnel matters specifically, “It would’ve been no good for kids to have them both on campus,” she said.
Elizalde insists that she had a hard decision to make, and one she wanted to handle differently if she could’ve.
“Have I handled it well? I haven’t. I haven’t,” she said, adding that “there have been a few parents that have been reasonable. They haven’t agreed with my decision, but they can at least see why I made the decision I made.”
“There is one (parent meeting) that I didn’t handle well, and it’s keeping me up at night because I never like to work with a parent like that,” she added.
But overall, Elizalde said, “If I could’ve found any other way, I assure you I would’ve. I get all the analogies they are drawing — if this was football, if this was a sport. And I get that. I started out in education as a cheerleading sponsor. I know how vital the band is.”
“I know no one can really understand, I made the best choice. My options were lose, or lose lose.”
Without all the information (or hell, even with all of it), it just seems like the bulk of the blame goes to two educators who couldn’t work out their differences for at least one more year. And who knows? Maybe it was so bad that morale would’ve suffered for all with that kind of animosity permeating the air.
But in the meantime, it doesn’t look like McCann will be back at Travis. Hopefully, as bright as these students are, and as well as they’ve been taught, they’ll be back at the TMEA competition next year, where they will crush their competition, albeit under a new director.