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Principal saga has a lesson for district

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published April 9, 2006

Principals, like pastors, enjoy an elevated stature in black communities. And this is especially true in places where segregation is part of the not-so-distant past.

A principal is in a position of leadership, trust, guidance. They're role models in the truest sense. Active parents and students who want to learn invest a lot of emotional capital in their principals.

That's why I'm so disappointed in Michael Ransaw. That's why it has been so difficult to read accounts of his removal as principal of Powell Middle School in Brooksville, so hard to see him fight to get back a job he deserved to lose.

Ransaw was suspended in November 2004 after Hernando County school superintendent Wendy Tellone learned that he somehow had overlooked mentioning that the state was investigating him for pawning a public-owned laptop computer when he worked for Broward County schools.

From the beginning, I thought that Ransaw had made a mistake and he ought to move on, start over elsewhere. His actions were wrong but with contrition could be forgiven. We all deserve a second chance.

But over the last 17 months, his stubbornness, dishonesty, arrogance and lack of contrition have changed my mind.

To think it started so well.

Back in 2003, Tellone appointed three new principals who happened to be black - Betty Harper at Hernando High, Marcia Austin at J.D Floyd Elementary, and Ransaw at Powell. This no doubt raised plenty of eyebrows.

Not that there hadn't been other black principals who distinguished themselves. An effort is under way to name a school after the late Willie Stephens Sr. Lorenzo Hamilton is a legend in Brooksville. Marvin Gordon has had a good tenure at Parrott Middle.

Of Tellone's appointees, all except Ransaw were longtime district employees. At 34, Ransaw cut a dynamic figure when he moved from South Florida and took a job as assistant principal at Pine Grove Elementary in 2002. Administrators who recruited him must have been impressed to learn that his father was once a principal and an administrator and his mother was also an educator.

The importance of having Ransaw deliver more than promise can't be understated. Black male students, who often lag behind their classmates, need to see firsthand that hard work pays off. They need role models in the schools.

Since Ransaw was so new, Tellone invested her own credibility in his success. She liked him. He impressed her. He said he could make a difference, and she believed him.

But soon Ransaw made enemies. Some teachers thought he was too heavy-handed; his disciplinarian act cheered some parents and angered others. Clearly, some people wanted him to fail. It wasn't long before co-workers began poking into his background. Rumors began to fly.

When Ransaw faced early opposition from parents and staff at Powell, Tellone backed him up. She was a firm supporter. That's why it wasn't surprising to see her tears, hear her disappointment, when she testified during Ransaw's administrative hearing last fall. His failure was her failure.

His hiring and firing also turned out to be a costly labor relations lesson. So far, the legal bill is more than $132,000 for the administrative hearing and defense against Ransaw's civil suits.

That's a lot to pay for lessons Hernando district officials should have learned years ago when similar scandals boiled up because of poor or nonexistent background checks.

Maybe this time the lesson will stick.

--Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 9, 2006, 00:19:12]