[FLASH POLL RESULT] Who Deserves the Most Blame for DPS Disruptions?

On Feb. 12, 2024, Southpoint Access encouraged readers to participate in a flash poll about recent school disruptions in Durham Public Schools after classified workers learned their increased pay structure was at risk of being rolled back.

More than one-third of respondents (36.1%) blamed DPS administrators, while 27.8% blamed the Board of Education for failing in their policy leadership role. Some responsibility also was assigned to state education/funding policies and the district’s legal and financial oversight.

We also asked respondents to share how the disruptions have affected their families:

• “Kids have missed school and valuable education (K and 5th), parents’ jobs are compromised by watching kids while working, considering charter/private schools for next year.”
• “Questioning enrollment for next year.”
• “Just missing school, but I’m OK with that, if that’s what it takes to support the DPS staff.”
• “We both work from home, so canceling school completely has little effect on my life. The days when we had to provide our own transportation were worse.”
• “The strike days have been challenging to cover.”
• “My partner and I are managing care for our son while he is out of school without any immediate threats to our livelihood, but we were concerned that he wasn’t getting a reasonably sound public school experience in DPS prior to this flare up. My level of trust in the competence and honest of DPS administrators is beyond strained at this point.”
• “My child isn’t getting access to his IEP services. He hasn’t been for a while now. We also have EC transportation services. The driver and monitor are very nice people and treat my child well. They deserve to be respected and paid.”
• “We’re a privileged family by all measures. However, we have a child with extreme mental health issues. He needs consistency for his mental health. He was on track and life was in a good place. This has started to erode all the hard work he’s done. And I’m scared for him.”
• “I have had to scramble to find and pay for childcare at the last minute.”
• “I’ve had to either work with my first grader at home or spend money to send her to camp. Both a privilege, yes. But still disruptive. However, she has a speech IEP that we just implemented and this disruption is affecting that as she’s not getting the services we were promised. Will they make them up? I’m sure, but it seems like the speech therapist already has too many students to help as it is and this is just going to cause more work for her. I can’t imagine the parents of exceptional children and children with disabilities, what they’re going through.”
• “They have caused distrust amongst the communities (especially when it came to the communication/messaging to families) and upheaval in our daily lives, disruption in parents work-related travel plans. Overall dissatisfaction with our choice to move to progressive Durham.”
• “Impacted custody issues, work schedules, jeopardized employment status, huge impacts financially, taken a toll on my child’s academic performance, eroded my trust in the school board and administrators, strained relationship with the community towards teachers (who are advocating appropriately for themselves and our students.”
• “As a teacher, it affects my planning and needed days for instruction. As a parent of a second grader, I now have to take him with me to my teacher workday.”
• “We are mentally exhausted by the uncertainty.”