Guilford County Schools issued a rather strange press release today.

The release announced the “redeployment” of “intervention teams” to 18 schools that are having trouble meeting academic standards. What’s weird is the defensive tone that appears in the second paragraph:

This short-term strategy does not come without a price. First, while some will embrace the move of central office staff to the schools for support, others will charge that if we can place that number of central office staff in the schools, then we didn’t need them in the first place. Nothing could be further from the truth and we should not lose sight of their importance to our long-term goal of academic excellence. For example, there is no question that we need our curriculum department to further develop the district’s math and reading curriculum and the formative assessment division is critical to helping teachers identify which objectives have been mastered by their students.

Over the years, GCS has had one of the lowest student-to-central office staff ratios among the large school districts in the state. According to an audit called for by the Guilford County Board of Commissioners several years ago, GCS could double its central office student to staff ratio and still be below the state average. Still, critics claim we are “top heavy” with central office administrators and that we spend too much money on staff development, trainers, etc.

Obviously, GCS is sensitive to claims that school systems are top-heavy these days. I bit hyper-sensitive, actually. That’s good, I guess. But will it cause anything to change?