HISD top job candidates are secret no more
It looks like the Chronicle dug up the names of the superintendent candidates for HISD, and, according to the Chronicle's reporting, we now know why the names were so hush hush:
All three candidates trying to win interim HISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra's job come from smaller school districts that don't want them anymore.
On Thursday night, Houston Independent School District trustees interviewed Pittsburgh Superintendent John Thompson and former Tucson, Ariz., Superintendent Stan Paz. They were scheduled to meet with Bridgeport, Conn., Superintendent Sonia Díaz-Salcedo on Friday night.
She and Thompson are lame-duck superintendents who have been informed by their school boards that their contracts will not be renewed when they expire at the end of the school year. Paz was forced into early retirement this spring after losing the Tucson school board's support.
Here's a big thank you to the Chronicle reporter for persevering and getting this information. This is why these things should not be kept secret. Parents and community leaders have a right to know who is in the running for the superintendent's job.
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in school district circles. Underwhelming superintendents will often be able to find a job somewhere else without the new community fully knowing what went on at the old district. There's lots of privacy and secrecy and good ol' boys protecting one another. As a parent, it's very discouraging.
Next, the Chronicle points out something interesting:
Saavedra, who has run the 211,000-student district since former superintendent Kaye Stripling retired in June, is scheduled to interview for the permanent job today. Several trustees have said all along that the job is Saavedra's to lose. Those comments, and the relatively low $30,000 price they paid for the search for other candidates, have prompted questions about how serious the trustees are about considering other applicants.
That's what I was wondering. A big district like HISD, where Secretary of Education Rodney Paige came from, should be able to attract fine candidates. It seems pretty clear that the trustees consider this interview process a mere formality, before giving it to Saavedra. That doesn't serve HISD students well at all.
Then there's this:
All the candidate interviews are being conducted in secret and trustees have gone through great pains to protect the applicants' identities. They've hidden the candidates in various meeting rooms throughout the HISD headquarters building on Richmond to elude a reporter waiting outside. Four HISD police officers working overtime used their radios to make sure no one was looking when the candidates left,getting into different vehicles from the ones in which they had arrived.
All this was necessary, according to the consultants hired to conduct the superintendent search, to ensure the best candidates would agree to interview for the job. Trustees were required to sign confidentiality agreements, promising not to divulge names. The candidates don't want their current employers to know they are job hunting, according to the consultants from the Texas Association of School Boards.
But it is clear that the candidates' school boards won't be too upset if they leave.
HISD parents should be outraged that this has taken place. Their children deserve better. And kudos to Jason Spencer and the Chronicle for working this story.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 11/06/04 06:19 AM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (0)
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