When interpreting any controversy swirling in the peculiar setting of the public schools, one must train a focused eye on the issues of true importance. This is pertinent to those of you now following the drama of school personnel treatment of special education students during the Holyoke, Massachusetts, tenure of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Prospective Superintendent Sergio Paez.
On 9 December 2015, two days after members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education voted 6-3 for Paez as the next Superintendent, the Disability Law Center of Massachusetts issued a report containing allegations of abuse of special education students at Peck School in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where Paez served as superintendent during June 2013- April 2015 and has continued as consultant thereafter.
On 14 December 2015, Hampden County (Massachusetts) Attorney General Anthony Gulluni initiated a criminal investigation. In all likelihood, Paez himself will not be implicated in criminal activity, but any criminal or ethically questionable activity of personnel under his watch raises legitimate concerns.
On 16 December 2015, the MPS Board of Education suspended contract negotiations with Paez. He remains, though, the candidate to emerge as prospective superintendent from the many months of national search from spring into autumn 2015 and from concluding semifinalist and finalist interviews in December 2015.
Even before these allegations and investigations clouded Paez's candidacy, his status was that of a prospective superintendent, pending contract negotiations and an investigative trip by school board members Tracine Asberry and Josh Reimnitiz. Decision for such a trip came at the behest of board member Carla Bates (who was one of the three who voted for Interim Superintendent Michael Goar) and by implication carried the goal of ensuring that nothing in Paez's tenure at Holyoke contradicted the favorable assessment given his record by the majority of six who voted for him as next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
In late December, board members Asberry and Reimnitz made their trip, coming away with favorable impressions (garnered from discussions with Holyoke school personnel, local officials, and community residents) of the academic efforts initiated during Paez's tenure in Holyoke, but still revealing concerns about matters pertinent to allegations regarding personnel in the special education program.
This week, Paez is in Minneapolis, meeting with school board members and making himself available to community members at two coffee hours, the first such event occurring today (Tuesday, 5 January 2016) at Avenue Eatery (1101 West Broadway) at 5:30 PM, the second tomorrow (Wednesday, 6 January 2015) at Fireroast Café (3800 37th Avenue South) at 10:30 AM.
So any concerns that you may have about Paez pertinent to recent controversies, you'll have a chance to express at those gatherings--- or at Public Comment time (5:30 PM) at the regular second-Tuesday-of-the month meeting of the MPS Board of Education next Tuesday, 12 January.
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But now I turn to the truly important and enduring themes in this scenario concerning the search for the next superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
In spring 2015, I went on record in this blog and other public venues with the counsel that the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should eschew a formal nationwide search and proceed with the hiring of Interim Superintendent Michael Goar. My reasoning was as follows:
Goar served as the Chief Executive Officer under Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, whose resignation effective at the end of January 2015 induced the selection of a new Superintendent. Johnson did not stay to promote policies that could ensure success for her three most promising initiatives: Shift (emphasizing concentration of resources close to the classroom), High Priority Schools (schools with economically challenged students who have not fared well academically, now targeted for additional resources and effective programming), and Focused Instruction (identification of academic subject area knowledge and skill sets to be acquired at each grade level during the K-12 years). But in her keen focus on areas that had long needed addressing, Johnson left a powerful legacy for the actual achievement by a diligent successor.
Goar was in position to push those key initiatives forward and had shown himself enthusiastic about two of those programs: Shift, in the service of which he reduced the central office bureaucracy at MPS by 120 employee positions, from 651 to 531, a diminution of more than 18%; and High Priority Schools, which have evidenced some improvement during his tenure as Interim Superintendent.
Goar lamentably advanced the case for pseudo charter schools (to be called "Community Partnership Schools") within MPS as his favored initiative for achieving academic improvement, over the more tangible changes in curriculum under the Focused Instruction program. In conversations with me as the candidacies for new Superintendent of MPS narrowed to those of Goar, Paez, and Charles Foust, Goar assured me of his dedication to the knowledge-intensive curriculum of Focused Instruction (which he maintained would still be required in the Community Partnership Schools), but much in his verbiage and activity conveys to me that I will have to be vigilant in reminding Goar of this commitment. He does not seem to have the importance of Focused Instruction in his gut.
But Goar seemed to me to have viability as the next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. My reasoning for his candidacy very prominently included the observation that the pool of great candidates is nonexistent: Nothing in the training or culture of the education establishment is conducive to the development of great superintendents--- so any nationwide search would at best be a diversionary tactic on the part of the MPS Board of Education conveying to the public an attempt to attract the best candidate available. And the track record of superintendents across the nation suggests an exit after two or three, and at most five, years on the job--- before any substantive achievements can be recorded. So any superintendent search tends to be a distraction from the real issues vexing the public schools, creating the Shakespearean Macbeth's proverbial "sound and fury, signifying nothing."
The members of the MPS Board of Education did not take my advice to hire Goar immediately.
Through summer and autumn 2015, the search was on, conducted by members of the firm, HYA Executive Search (represented in meetings of the MPS Board of Education by Ted Blaesing), hired at $40,000 to find the best candidates available.
The three finalists who emerged in the course of November and December 2015 were Michael Goar, Sergio Paez, and Charles Foust. I have detailed their qualifications and evaluated their candidacies in many articles posted on this blog.
In summary, Goar has administrative experience in Boston, Memphis, and Minneapolis but no classroom experience. Paez began his career as an elementary school teacher and has experience as English Language Learner administrator, assistant principal, and superintendent (two years in the medium-sized Holyoke school district). Foust also started as an elementary school teacher and held numerous administrative positions (including principal) before becoming an academic turn-around specialist as assistant superintendent in the Houston (Texas) Independent School District.
The narrowing of the pool to these candidates strongly suggested affirmation of the lack of truly great candidates. Greatness can always occur in the absence of obvious evidence predictive of greatness, and I actually came to note numerous compelling qualities in the personages of Paez and Foust. But not one of these candidates has experience leading a large urban school district in the formal position of superintendent. Not one of these candidates clearly articulated a compelling vision for the Minneapolis Public Schools during interviews. Paez and Foust conveyed a sense of how they would raise achievement in math and reading for historically underserved populations, but only their answers to my questions in personal conversations revealed their stance on knowledge-intensive K-12 education imparted by teachers trained and able to deliver an information-heavy curriculum.
At the culmination of the hiring process, I advocated for Charles Foust, who seems to have the importance of knowledge-intensive education most deeply lodged in his gut and thus dissuaded me from my original inclination toward Goar. Here again, members of the Minneapolis Board of Education eschewed my advice, voting for Paez on a six-for-Paez, three-for-Goar count.
And here we are, mired in the essential position of which I had warned. Something distasteful tends to happen in these hiring processes, either while it ensues, or in its aftermath. Superintendents tend to prove academically disappointing, ethically questionable, careerist, or energy-deficient. We spend months and months hoping to find a leader who will take us to a higher quality of education, the definition of which is too ill-defined by anyone at the school district. For whatever reason, the person in whose candidacy and selection much time was invested proves insufficient as to results, ephemeral in presence, or both.
In the meantime, we never get around to the development of the knowledge-intensive curriculum and teachers of true excellence that will actually give our precious children the K-12 education that they deserve.
Officials and personnel in our central schools districts are in constant motion, seeming to address all manner of issues critical to the moment, but making not one whit of advance toward excellence in
education.
I still maintain, therefore, that a national search should not have been conducted and that Goar should have been given his chance. The school board failed to take that advice and is now enveloped in the cloud of confusion swirling around Paez.
Having opted for the national search, the MPS Board of Education conducted numerous meetings that I attended and at which I came to know the candidates. While I still would have preferred to be focusing on real academic issues under a Goar tenure, as long as the search ensued I evaluated the candidates fairly and advocated for Foust. Thus, my counsel was not followed at a second major juncture.
At this point, many moons forth from the search that began in spring 2015, we do not have time to endure another prolonged and unsatisfying search for the great superintendent of proven mettle to lead a large urban school district.
The vote of the members of the MPS Board of Education on 7 December 2015 rendered Goar a lame duck. He is no longer viable according to public perception. Paez has become damaged goods and has a huge task to reverse his own perceptions among the public; he is not likely to recover.
Charles Foust is a young, vigorous educator, with the commendable qualities that I have detailed in previous articles. He has something of the aura of the talented young athlete who just might be ready for the big-time.
Members of the MPS Board of Education should now more thoroughly chew, rather that eschew, my advice, digesting my reasoning in opting for Charles Foust as the next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Not to do so could well keep the themes of importance in the current controversy surrounding prospective Superintendent Sergio Paez swirling.
In the same way that we would have been better off giving Goar his shot to see what he could do, rather than endure the unsatisfying search process, we should now give Foust his chance:
Charles Foust could prove that golden nugget shining through a rather murky pool that at last gives education in the Minneapolis Public Schools a boost toward that level of excellence for which I will always advocate.
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