OFF THE CUFF: School Board Stakeholder/Parent Meetings-Superintendent Search 9/22/10

[Karen Gray]

Finding a new superintendent is serious business, but today, I’ve just
got a tickle in my funny bone…

For weeks I‘ve been asking the trustees if they are going to post the
locations of the “invitation only” and “trustee” candidate meeting
locations. Finally, last week, Janison said no, that it would defeat
the point of invitation-only meetings. They wouldn’t want anyone
uninvited to show up or anything.

I guess that makes sense. So, you can only imagine just how tickled my
funny bone was when trustees interrupted my lunch with one of those
meetings. Having lunch with a friend, I returned from the powder room
to find Trustee Mason, candidate Jones and my friend standing next to
my table chatting it up. Yep, in a twist of fate, Mason, Jones and
Trustee Wright had their secret lunch right next to me.

Off to the next secret location meeting, for invited stakeholders
only…

Interesting line up of invitees: PTA, CBN, NAACP, NPRI, BEACON, the
Black Caucus, a few parents and school board candidate Lorraine
Alderman — just to recognize a few faces. More interesting is who’s
missing:

• Ken Small, who’s running for the school board against sitting
Trustee Edwards, was not invited to the meeting. Edwards, of course,
is here .

• James Brooks, who’s running for the seat of outgoing trustee
Moulton, was not invited. But his opponent, Erin Cranor, is here. I’m
told she was invited by Moulton as a parent, not a candidate.

FYI: Edwards says she’s not sure why the three school board candidates
weren’t invited — all were supposed to be. Talk to the search firm
about that, she says — trustees weren’t involved in the invitations.

All in all, candidates gave their background, answered a few CCSD
questions and fielded about eight audience questions each. The topics
ranged from social promotion, graduation rates, cultural differences,
inspiring the public to even special education.

Now I’m off to the next meeting. This one is not in a secret location.
It’s open to everyone — Harmon Elementary School.

Not a lot of parents here. I would be disappointed, but I’m sure it
has to do with the meeting time — 3:45. Unlike the business invitees,
public participants only had enough time allotted to ask three-to-five
questions of each candidate. Seems to me somewhat belittling that
special interests get one hour with each candidate and parents only
get 45 minutes — 30 of which is spent on candidate introductions and
CCSD questions.

I have a question but the CCSD moderator fails to call on me. However,
my new friend from lunch has my back. Jones calls on me, saying
something like, I met that woman at lunch today, so I think I better
take her question.

I ask him whether the public can expect him to meet more than 51
percent of his student achievement targets. It’s a Policy Governance
thing, and Jones isn’t too familiar with PG. But he says we’ll talk
about it if he’s hired.

Perhaps, the next meeting at Cimarron HS will have more time, more
parents and more questions — if you were there, let us know.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, Dr. Jacobson from the search
firm says he doesn’t know why any candidates were left off the
stakeholder invitation list. He got the list from trustees, he says.