“I’m a Boomer”: An Unlikely Social Justice School Principal in a Politically Hostile Context

Abstract

In recent years, Florida has become increasingly hostile toward issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in public education. This poses challenges for principals who need to ensure that students, particularly from marginalized backgrounds, have the opportunity to succeed. This case explores the social justice practices of a self-identifying conservative, Cuban, “boomer” principal leading a predominately Black and Brown high school in South Florida. The case draws upon the multiplicity of social justice leadership conceptualizations within the field to suggest that not all leaders “talk the walk” of social justice and raises important questions about the construct of social justice leadership in practice.

Background

This case is situated at a large urban high school—Marshall Community High—in South Florida during the 2022–2023 academic school year. Marshall is one of 20-plus high schools in a large, urban South Florida school district. The district boasts a high degree of economic, racial, ethnic, and gender diversity but resides in a state with a governor that has been openly hostile toward progressive issues which have affected schools including safety from COVID-19, gun control after the 2018 Parkland shooting, and physical safety for racial and gender diverse people. In recent years, Governor Ron DeSantis issued numerous legislative orders including the Mask Mandate Ban, Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act (i.e., Stop W.O.K.E. Act), and the Parental Rights in Education bill (i.e., Don’t Say Gay bill) to fight against left-leaning political ideology. In retrospect, these policies were likely nothing more than a political setup for his bid in the 2024 presidential primary. Nonetheless, they created very tangible hostile conditions for schools and school leaders to navigate. For example, some school districts lost state funding when they elected to retain mask mandate policies (Mervosh, 2021). Professional development, curriculum, and teaching practices that could be construed as critical race theory, LGBTQ+ identity and sexuality, or other radical liberal ideologies were forbidden or eliminated. Ultimately, this led to an exodus of teachers, book bans, and potential criminal charges for any educator or school leader in violation of these mandates (Pen America, 2023; Salam, 2023).

In a public statement, DeSantis declared, “We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other” (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 2021). More broadly, the governor’s efforts represent the alt-right conservative ideology and current culture wars that have targeted public education to placate the Trumpian conservative populace (Ecarma, 2023). One populace in particular has had significant voting power in Florida: Cuban Americans. Unlike most Hispanic voters, the majority of Cuban Americans identify as Republicans (58% compared to 32% of non-Cuban Hispanics; Krogstad, 2020). In 2018, DeSantis clenched victory with the large majority of Cuban-American votes in urban cities like Miami and Hialeah, and in 2022, he was re-elected with the majority of urban votes in racially diverse counties across Florida (Gamez Torres, 2018; Politico, 2023). A statement from Florida’s Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez reflected this trend. “As the daughter of Cuban exiles who fled from Marxist ideology, I am proud to stand alongside Governor DeSantis and support this proposed legislation that will put an end to wokeness that is permeating our schools and workforce” (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 2021). In this case study, we explore how a self-identifying Cuban-American, conservative school principal negotiates socially just leadership practices at a racially diverse school in South Florida under this hostile political context.

Case Narrative

Roberto Martinez has nearly 35 years of experience in public schools. He was a classroom science teacher for 16 years, served 3 years as an assistant principal, and has been a principal in middle and high schools for the past 16 years. Mr. Martinez has been the principal at Marshall Community High School—a large urban school that serves predominately Black and Hispanic students with 90% of students receiving free and reduced meals—for the last 10 years of his career. Like many schools in the area, Marshall High offers unique educational opportunities including programs in accelerated courses, culinary arts, fashion design, finance, computer technology, pre-medical sciences, and dual enrollment opportunities. Over the last decade, Mr. Martinez has hired nearly 80% of the teachers and staff at his school. Year after year, he has received positive feedback through school-wide climate assessments by teachers, staff, and parents in the school community. In 2020, Mr. Martinez received the Principal of the Year Award from his school district which, at the time, was the 11^th largest district in the United States.

Roberto Martinez was born and raised in South Florida and identifies as a conservative, first-generation Cuban American to Cuban immigrant parents. He uses the phrase “old school” to describe himself and his leadership style and pivots often to his rough and tough upbringing by his father who was a “shake it off, get back up, and get back out there “ kind of guy. In addition, Mr. Martinez uses the phrase “baby boomer” often but in various colloquial senses to describe attributes about his age, his belief system, and his work ethic. For example, he shares, “I’m old! I’m part of the baby boomer generation, and I was raised to believe in hard work. Plain and simple.” When asked to describe his leadership philosophy, he shared three pragmatic core values without much elaboration: (a) hard work—meaning all people need to put in the time and hours at school, (b) surrounding oneself with good people, and (c) the golden rule—treating others like you want to be treated.

Uncomplicated Leadership: Exemplifying Simple Core Values

When Mr. Martinez was asked about the impacts of Florida’s hostile political climate in response to COVID-19 and anti-CRT on his leadership practices, he responded matter-of-factly, “The job is the job and it just has to get done, right?!” Initially, Mr. Martinez’s response seemed nonchalant, but then he added, “I just always try to do right by people.” He continued:

Coming back from COVID, I told teachers to make mental health a priority. Make sure that they’re in a good place and taking care of themselves. I actually said, ‘If we want to be on the right side of history, then we’re going to look out for the kids’ best interest and not a test score or anything else.’

Mr. Martinez’s combination of pragmatism and core values created a foundation that allowed for deeper reflection and empathy. He said, “I try not to make teachers do anything that I wouldn’t want a principal to make me do” which emphasized his commitment to the golden rule. Mr. Martinez was also cognizant of the concept of equity by “giving people what they need.” He shared:

If a teacher comes to me and complains about a broken pencil sharpener then I just send them to my assistant principal, but if a teacher says that their partner just got diagnosed with cancer, then I would give them all day. As much [time] as they needed, as much as they wanted.

As a litmus test, Mr. Martinez would often imagine himself on the other side of his decisions to determine the best course of action. “If a parent came to me about their child being bullied, I would put myself in that parents’ situation as if that’s my child in that situation.” Mr. Martinez’s technocratic approach means leading with standards, rules, and guidelines that everyone must follow, but he also believes that his decisions must fall in line with “the right thing to do” aligning with the golden rule.

For the past 2 years, Mr. Martinez shared that major changes from the COVID-19 pandemic, reckoning of racial injustice, and Florida’s politics have been a series of hurricane-like events. Like palm trees in a hurricane, Mr. Martinez shared that COVID, in particular, deepened his commitment, like roots, to his core leadership values. Leadership experiences in literal life and death situations deepened his empathy, communication, and willingness to listen and understand the difficulties people in his school community were confronting. While Mr. Martinez had always prided himself as a lifelong learner, his leadership experiences through COVID-19 primed his ability to navigate what he called “dehumanizing state policies.” In reference to the anti-LGBTQ+ policies, he said, “I do not know anything about the LGBTQ+ community, but now I have to learn because I have students and teachers in that community.” While Mr. Martinez likely had LGBTQ+ people in his school community before the politicization of LGBTQ+ issues, it took the surfacing of such issues to turn his indifference into recognition, and recognition into action. As he reflected more about his social justice conceptualizations, he said

I’ve always been wise about making sure that I treat all the kids equally, but the problem is—that I’ve learned—social justice isn’t necessarily treating everybody the same. I will say that is one of the things that has changed most about me in these last few turbulent years. I’m more in tune with what barriers look like than I was before.

In a divisive post-2020 context, people in the United States have become conditioned to view one another through increasingly polarized political lenses. Although Mr. Martinez self-identifies as a conservative “boomer,” he does not necessarily speak, behave, or respond to issues in his school from an alt-right political ideology as one might assume. When asked to provide an example of how he had supported his predominately Black and Brown school, he shared a recent school-wide decision around graduation.

Small Change, Big Impact: Choosing Love Over Fear

Marshall Community High School is one of more than twenty high schools in a large urban school district in South Florida which can make coordination for graduation dates and times challenging. Given his seniority, Mr. Martinez often received his first choice for graduation time slots during the weekday graduation event at the local convention center. He said:

A lot of people like that eight o’clock in the morning slot because the kids are half asleep and there’s less chance for something bad happening or something to go wrong because you’re waking up at five in the morning to get there by 6:15 am. They’re not apt to do anything crazy. For years, we had the eight o’clock, and I wouldn’t give it up.

Then, last year, there was a scheduling conflict and the district administration asked Mr. Martinez if they could move Marshall High’s graduation time from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm. Mr. Martinez was outraged, “Are you crazy? You’ll get people who’ll show up drunk. I mean parents will be crazy. I didn’t want that.”

Mr. Martinez was concerned about two main issues: something bad happening at graduation and the sociopolitical consequences of such events. When Mr. Martinez brought this potential graduation time change to his leadership team, an assistant principal, whom he had hired, said “I don’t know, Roberto. I don’t want to be responsible for the next school shooting.” ¹ In addition to safety issues, Mr. Martinez was also worried about the media picking up any unanticipated shortcomings. Recent hostilities against public education (e.g., mask-mandate bans and banned books) in Florida had local, state, and national media reaching out to school districts, schools, and educators for comment. While most school districts traditionally limit media attention, Mr. Martinez’s school district was on heightened lockdown and warned all school personnel against unnecessary media coverage. Considering the governor’s divisive policies, Florida’s COVID-19 failings, and attacks on DEI, the district believed that Florida public schools were under heightened political scrutiny on a local and national level. Firm anti-media directives were delivered to all schools warning principals and educators that the district could not protect them if they received unwarranted media attention. Ultimately, Mr. Martinez had to be the one to make the decision and he said:

I had to weigh the pros and cons and honestly at the time, there were a lot of cons—fights breaking out, kids being out of control, someone getting hurt, or God forbid someone bringing a gun. I don’t want that kind of attention. We’ll all be fired or killed, but at the same time, I want to help if I can.

Ultimately, Mr. Martinez was a team player, he trusted the district administration, and he reluctantly agreed to the time change.

On graduation day, Mr. Martinez experienced a great deal of anxiety and worrying about how the ceremony would unfold. He created an impromptu faculty meeting asking teachers and staff to be on high alert and prepare for any “unanticipated events.” He also reached out to his school resource officers to prepare them for potential issues. He asked about “code red” safety procedures on the off chance of an active shooter on site. The school resource officers, having numerous experiences with district graduations, reassured him that everything was going to be fine and under control.

Despite Mr. Martinez’s concerns, the 6:00 pm graduation ceremony turned out to be a huge success and was the largest attended graduation in the school’s history since Mr. Martinez’s decade principalship. His security team and school resource officers congratulated him on a very smooth, well-attended, and high-energy graduation event. Several parents, that had kids who graduated years before, personally thank him for a great ceremony because they or their spouse could not attend in previous years due to lost income from taking a day off. As Mr. Martinez finished recalling this experience, he expressed that this should have been the right thing to do all along. He said:

It occurred to me that the goal of the graduation ceremony is to get as many people there as we can. In a community like ours, the majority of parents are not salary employees—they’re hourly employees. So, it felt like the right thing to do, and once I felt like that, I decided to change it permanently.

At the time of this interview, Mr. Martinez said that this would be the second year his school would participate in the 6:00 pm graduation. However, the change remains challenging and risky. He said, “I blamed it on the district last year because they asked, but now I need to do the harder work of convincing staff that this is the right thing to do, permanently.” Mr. Martinez valued shared decision-making and recognized that many of his teachers and staff were going to protest the change from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm; however, Mr. Martinez believed that he could convince the teachers to accept these changes and after a few years, they would witness firsthand, the positive benefits for their students and community.

This scenario reveals tensions within Mr. Martinez’s belief system between bootstrap/work ethnic narratives, deficit perspectives around students and families of color, and his leadership core values, particularly the golden rule. Whether it was general worry or fear of a new change, Mr. Martinez’s initial response revealed deficit beliefs and negative stereotypes about his predominately Black and Brown community. In essence, he feared that dangerous situations were more likely to unfold because students and parents would be “too awake.” More alert students equated to more problematic behavior and more alert parents equated to a greater risk of intoxication, fights, or out-of-control community members—all of these are problematic stereotypes of Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities. Indeed, Mr. Martinez’s response to the change was reactionary and likely out of fear that something bad would happen. These potentially unanticipated events posed safety risks, which increased the possibility of negative attention and consequences for Mr. Martinez and his school given the hostile sociopolitical environment.

Mr. Martinez likely understood the economic and occupational limitations of his school community, but he was only forced to reconcile his deficit perspectives and leadership core values when forced to make this graduation time change. In the end, he applied his leadership golden rule and said, “How would I feel if I had to choose between supporting my kids at their graduation and feeding them?” Here, Mr. Martinez puts himself in the context of his parent community to be able to make a decision that is best for the students out of love, not fear. While it is unclear whether Mr. Martinez’s beliefs have shifted progressively, it is important to note that his decisions align with more equitable and socially just outcomes. That is, Mr. Martinez may not “talk the talk” but he is leading inclusively through continuous learning and action.

Teaching Notes

For many school leaders, the political situation in Florida has become untenable. In the year following the pandemic, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) released findings that foreshadowed high rates of principal turnover largely due to political tensions and rhetoric (Davis, 2021). For example, a principal in Tallahassee was forced to resign over a lesson on Michelangelo’s Statue of David that was deemed pornographic by a handful of parents (Heubeck & Superville, 2023; Yang, 2023). As a result, principals are reporting widespread stress and burnout which impacts personal and professional outcomes and their longevity in the profession (Su-Keene & DeMatthews, 2022; DeMatthews et al., 2021). In Florida’s current political climate, social justice leadership remains elusive in practice given the overall threats to job security which begs the question, is socially just leadership in Florida tenable?

Broadly, school leaders who are concerned with social justice issues recognize that attributes such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, and other identities differentiate power and privilege within U.S. society. Both empirical and conceptual models for social justice leadership in practice argue that school leaders must be keenly aware of barriers for diverse students so that they can take action to rectify these challenges and barriers that bar student opportunities, belonging, and success in schools. While social justice leadership is essential for ensuring the social and academic success of marginalized students, the conceptualization of what it means varies widely across contexts and time.

In educational leadership, the term social justice leadership originated within the United States and expanded through a burst of conceptual literature at the turn of the twenty-first century (Gümüş et al., 2021). The origin of social justice leadership has been posited as a critical response to the historic conceptualization of leadership from scientific management and Taylorism (Foster, 1986; Furman, 2012; Jean-Marie et al., 2009; Rivera-McCutchen, 2021; Theoharis, 2007). As such, some have defined social justice leaders as critical humanists or ethno-humanists who are concerned with and engage in efforts of liberation for marginalized children (Foster, 1986; Lomotey, 1993). Socially just school leaders are cognizant of discrimination based on race, diversity, gender, ability, and other markers of marginalization (Dantley & Tillman, 2006) and focus on creating equitable and inclusive education environments (Larson & Murtadha, 2002). Seminal scholars like George Theoharis (2007) have developed operational definitions of social justice leadership such as “principals [who] make issues of race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and other historically and currently marginalized conditions in the US central to their advocacy, leadership practice, and vision” (p. 223). David DeMatthews offers a more pragmatic definition where “social justice leadership starts with a leader being able to recognize the marginalization of a group. Once recognition occurs, leaders engage in an ongoing process to eliminate inequities” (DeMatthews & Mawhinney, 2014, p. 853). In addition, numerous leadership frameworks centering diverse issues and marginalization have been developed. Some of these include culturally responsive leadership frameworks centered around Black and Brown communities (Khalifa et al., 2016), school leadership addressing indigeneity and decolonization (Khalifa et al., 2019), and social justice leadership from the unique perspective of Asian American school leaders (Liou & Liang, 2021), to name a few.

Given the multiplicity of definitions, researchers have argued that social justice leadership is an elusive, contested construct (Shoho et al., 2005). Like the theory of relativity, Bogotch (2002) highlighted that social justice is contextually situated to the systems of oppression based on the geographic location; social, political, and economic context; and temporality. Furthermore, leadership as a construct cannot exist solely through an individual. A population of one, for example, cannot be a leader because leadership is a relational activity. Leadership becomes defined through engagement around such things as purpose, context, emotion, ideology, politics, freedom, collectivism, culture, and humanity (Bogotch et al., 2019). As such, scholars have cautioned against approaches to constructing a universal definition of leadership particularly as a relates to social justice because the intentions begin to shift toward universalization and sameness rather than leaving space for multiplicity and plurality (Bogotch et al., 2019; Foster, 1986). These tensions have been illuminated in the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership where scholars have noted the complexity of social justice leadership in practice including challenges in leading increasingly diverse schools (Scanlan & Theoharis, 2016), antiracist leadership in a post-2020 context (Diem & Welton, 2020; Roberts et al., 2023), and inclusive leadership within high-performing schools (Duncheon et al., 2024).

An important tension that has been revealed in the literature is whether social justice leadership is tenable within various educational contexts (Karpinski & Lugg, 2006; Shaked, 2019). Large-scale policies that focus on academic achievement, performance-based funding, and competition induce competing priorities for principals to navigate, and in some cases, result in termination (Karpinski & Lugg, 2006). In Florida, both principals and teachers have been subject to termination and criminal prosecution for violating DeSantis’ alt-right policies (Salam, 2023). Just the threat alone has created chilling effects throughout the Floridian education system which has stymied principals’ and teachers’ decision-making to support marginalized students (Mervosh, 2022; Pen America, 2023). Finally, political hostility has become a driving force for involuntary turnover and early exodus of educators, particularly from racially diverse backgrounds (Guan, 2023; Payne, 2023).

Ryan (2016) argued that social justice-oriented principals can maintain their practice through subversive activism to enact social justice goals by being “under the radar” in vulnerable contexts. Yet, cultural sentiments post-2020 suggest that principals need to be more vocal, explicit, and intentional in creating critical changes to support Black and Brown students. However, doing so poses challenges and threatens job security for school leaders who find themselves in politically charged geographic locations. In addition, being vocal may not be enough. Researchers also have found that school leaders may be “talking the talk” but lack the capacity whether through training, leverage, or authenticity to enact major changes (Grace et al., 2024). Indeed, researchers have cautioned against performative wokeness when issues of racism and White supremacy are brought to the forefront of education which can cause more harm than progress (Marshall & Wilson, 2023; Watson, 2020).

These recent trends in conceptualizing social justice leadership raise important questions about tensions in social justice leadership within politically hostile contexts. The intensity of identity politics and culture wars has created divisions among people, and this is especially the case in a state like Florida which has furthered notions of who can or cannot be a social justice leader and what sorts of dispositions a leader who cares about diversity and inclusion needs to possess. But in today’s political environment, one or even two pathways to social justice are not sustainable. With each new policy/law/regulation, the contexts in which school principals work change, and meeting one group’s notions of justice often violates another group’s sensibilities. The case of Roberto Martinez, a high school principal, is an example of someone who, at first, said that he didn’t care about social justice. Indeed, his quick declarations of being “old school” and a “boomer” signaled that he identified more with the conservative political right than the progressive left.

The question that we want our readers to grapple with is how can a school leader who doesn’t “talk the talk” begin to reflect and change. In this case, it is not what Roberto Martinez says that is so compelling, it is his humility and ability to be compassionate and empathetic that speaks to his acceptance of new ideas and new practices. Mr. Martinez is not a perfect principal; indeed, he may be a very imperfect social justice school leader, but he might also be the most sustainable social justice leader given the temporal and geographic context. Most importantly though, Mr. Martinez is a learner and committed to doing what is right for his students and school community amid the risk.

Discussion Questions

1. Roberto Martinez does not fit easily into the many images or definitions of a socially just school leader; and yet as he [and we] learn, his actions come to reflect greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in his school. Does this case example raise any questions as to your previous understandings of leadership for social justice? In what sense?

2. (b) How significant a role do changes in contexts/issues/situations play in the decisions of school leaders?

There is evidence that matching school principals and teachers with the student racial demographics in a school adds cultural value to students’ education. At the same time, does this case suggest that maybe such personnel policies and practices might marginalize students? How so?

Given Florida’s political hostility toward marginalized youth, teachers, and leaders, in what way do Roberto Martinez’s leadership decisions give you hope? Or, conversely, does this case signal an end to leadership for social justice?

(a) In your opinion, which possibilities are more likely, and would your opinion change if this were a principal in a more progressive state?

(b) What image(s) of a school leader emerges in your mind when you are told that she/he -

has 35 years of experience in one school system,

is both Cuban and a registered Republican, and

calls him/herself a “boomer” or “old school”

Managing a large urban public high school is hard. Recognizing differences to create equitable practices is harder. Acting as a leader for social justice is perhaps the hardest. In what ways can this case inform leadership preparation programs?

Let’s put ourselves in the position of Mr. Martinez and extend the Golden Rule. How can self-identifying conservative, progressive, moderate, or apolitical educators and leaders engage humanely with one another to lead social justice efforts?

(a) Consider the intersections between your political identity, professional identity, and personal values. Where are the points of alignment, and more importantly, the points of contention?

(b) How might school leaders learn to make socially just or ethical decisions? (See Sealey-Ruiz’s [2020] Archeology of the Self or Stefkovich and Michaele O’Brien’s [2004] Best Interests of Students)