Only 19 months into her Superintendency, Dorland has not yet demonstrated that she can solve Jeffco’s academic, financial and trust problems. In fact, one can make a case that those problems have only worsened under her leadership. She has not demonstrated that she deserves a contract extension, yet.
Her Reading Curriculum initiative resulted in the selection of a program that has no known history of improving results anywhere. Jeffco’s pilot program did not show improved results and there are no other Districts nationwide that used Into Reading that can show improved results. She’s taking a stab in the dark with 1000s of kids lives instead of using data and results to make informed decisions on something so critical in the District. To compound the issue, Dorland allowed multiple schools to not transition to a standardized curriculum subsequently resulting in kids at 6 closing schools needing to transition to a new curriculum again next year. That will harm more kids than it helped.
Fiscally, Dorland presented what is now a $32.5M deficit General Fund budget which only gets worse in the years to come. In addition, she submitted that budget with no accompanying cuts and without a future plan to balance it. Any decent CEO would have presented a very specific plan to bring the budget into balance. Unfortunately, Dorland did not do that. How can you give a contract extension to someone who runs a massive budget deficit and doesn’t have a plan to fix it? You can’t.
Dorland came to Jeffco with a reputation of someone who could successfully run a bond program. To her credit she engaged Moss Adams for a cursory review of the program, the results of which were quite damning. She then promised the Board, and taxpayers, that she was developing a 30/60/90 day plan to address the numerous Moss Adams recommendations. Now, over a year later, $40M in additional unallocated contingency has been spent and there is still not a comprehensive plan to address the recommendations in the report. The public has only seen a new Flipbook that is incomplete and misleading and heard some vague promises about staff addressing a few of the recommendations that may be implemented at some point still in the future. By failing to keep her word in delivering and executing a plan to address the Moss Adams recommendations, Dorland has demonstrated that she can’t be trusted. You don’t give a 5 year contract extension to someone who you can’t trust to deliver on their promises.
Multiple schools needed to be closed. However, the process that Dorland used to determine which schools should be closed and the community engagement surrounding those closures can, at best, be described as ‘rough’ and left much to be desired. Anyone involved knows that it could have been much better and she lost the trust of many people in the community. It is not good optics to immediately award a 5 year contract extension to someone who just oversaw a deeply flawed school closure process. That’s not how you restore trust in Jeffco schools.
Dorland did expend considerable time and effort in the development of a new vision and strategic plan for Jeffco. Only you can decide whether that was a good use of limited resources given all of the other issues in the District. One of the key tenets included that of Integrity. Yet, her staff presented false data in the FCB, suppressed information relating to upgrades at receiving schools, presented a misleading and deceptive new Flipbook to the community and she took no apparent action when her COO falsely and repeatedly told the Board that Jeffco would have some ownership of the new Meyers pool. There is a culture of deception in Jeffco. Including ‘Integrity’ as a key tenet in her vision without taking action to ensure actual integrity only further erodes public trust and makes her look weak and untrustworthy herself.
Finally, I think the Board has to look inward and figure out why it wants to give Dorland the extension right now. In most instances organizations give extensions because a contract is coming up for renewal and they want to keep the employee, or they make the extension offer early to keep a rock star employee from going elsewhere. In Dorland’s case she still has a year and a half left on her contract so end-of-contract timing shouldn’t be the driving factor. Therefore, the Board has to ask itself the question of whether it thinks another organization would think that Dorland is a rock star and make her an offer for something better than Jeffco. Given that she has been in her position for so little time and has no track record of fixing problems I would find it very unlikely that another organization would make her an offer that she couldn’t refuse. Besides, do anyone really think the Board couldn’t get an equal, if not better, replacement for her? Once again, there seems to be no reason to rush the extension.
Dorland is a very good talker. However, she has not proven that she is up to the task of fixing any of Jeffco’s problems, many actually seem to be getting worse. The Board shouldn’t make the Russell Wilson mistake and give her an extension too soon. Make her prove that she is actually improving the District, especially academics, before rewarding her. The previous Board fell for Glass’s grift, don’t fall for Dorland’s smooth talking too. Hold off on giving her a contract extension until she proves herself.