Tuesday was the annual Board Appreciation Ceremony at San Antonio Independent School District‘s headquarters, a touching afternoon of student music, dance and visual arts presentations, a way of saying thanks to the seven unpaid board trustees who preside over the inner city’s largest school district.
The afternoon program preceded the evening board meeting, and the atmosphere was festive as a quick-witted Superintendent Sylvester Perez served as emcee, his last such ceremony as his planned retirement at the end of the 2014-15 school year approaches.
“I’ve been the superintendent of at least five school districts and I can say this is the best group of trustees I’ve worked with,” Perez declared at the outset of the program.
The talented Jefferson Jazz Ensemble opened with “My Cheri Amor,” the 1969 Motown soul classic by Stevie Wonder, and dance groups from Sam Houston, Highland, and Edison high schools performed several original jazz dance numbers as trustees, administration staff and others looked on with appreciation.
Students are seldom the center of attention at school board meetings. Tuesday proved to be the exception to the rule, and left me wondering why more meetings aren’t leavened with entertaining reminders that students should come first.
After the trustees were presented with original artworks by student artists from their individual districts, and trustee Olga Hernandez was presented with a dozen yellow roses, the board got down to business.
“On behalf of the whole board, we want to say how honored we are to be part of the SAISD family,” said Board Chair Ed Garza. “We have been laser focused on becoming one of the best school districts in the nation.”
Such lofty aspirations drew loud applause. Achieving it, or even demonstrating such an ambitious trajectory, will be the challenge.
That challenge includes what arguably will be the most important decision that Board Chair Garza and his fellow trustees will make: recruitment and hiring of a new superintendent.
The district has a poor record on this front, with a history of the board resisting and eventually dismissing strong superintendents with ambitious change agendas. Perez himself originally won the job as an interim superintendent after the last formal search was botched, ending with an unqualified finalist withdrawing before his selection had to be arbitrarily reversed.
Over the next few days, the Rivard Report will publish an in-depth look at the search for a new superintendent and how the current board dynamics have worked against the best interests of the district at times and prevented a national caliber superintendent from being hired and retained.
Perez, by all accounts, has been an unqualified success in his relatively short-term as the district’s top administrator, but he came out of retirement to accept the interim appointment, then agreed to stay for a full term after the board removed “interim” from his title. Now he has decided he is ready to leave.
Tuesday’s meeting focused on the timeline presented to the board by George McShan, the one-man search firm based in Harlingen who has partnered with Rúben Olivárez, a University of Texas education professor and former SAISD superintendent. The selection of a search firm in December was, to say the least, a controversial process that seemed driven more by personalities than qualifications and finally ended with the McShan-Olivarez hiring by a 4-3 vote.
Unfortunately, such board division is bound to influence who applies for the job as applicants weigh the odds of mustering strong board support, considered essential to longevity and success in the job.
Trustees hope to identify a sole finalist for the job by April 13 and, presuming that individual is fully vetted and approved, announce a new superintendent hiring by the first week of May, allowing the new hire to overlap with Perez before he vacates the office.
The timeline is an ambitious one, and both trustees James Howard and Hernandez expressed concern that the board was moving too quickly and not leaving sufficient time for trustees or the public to fully participate in the process.
The board is conducting a series of public hearings at which members of the public are invited to share their thoughts on what qualities the next superintendent should embody. The exercise seems nothing more than a public relations effort. The board already agreed on a profile before its last failed superintendent search, and such meetings are thinly attended at best.
The meeting last week at Sam Houston High School drew 40 people, yet nearly half of those in attendance were district employees and another 10 were children. In other words, the meeting was a bust.
Howard twice expressed concern that with only one such meeting in his district, the Eastside’s “faith-based community” had not had the chance to weigh in with its views. Is it just me, or is it inappropriate to invite the faith-based community to play any role in a purely secular decision?
McShan’s efforts to reassure trustees devolved into a painful demonstration of poor public speaking and communications by the consultant, who appeared disorganized as he reviewed optional milestone dates, from the opening of the application filing period to the review and interview process, and on to the final selection.
Earlier in this article, I linked to McShan’s resume that I found on another firm’s website where McShan had done some consulting. I couldn’t find a website for McShan Consultants, which might have given readers a fuller understanding of his work. Trustees passed over far more experienced and proven search firms to hire McShan. As our stories in the next few days will show, he has a spotty track record and this will be his first big urban district search.
Trustees Steve Lecholop, Deborah Guerrero, and Patti Radle, who voted against McShan’s hiring, all grew impatient with the consultant’s inarticulate responses to their questions about the proposed timeline. McShan kept mumbling about possible site visits, as if trustees might visit districts in Texas and other states as if that would somehow shed light on a candidate’s qualifications. It was not a confidence-building display.
In the end, Garza agreed the dates should be adjusted to give trustees more time to review applications and conduct candidate interviews over multiple days. The board unanimously voted to adopt the timeline as a “framework” subject to change as the process continues.
SAISD’s mission statement was rewritten by the board in 2012, and the new version sets very lofty goals that some see as inconsistent with the board’s track record: “To transform SAISD into a national model urban school district where every child graduates and is educated so that he or she is prepared to be a contributing member of the community.”
Ultimately, such transformation starts at the top. Finding a superintendent with both the experience and the vision to lead the district forward, and then giving that individual the support and authority to lead, will be the best measure of the board’s ability to pursue its stated path to excellence.
Interested candidates have until March 13 to apply.
*Featured/top image: Board Appreciation Day: Trustees James Howard, Patti Radle, Ed Garza (chair), Olga Hernandez, Steve Lecholop, Debra Guerrero, and Arthur V. Valdez. Photo by Robert Rivard
Related Stories:
The Power of SAISD Fathers in Action
Coming Soon: Young Men’s Leadership Academy
All-Girl College Prep Turning Heads in San Antonio, Producing Tomorrow’s Leaders
Thank you for reporting on this process. The public needs all the transparency it can get from the SAISD. Good points, well said.
Great turnout tonight at the Jefferson Education Leadership Council/District 7 conversation on the Superintendent search process. Mr. McShan did a great job engaging the audience and gathering written, verbal and virtual (students attending were providing input via the web) feedback. In attendance tonight was an equal representation of parents, principals, faculty, students, neighborhood, and business leaders…a cross section of the community. The featured topic on the Superintendent Search process attracted about the same number of engaged citizens as every other monthly Jefferson Education Leadership Council forum.
“… history of the board resisting and eventually dismissing strong superintendents with ambitious change agendas…” I believe previous boards get too much credit in this statement. If I recall correctly, Lam (who had deep business community and city hall support) was dismissed after a board election in 1998 where the voters removed two incumbent board members who supported the ambitious change leader. I remember this shift because I was a supporter one of the incumbent board members who was defeated (I was a city councilman at the time). It was the election results and will of the voters that mandated the controversial Superintendent be removed. After Lam, Dr. Olivarez was hired in 2000 and remained the leader until 2006. Dr. Olivarez is now a member of the Mc Shan Search team for SAISD. The runner-up search firm, Thompson Group, was represented by Dr. Julian Trevino. Dr. Trevino was a member of the SAISD board that hired Dr. Olivarez. Superintendent Olivarez left SAISD in 2006. From everything I’ve been told, Dr. Olivarez left SAISD after losing business community support. In 2006 Dr. Robert Duron became Superintendent, and the Thompson Group was the search firm. In 2012, Dr. Duron voluntarily left SAISD with agreement from the board, business community and voters. Duron has not held a Superintendent position for any other school district since his departure at SAISD. Ironically, Dr Syl Perez (who by far has been one of the most popular SAISD Superintendents) was also a finalist in 2006 when Duron was selected. I will share my philosophy on SAISD governance and stakeholder dynamics on future posts. These dynamics are rooted as far back to our city’s early days.
Nathan Busse, SAISD Teacher AND Parent, and I will be at the Brackenridge Community Input Meeting tonight. I hope several dedicated SAISD parents, staff, students, and community members can make it!
I’m glad a good number of SAISD staff made it to the Sam Houston meeting because they want a great leader and wish more of the community had been there that evening to give input and show support.
Michael Taylor, could you ask Scott Meltzer to change the time of his Meet and Greet for SAISD Board event to another time so that it does not directly conflict with the three Community Input Meetings occurring tonight? It would be great to have input from the families who this event may otherwise pull away!
There is another meeting tonight on the characteristics that a Super should have and a would be board member scheduled a networking meeting at the exact same time.
That is undermining and should be rescheduled.
Parents can only be in one place and since his meeting includes tapas and drinks, the bright shiny objects will draw away from a more difficult but more worthy meeting.
The Super should have race and class consciousness as part of his critical theory because SAISD is suffering from white flight, poverty, and right wing propaganda that schools are failing when they are not. They are simply doing more with less money and caring for the children society undervalues.
The East side faith based groups might be the only ones who will say things like this, since they understand, lived the history and are the only ones who counter the prevailing narrative.