New Sup for Sac? - One Vote for Community Builder!
In an earlier post I asked "Sacramento Needs a New Superintendent- A Corporate Reformer or A Community Builder?" Well here is one vote for Community Builder:
Who Will Your Board Member Pick for the Next Superintendent?
You remember the old saying, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” Well, its time to dust off this old saying and use it again if we allow our board to make the monumental error of selecting a less than qualified superintendent again, especially in light of recent rumors circulating that some Board members are considering to pick Raymond’s hand-picked Interim Superintendent, Sara Noguchi, Ed.D. to become the next superintendent.
SCUSD is the 11th largest and most diverse school district in California with over 47,900 students, 81 school campuses, and with an annual budget of over 450 million dollars. It is also a low achieving district who, according to CDE data, its API (Academic Performance Index) numbers have gone down from 2012 for every ethnic group of students and just about every other category. In other words, it is a school district in need of real, experienced leadership.
If we have learned anything from former Superintendent Raymond's tenure, is that a superintendent with significant experience does matter. Every superintendent hired by the SCUSD board prior to Raymond had, on average, over twenty years of experience in education; and had served as superintendent at some other school district before coming to SCUSD. In other words, they had significant experience; and they had a track record.
The same level of credentials also holds true of other school districts of comparable size to SCUSD across the country. For instance, a review of the biographies of superintendents currently serving in school districts in Boston, Chicago, Miami-Dade, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco reveals that they all have one thing in common: they have a minimum of 20 years experience in education having moved up from being school teachers, school principals, district administrators, and having led a school district before taking on their current roles. For the first time in recent memory this common sense criteria for hiring superintendents has not been applied by the SCUSD Board - Raymond was hired despite having only 2 years and 10 months of experience in education. The problem was not that SCUSD did not have a competitive salary to offer for the position. In fact, SCUSD offered a salary of $260,000 dollars for Superintendent, a highly competitive salary by any standard.
Noguchi, unlike Raymond, does have more educational experience. For instance, she has a doctorate in education, has taught, and has served as consultant to education agencies such as CDE. However, Noguchi has never managed a school district before, not even a small one. And, perhaps, more significantly, she has no track record we can judge her on. What we are able to discern about her leadership since becoming Interim Superintendent, however, is that she has not negated any of Raymond’s decisions, no matter how ill thought out or ill advised. For example, she has not taken any action to reduce or correct the excessive salaries being paid to her colleagues in the Cabinet which total a staggering 1.3 million dollars.
In another area, Noguchi’s decision making style has not exhibited any true leadership, leaving everyone wondering who is really in charge, which shows that she is more a group thinker, than a leader. A recent example of this observation is her inability to hold her colleagues accountable for the deteriorating parent relationship with district officials under her colleague Teresa Cummings, a situation that reached an all time low when Cummings called outside police to settle a disagreement with a District Advisory Council parent leader - a matter being reviewed by the CDE. Unfortunately, the Interim Superintendent is on mute
The opportunity to redirect the district from a Broad Academy sponsored corporate agenda to a community agenda is now, but not with the people who Raymond left behind to run the school district. We should demand from our board that we will expect nothing less than a highly experienced superintendent with a track record we can judge them on for such issues as what he/she thinks about charter schools, school closings, parent engagement, common core, and who has a track record for promoting diversity among its staff. So remember the next time your Board member argues in favor of the least qualified candidate to run our school district: “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!”