When hired as the new Jeffco Public Schools Superintendent, you may very well be walking into a no-win situation. Don’t be seduced by the salary and a self-confidence that leads you to think that you can solve all of the problems.
Granted, as with most districts, we have issues related to educational performance. However, this may be the easiest of your problems to solve.
We also have financial issues, but again most school districts have these problems.
But the biggest issue you will have, and probably the hardest to solve, is a division within our community and our utter lack of trust in the last 2 sets of Boards of Education. A contentious set of issues and a subsequent recall election resulted in a completely new Board in 2015. The Superintendent hired by the previous Board was subsequently put into a very difficult position and essentially didn’t make it to the end of his contract.
The current Board ran on a platform of trust and transparency. It exhibits neither, most recently exhibited by their skirting of Colorado law in naming you as the single finalist – an action similar to the previous Board which was soundly criticized by the community at the time.
You have a Board that exhibits no leadership. How will they react to your plans and the strong leadership attributes you will bring to the table? Will they let you lead or will they, as they have recently shown, suppress your leadership and attempts at innovation and performance improvement? Will you just be a financial caretaker? I doubt that’s what you want to accomplish.
You have a Board and District staff that were unable to gather sufficient financial trust so that our community was the only one in the metro area to not pass Bond and Mill levy proposals last November. How will you quickly re-establish community trust so that there is a greater chance of success the next time a proposal is sent to the voters? Based on what I perceive as fiscal mismanagement, the current Board has set the bar pretty high for me to trust the district with more of my money, and I know many citizens agree with me.
You have a Board and a staff who seem to have forgotten that their true constituents are the taxpayers and students. How will you bridge the divide between the community and a Board and District staff that seem willing to kill successful programs in a dogged determination to fund salary increases that are unsupported by true evidence and were rejected by taxpayers?
You have a District staff that thinks of dollars before students. There is swamp that needs draining. A new mindset needs to be put into place that supports students and nurtures excellence.
You have a Board that ignores a taxpayer pointing out inaccurate minutes, and a Board president who border-line bullies other Board members to approve those minutes without a review, bringing into question the accuracy of all previous Board minutes. How do you work with the community, and Board, to restore the trust lost in that episode?
You have a Board and staff that uses narrow and clearly biased budget survey questions as a screen to make financial budget decisions that run counter to taxpayers’ clear desires. How do you regain the community’s trust in the budget process after that?
You have a Board that has chosen to pursue a K-5, 6-8 model despite evidence showing that this is detrimental to academic performance and kids’ social needs, and despite the public’s rejection of the concept. Once again they are prioritizing dollars over students.
You have 3 seats on the Board coming up for election in November. With built-up and continued mistrust, anger at Board decisions and lingering divisions surrounding the 2015 recall – what will be the makeup of the Board after November and how will that affect you personally? We saw how that worked out for the previous Superintendent – now gone.
Be careful Mr. Superintendent!