Pros
Leadership generally returns e-mails they receive and is responsive to outreach even if they don’t act appropriately on the feedback they receive (imo). They do at least receive it professionally. Some local schools are truly excellent on the backs of local teams that rise above organizational chaos Upper management has some intelligent people but they are too separated from the real world by nepotism for it to matter. They get more out of touch with every passing day. Almost all problems can be tied to a disconnect between upper management and school level staff, which means it might be feasible to solve them. The fundamental idea of “modernizing” Montessori is a worthy one.
Cons
The company is in a downward spiral. Turnover is massive at the school level and morale is very low. As they are spiraling they continuously blame their employees and double down on their mistakes. Upper leadership are an insular group of friends who share the same ideology. However they are not up front or honest about the ways that ideology interacts with their business practices. As massive turnover spreads through the organization, none of the members of this inner circle face any consequences or accountability as they continuously double down. Initiatives will be started and then just disappear. I don't mean that an initiative is dropped, I mean it is simply never spoken of again. This creates a maddening, disorienting work environment. When they aggravate and hurt their staff, instead of reflecting, they seem to roll it into some kind of "we're the disruptors of education" narrative and then talk about how the problem was with the staff member not their leadership. In some cases they revive an old initiative as if its a new idea, seemingly forgetting that theyve already tried it. When confronted with massive turnover they initiated "Project People" which I interpreted as trying to hire different kinds ofpeople rather than shift the internal culture. There are other examples - like when they bizarrely solicited investment money from parents. It was creepy to me. but what was really unethical is that they misled parents claiming that teachers would be given stock options and implying that parents and the teachers they love would be investors together. Basically using the good will the teachers had built with families to persuade families into investing and then when they didnt get the amount of money they wanted they just dropped the teacher stock options plan together and never spoke of it again, at least not that I heard. It’s possible it’s still in the works and they will follow through, but from the perception of the teaching staff right now it was just an empty commitment. Investors and board members don’t seem to hold the company accountable. I suspect because there is some shared ideology amongst those groups but I’m not sure. One day when dealing with a stressful situation, I saw an executive tweet about the book they are writing. It all just gives the impression of upper management being very out of touch with the struggles of their staff. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle but Pereception counts for a lot in regards to staff retention.
