Dominic Liechti is the "Executive Director & Head of School" of Khan Lab School. We're quite disappointed in his approach to addressing perceived problems. We feel that we never had opportunity to address whatever issue he had with us -- indeed, as of two months after Moby's last day, we still struggle to explain why Dominic broke the contract between us and KLS. Dominic kicked out a family that was happy with the school and enthusiastic about the vision of "Designing student-centered global learning experiences, accessible to the world." He did so without clear warning or clear prior requests for changes, and as far as we can tell breaching contract on behalf of his employer.

Below is a chronicle of our substantial interactions with Dominic.

Conversation 1: Back to School Night (Sept 12, 2016)

Back to School night was on the 5th school day of the school year. My husband and I walked through the door that night looking forward to finding out who our son's teacher was, and admittedly a little on edge about how little we knew about how our son was doing and the gist of his days at KLS. I inadvertently ended up talking to Dominic, not knowing who he was when the conversation started. As long as we talked about him, everything was great. I'm not sure how the topic changed; I think he asked what we thought of the school. The moment we revealed our disappointment with how opaque the school was, he got angry. I was suprised. I had expected some guidance on how to learn how my son was doing; I wasn't expecting anger.

In retrospect, and with more insight into the school, I suspect Dominic thought we were asking for academic feedback. He had made substantial efforts to implement the "Goal Tracker" spreadsheet and weekly "KLS Insider" emails. I suspect he got defensive that we didn't appreciate his work -- though at that point, we knew of neither tool. In any case, I think this conversation was the beginning of the end.

Conversation 2: Meeting with Ania (Nov 29, 2016)

Email 1: Email about Philosophy (Dec 15 & 16, 2016)

I spent some time thinking about Dominic's question. I thought perhaps we'd chanced across a topic of mutual interest. I hoped that using that opportunity to have an interesting conversation without any associated requests might help us develop a positive relationship. So I sent him what I hoped was a friendly email (full text here) discussing why I thought parents benefit from understanding their child's lives. It seems I erred and answered a rhetorical question.

Dominic replied by postponing our re-enrollment from the earlier period for current students to the later date for external applicants (full text here). He didn't specify what was wrong nor what needed to change. He just knocked us down to a lower status than other families.

Conversation 3: Meeting with Seth (Friday, Jan 6, 2017)

On Dec 18, in response to Dominic's unexplained postponment of Moby's re-enrollment, my husband Seth requested a meeting with Dominic and Erica. Seth went aiming to be polite, open, calm, and conciliatory. I don't want to recap my husband's recap of a conversation, other than to say that he stuck by his goals.

The previous day, on January 5, was a Parents' Association meeting. Since we were feeling quite rattled by Dominic and unclear on what we should do, we raised the topic with other parents, hoping for guidance.

Dominic was angry that we discussed our imbroglio with others, though he'd never asked for confidentiality. Seth apologized, still aiming at conciliation. Seth's impression was that Dominic thought he'd communicated in the previous two conversations that further questions about parents in the classroom were unwelcome; but we did not leave those conversations thinking that we'd received such guidance. In this third conversation Dominic said several other things that clarified his perspective. We've struggled to recap his reasons; every paraphrase sounds too crazy to post publicly. Now that Seth understood something about what Dominic wanted, it was too late to do anything. Dominic declared that unless we voluntarily withdrew our son on Monday, Dominic would expel him on Wednesday, just three business days later.

Emails Attempting Reconciliation (Jan 7, 2017)

Email About Termination (Jan 10, 2017)

Email to IL2 Parents (Tue, Jan 10, 2017)