Blink, and you could miss a superintendent change.
Three times this summer, Rochester-area school districts have announced superintendent departures and already had successors in place, an increasingly common practice that can allow a smoother leadership transition but doesn't provide any opportunity for community input. The process lacks transparency on purpose.
In each case, residents did not even know that a transition was about to happen, much less have a chance to weigh in.
Penfield School Board President Emily Roberts and Greece School Board President Sean McCabe said they believed finding a quality internal candidate without a lengthy search process was the best use of district resources — and within their purview as elected officials.
"I know the community put a lot of trust in us when they voted for us to make these decisions, and we didn’t take that lightly," Roberts said. "To have someone in position (this summer) to plan for the current year was really important to us to have a successful transition."
The risk is that district residents will feel ignored. Graupman, Antonacci and Putnam had all been in their positions for around a decade, meaning it has been a long time since that particular opportunity for input was last available.
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From more to less transparent
There are three basic ways to hire a superintendent. The most participatory is an open search, where multiple candidates are presented to the community in a public forum before a final selection is made. That is what the Honeoye Central School District in Ontario County did this spring before hiring its new superintendent, Natalie Pfluke.
"We wanted to be able to let the community know what we were doing as clearly as we could," Board President James Sykes said.
Then there are closed searches, where community members can provide general input but don't hear any candidates' names until the final selection is made. That was how West Irondequoit hired its current superintendent, Aaron Johnson, in 2018.
John Vay, the school board president at the time, said there were public engagement events with faculty and staff, parents, students, other residents and even former school board members.
"We threw that net out there as wide as we could get it and we got back information about what was important," he said.
The least transparent means is what Greece's McCabe called succession planning. The board realized Graupman was nearing state retirement age and so identified someone in Smalline they believed would provide a good cultural fit and a seamless transition.
"I can find a superintendent, but I want someone who’s going to be committed to Greece, not someone coming in looking for a payday for three years or to pad their pension," he said.
Trend toward confidentiality
Most school boards' first call when beginning a superintendent search is BOCES. One of the services each BOCES provides to its member districts is leadership search management, with only advertising and marketing as direct costs.
Monroe 1 BOCES Superintendent Dan White has been part of many such conversations. He said there is a trend across the state for more confidential searches, in particular because they garner more candidates.
Ten years ago, he said, an open hiring process for a superintendent might draw 25 or 30 applicants. Now it would likely draw between five and 10. (In Honeoye there were eight applicants, Sykes said.)
"You’ll likely get a more experienced and deeper pool if you do a confidential search process," White said. "And you’re seeing more districts go toward succession planning, where we have someone internal that we really like and we’ve seen their work product for a number of years."
White and Monroe County School Boards Association Executive Director Amy Thomas said there's no right or wrong answer, but that every district needs to weigh its own circumstances. Urban districts like Rochester, for instance, more often conduct nationwide searches with more opportunities for public input.
The superintendent Honeoye settled upon was in fact an internal candidate; Pfluke had been principal of the elementary school. But Sykes said the open search sent an important signal to the community that the board valued its consideration.
"(Pfluke) was high on our list at first, but we wanted to be open and upfront with everyone in the district and to have them know that we’d looked at more than one person," he said. "We're very happy with our decision, and we were very happy with our process."
— Justin Murphy is a veteran reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle and author of " Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York." Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/CitizenMurphy or contact him at jmurphy7@gannett.com .
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: School superintendent selections lack transparency on purpose. Why?
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