As the school years go by, administrative decisions continue to become more obscure and confusing for students and teachers alike–causing growing frustrations amongst the faculty.
There have been numerous instances in which changes or announcements were made that were not properly conveyed to the teachers in advance. In some cases, it has led to additional stress being added onto their already heavy loads, or disappointment in how things are communicated in Edison.
“When our administration sets policies and directives into action, not just for staff but for students and their parents, they drop the ball so often that it’s highly noticeable. I’m not the only person that has noticed their lack of ability.” Stated Teacher A, who wished to remain anonymous.
The Problem
The faculty member would point to the most recent and arguably controversial decision given of this year–- the 2026 mock regents schedule, which fell between March 13th to March 18th.
This scheduling system saw 15 minute classes, with 40 minute classes back to back alternating on each day– with the exception of 22 minute classes on Wednesday instead of 15. The schedule was hyperlinked into the school’s website and discovered on March 9th, with students initially hearing vague fractions of information from their teachers.
Students had not received any emails nor direct notification about this update until the same week it would begin. This change not only is unexpected, but leaves teachers with a tighter window of instructional days to work with, and puts students taking regents classes in a tough position.
Of course, the mock regents schedule system was not the only case in which administration had failed to effectively communicate.
Another very recent incident regarded the 2026 New York City School survey in which there had been little information to the release of the survey nor the access codes. Even a day before the announced due date of this survey, there had still been confusions, and no access. The deadline was extended.
“I don’t know how much communication there was between administration and between teachers to make that [confusions stirring about the surveys] happen.” Stated Teacher B. “But I think better communication between the parties can make things happen, better communication needs to happen.”
Impact On Students and Staff
These miscommunications often stir feelings of frustration amongst teachers.
“I would not describe my feelings so much as disrespected, certainly frustrated, because sometimes what we would like to do, there’s bureaucratic red tape,” stated Teacher B, who requested anonymity. “But then it’s also if administration is told you need to have your staff do this, then they also can’t give. We need to meet in the middle, and feeling frustrated is unfortunately part of it.”
Another source of frustration comes from the lack of proper execution and professionalism– especially seeing as teachers do not get proper answers as to why something is a policy.
“When you try to ask administration, ‘why are we doing this’? The standard answer is because the superintendent wants it. No, why does she want it? What is she doing with these data points? That’s a question every single person in this building should be asking,” stated Teacher A.
“Some directions do originate at the district level, which is the superintendency. And some decisions happen here,” clarified Moses Ojeda, Edison’s Principal with 2026 marking his fourteenth year.
“The district wants all schools, which are 30 schools in Queens South, to do mock regents. When it comes to us, we decide how we’re going to roll this out. So what we decided to do is say to ourselves, well, what can we do to shorten it? So we asked questions about how other schools in our district did this. Having done that, we figured we could do a special schedule. It would help everybody just knock it out at one time. It also would allow teachers to just do one exam and not multiple versions,” stated Mr. Ojeda.
Mr. Ojeda emphasized the importance of trying new initiatives– something he claimed to have expressed with his committee of teachers with whom he shares information with.
“And I was like, guys [teachers], we just got to pull off the band-aid. We have to try. Because at the end of the day, we’re going to gain time. We will learn from this and make better changes for the future,” Mr. Ojeda said, despite the loss of instructional time during both mock regents and the more recent PSAT schedules, both of which saw extremely reduced instructional periods– the most shortened being seven minutes.
The unfortunate execution of the mock regents schedule also saw conflict with the midterms for those not taking a regents class, as well as the end of the marking period— having left teachers with minimal time to grade. Additionally, the decision of making the mock regents a midterm grade pushes more pressure onto students being faced with content they may not have learned about at the time of the test.
In regards to the New York City School Survey, Mr. Ojeda shared that it had been under the administrative control of another administrator.
“The deadline was extended, but we had already begun the process. We found out about the deadline after we had committed to when we were going to do it,” Mr. Ojeda said.
Mr. Ojeda acknowledges that in large organizations such as a school building, not all needs can be met.
“I’m available to have discussions, and I’m always willing to collaborate to figure out what we can do better. That’s why I have my think tank that I work with,” Mr. Ojeda said. “And I’m reflecting on this year, as a leader who reflects a lot, to see what changes I need to make to make sure communication tightens up.”
