The people have spoken. Morgan Hill wants a superintendent who
can bring people together. The Board of Education agrees.
The people have spoken. Morgan Hill wants a superintendent who can bring people together. The Board of Education agrees.
This week, Morgan Hill Unified School District trustees received a 41-page report from superintendent search firm The Cosca Group that details the community’s input on what they’re looking for in a new superintendent.
The report, which will be used as a brainstorming tool by the board as they devise language for the job brochure that will be sent to prospective candidates identified by Cosca, is peppered with descriptions like team builder, collaborative, open, respectful and has integrity.
“Team builder” was the first word thrown out by the school board during their brainstorming session in late July.
“We need someone that will both talk and listen to the entire MHUSD educational community. This will go a long way towards developing the ‘spirit of collaboration’ that is needed,” he said.
Trustees Bart Fisher, Kathy Sullivan and Julia Hover-Smoot, meanwhile, are looking for strong leadership and trustee Peter Mandel declined to name one skill as most important.
“(Superintendents need) as diverse a skill set as I’ve seen in any CEO in private industry or public service,” he said. “The key is to find a person who has the right balance of skills in all these areas. There is no one skill that is most important as they all have to balance and reinforce one another.”
Fisher offered a definition of leadership from Harvard professor John Kotter: “Management is about coping with complexity … Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.”
“I think we have good management,” Fisher said. “But there’s a lot of change in this district. Changes from the outside we need to deal with, like budget cuts or potential changes to the No Child Left Behind legislation, and internal changes we need to make, like more transparency and parent collaboration.”
The two phrases Fisher touches on crop up again and again in the report. Many stakeholders view team building and collaboration, both with employee groups and the community at large, as necessary skills for the next superintendent to have. Visibility, accessibility and having an “open-door” policy are also phrases that get a lot of play in the report.
Over the past two years, the board has watched as the district administration’s relationship with the two unions, SIEIU and the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers, has frayed amid budget cuts and drawn-out contract negotiations.
Trustee Julia Hover-Smoot listed repairing and improving these relationships second on her list of items for the new superintendent to tackle.
“I am not pleased with where we currently stand with regard to these vital people,” she said.
Hover-Smoot’s number-one goal is improving academics for all, but specifically for the very highest achieving students who “have been somewhat ignored by the No Child Left Behind program.”
Fisher and Mandel, too, want the focus of the new superintendent to be on student achievement.
Other desirable skills listed in the report include good listening, dynamic, visible and accessible. The community wants a problem solver who is a good listener, “dynamic” but “not a micromanager.” Someone who is “sensitive to diversity” but who can create uniform standards.
The report doesn’t identify any of the 37 groups of stakeholders. Any group could be made up of one or more people, and two of them are the groups of seven and 16 who attended the open community meetings held two weeks ago.
Now that they have the input, though, trustees still must come to agreement on how to execute a search that will find them a catch who possesses the right skills. Six of the seven trustees conducted the search that found Dr. Alan Nishino, who has proven to be results-oriented and standards-loving. But, he’s also blamed by union groups for much of what is wrong in the district: morale is low, and union relations are tattered.
Trustee Shelle Thomas said she learned during the last search that resumes and reality are not the same. During a site visit Alameda to scope out Nishino’s former district, trustees met with management that, later, Nishino brought with him to Morgan Hill. The Alameda board “shared little,” she said, and the California Teachers Association didn’t indicate any concerns either.
“I believe, this time, the consultants and the board need due diligence in a background check (way back) and on the criteria deemed to be important. We need to talk with, not a limited group brought together by the Superintendent, but with the educational community, parents and community, the consultants or board bring together.”
Board President Don Moody said he learned not to be “rushed or forced” into making a decision.
“We need to be prepared to go with an interim and redo the search if we don’t find the candidate that is right for the MHUSD culture,” he said.
The board will likely hire a new school leader in October.
Trustee Mike Hickey could not be reached for comment by press time.
The board was scheduled to meet Thursday night to discuss the input and the brochure.
