Ashley High School leadership under fire

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY)– The level of dissatisfaction from teachers at Ashley High School in Wilmington is growing.

WWAY recently told you about the initial, and dismal results of those teacher satisfaction surveys.

Monday we learned about a second survey sent out in response to the initial survey. What it shows is the school seems to be concerned about the initial survey results.

Seventy-five percent of teachers responded to the 2014 teacher satisfaction survey compared to 47 percent in 2012.

Their concerns stem from what appears to be a lack of school leadership.

Questions from the survey include:

Teachers feel comfortable raising issues and concerns that are important to them? 20 percent agree. That’s down from 68 percent two years ago.

There is an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect in this school? About 19 percent agree, down from 59 percent in 2012.

The school leadership makes a sustained effort to address teacher concerns about leadership issues? Twenty-seven percent agree, down from 69 percent in 2012.

Teachers have sufficient access to appropriate instructional materials? Thirty-nine percent agree, down from 70 percent in 2012.

After airing our initial story about concerns at Ashley teacher, concerns poured in via email.

In one email, a teacher said Ashley High School is, “a scary place to work.”

“It has been the worst year at Ashley ever this year. Our principal is a bully and is retaliatory,” wrote another teacher. That teacher added that everyone is afraid of losing their job if they speak up.

WWAY has tried twice to get either the New Hanover County Schools Superintendent Dr. Tim Markley or Ashley High School Principal Jackson Norvell to speak with us.

Markley said no both times. Norvell just left without responding once and has yet to respond to our second request.

Someone is responding to teachers though.

In an email to WWAY, a teacher sent us a copy of a survey that appears to have been sent from school administrators to staff in response to the survey.

The problem is teachers say this survey would not have been anonymous so some were afraid to respond.

In the interest of full disclosure Chris Brown, the reporter on this story, graduated from Ashley High School in 2004.