MCC Principal Brad Jacobs: Inferior Job Nets Super Job

[XLFD]

In the news article,"Jacobs to leave Mason County Central takes superintendent position at Inland Lakes", it alerts us that after eight years at Mason County Central, high school principal Brad Jacobs has accepted a position as superintendent of Inland Lakes Schools in Indian River, effective Jan. 1, 2017. He will continue to perform the duties of his current position until Dec. 31.

Inland Lakes is a smaller school with a K-12 enrollment of 740, a staff of 42 teachers, and 7 administrators.  In comparison, MCC High School has an enrollment of just under 500 students and 23 teachers, around a third of the total enrollment of MCC schools.  Over a year and a half ago, Jacobs was a finalist for Montague Superintendent, so his job seeking has been going on for a while.

Brad Jacobs biggest claim to fame throughout his tenure at MCC may have been that he died a hero earlier this fall.  Principal Jacobs allowed a live-action school shooting scenario to occur at his school during a normal day with students present. 

The wisdom of having such a scenario play out with a bunch of teenagers already looking for meaning in their lives in the strange world we have created for them is worthy of debate, but there were 11 make-believe casualties in the exercise, the first being Jacobs, who warned the school over the intercom before taking some fake-lead for the cause. 

For eight years at the helm of the high school, his reign has been mostly uneventful as far as other news.  An issue came up this spring, when 18 y.o. Travis Barrette, a Junior at Jacobs' school, flew a confederate flag on the back of his truck to school.  Barrette posted the issue including his erratic discipline, officials including Jacobs' and MCC Superintendent Jeff Mount related a constantly evolving story about what happened.  Barrette's story didn't change, fit the facts better, and showed him as much more knowledgeable about history than the so-called adults that ran the school.  See the full story and analysis here. 

In fact, beyond these two instances, which may both call his competency to deal with young adults into question, there is basically only one other thing you can find out about Principal Jacobs through a thorough internet search of his career at MCC.  And that isn't complimentary either.

At the school website, you can find with some diligence an April 20, 2016 announcement by Jacobs that informs the public that MCC High School had become a "Focus School".

 

By the context, this annual report alerts the public that they are revealing this fact for the first time, yet at the bottom of the snippet above, Jacobs was aware they were called a Focus School since the previous year.  Focus Schools are identified as the ten percent (10%) of Michigan schools having the widest gap in student achievement between their lowest and highest performing students (see more here:  FAQs about Focus Schools). 

In the snippet, Jacobs defines it as a school that has a large achievement gap in 30% of its student achievement scores, as if that even makes sense.  As there is no other notification of this designation anywhere in the school website (or noted by several MCC students and parents I interviewed), this notification was very late to the community.

In this Focus school parental notification slideshow we find out that parent notification is required in a timely manner when one becomes a Focus School:

In the notification above, Jacobs does not properly relate the reason for the identification as a Focus School, nor any substantive plans for improving achievement.  Furthermore, as MCC High actually became a Focus School in 2014 (2013-2014 list of Focus Schools), Jacobs' letter is almost two years tardy, and should have been given to any new students added to the district since (which doesn't appear to have happened).  

As an aside, it is quite amusing to see the slideshow made by the Michigan Department of Education make some silly mistakes in their slideshow (circled in red).   Using "to" instead of "so", and "much" instead of "must", shows you how far our educational standards among our education administrators have fallen. 

But Principal, Superintendent-to-be, Brad Jacobs made another statement of note during the same time period he sent out the announcement above, he made the pronouncement at the April 2016 MCC school board meeting

Had he reviewed the state's records, he may have seen this March 2016 Report says MCC HS is still a Focus School for now.  An October report, also keeps them as a Focus School. 

So here are Brad Jacobs' qualifications: 

He put a bunch of his students through the terrors and anxieties of a live-shooter training where 11 people 'died'.

He crafted a factually, and historically, inconsistent story about a student's right to fly a flag on his truck.

He totally didn't know what a Focus School was even after having run one for two years, nor did he tell anybody outside of the school about it for two years, even when he was required to do so. 

Inland Lakes, your gain is our gain.  Perhaps our friends in Scottville can help their school administrators choose a better candidate for their next high school principal.

[Willy]

Thanks for that report x. I have never heard or read anything about Focus schools. I have never heard of any news stories regarding this schools Focus designation. Parents should be furious about the lack of communication and lack of concern given to this situation. Another fine job of news gathering and reporting X.