Board games

The contentious search for a superintendent is the first test for the dueling factions on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.

It was almost 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 25 when the special school board meeting ended after more than four hours.

Board members had just chosen Samuel King, superintendent of the Rockdale County (Ga.) Public Schools, as the lone finalist to become the next superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, rejecting three other semifinalists, including Herman Brister, the system's chief academic officer.

No one, however, seemed happy with the outcome. On the way out, one board member grumbled to another, “What do they have against Dr. Brister?” Other members stayed behind and consoled one another, fearing the decision they had just made eventually would lead to more state takeovers; at least one board member appeared to be sobbing.

Moments before, three speakers from the audience—practically the only people remaining—had berated the board for the “asinine” process that got them to this point.

“Who would want to come here after that?” said Carnell Washington, president of the local branch of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. “It is not about your constituents. It is about the children. I could care less what grown people think. … I think we really need some healing.”

When voting for the four remaining semifinalists, the 11-member board had displayed the same 6-5 split that has characterized many of its decisions since taking office a little more than one year ago, with one exception: Craig Freeman.

Freeman, part of the six-member majority supported by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber's FuturePAC in the last election, voted down every candidate, an action that infuriated friends and enemies alike. In doing so, Freeman argued that the board could do better.

“We got into this hole by settling,” he said. “We will not lose another generation because we didn't do our job. You can look at this as asinine; I think it would be asinine to kick this can down the road again.”

The attention of the board and the public education community now turns to King. At some point this month, he's expected to return for further discussion about the position. Based solely on the vote, he is at least acceptable to 10 of 11 members, although some education activists remain on the lookout for more candidates.

The last board needed a late tiebreaker to hire current Superintendent John Dilworth in 2009. Since then, redistricting and an election have reshuffled the school board; six of the 11 members are serving their first term. This board isn't the first to come in with promises of hope and change. But while they've been on the job for over a year now, selecting the next superintendent is the first big test, and how board members perform will say a lot about the direction of public education in East Baton Rouge Parish over the next three years.

The two sides

For the sake of convenience, let's call the six-member, BRAC-aligned majority the Freiberg faction, after board President Barbara Freiberg, and the other five members the Smith faction, after Vice President Tarvald Smith. Think of this as a nonjudgmental shorthand and not a suggestion that Freiberg or Smith give marching orders, or that the factions are permanent and always march in lockstep.

Before the contentious Jan. 25 vote, there were six semifinalists, all of whom had been interviewed publicly. Two candidates withdrew from contention the day of the meeting: Kelt Cooper, superintendent of the San Felipe-Del Rio (Texas) Independent School District, on the U.S.-Mexico border; and Tisha Edwards, chief of staff of the Baltimore City Public Schools. The semifinalist who inspired the strongest sentiment—for and against—was Brister, the former principal of Capitol Middle School and the Staring Education Center, who has served in his current position since 2008.

Hyma Moore, a parent of local public school graduates who volunteers at Park Forest Middle School, attended the candidate interviews and the special meeting. As far as he's concerned, the lengthy executive session was a waste of time. Brister and the rest of the teachers and administrators are doing a fine job, he says, adding that if students are struggling, it's the parents' fault for not being involved.

“We don't have time to bring someone to East Baton Rouge, talking about how they need to learn our system,” Moore says. “The chamber didn't want [Brister] in there. They can't tell him what to do.”

Several of Brister's relatives work for the system, and supporters applaud his family's service to education. His wife Darlene, for example, was an award-winning principal at Ryan Elementary before being promoted to assistant superintendent for elementary schools.

But there is a widespread belief that people close to Brister receive favorable treatment within the system, that he's too much of an insider and too much of a traditionalist to make the radical changes needed for rapid improvement. Brister didn't seem to have a plan to overcome that perception when the issue was raised during his interview.

“There was no way he was ever going to be able to get six votes,” says board member Jerry Arbour, who voted to make Brister a finalist. “If John [Dilworth, the current superintendent] had a steep hill to climb, trying to get the chamber and other people behind him, it would have been an impossibility for Herman Brister.”

Behind the scenes

Among the Freiberg faction and its supporters, there was a fair amount of enthusiasm for Elliot Smalley, the deputy of strategy and communications for the Charleston County (S.C.) School District.

Smalley can be thought of as an “upside” candidate. With a background in communications, he has no experience as an educator and very little as an administrator. His supporters touted his energy, intelligence and support for “reform,” however that might be defined.

“There were a lot of people pulling me for Brister,” Freeman says. “There were a lot of people pulling me for Smalley.”

Smalley has been compared to former BRAC president/CEO and current Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret, who was not a traditional, obvious choice to lead a chamber of commerce, according to this line of thinking, but was someone with talent who was willing to shake things up.

Smalley also listed state Superintendent John White as a reference, raising hopes that White might work well with Smalley and perhaps be dissuaded from taking over struggling schools in the system. But Smalley, a young white male who, on paper, isn't as qualified as some of the other candidates, was just as unacceptable to some people as Brister was to others.

Freeman believes that Edwards' withdrawal changed the dynamic of the search. He says Edwards could have been a good “microscope,” dealing with the day-to-day issues of running a system, which presumably would have been Brister's strength, and also a “telescope” who could lay out a broad vision, which is a characteristic that people liked about Smalley.

“Quite frankly,” Freeman says, “I think people tampered with the process to kind of clear her out.”

As a black woman, Edwards might have been a threat to the other black candidates, including Brister. As someone considered a reformer, she also could have peeled votes away from Smalley.

Edwards did not respond to an interview request, but she has told others that family considerations led her to pull out. According to one rumor, Business Report Publisher Rolfe McCollister called Edwards, encouraging her to drop out. McCollister says he didn't call any candidate, and adds that he heard good things about Edwards and Smalley, and would have preferred the strongest possible field.

Recollections of what happened in the closed-door executive session before the Jan. 25 vote differ. Some board members were under the impression that they had come to a compromise agreement to advance King and Maria Pitre-Martin, the director of K-12 curriculum and instruction for the state of North Carolina who served as an assistant superintendent for instructional service for the East Baton Rouge Parish system from 2006-08, and were surprised by Arbour's motion to only advance King.

“It all went crazy from there,” says one board member, who asked to remain anonymous, “just like it had when we were in the back.”

Arbour's motion to only bring back King failed. After a flurry of subsequent motions, the board finally decided to subject each of the four remaining candidates to a yea or nay vote, with any candidate who received six votes becoming a finalist. Had Freeman voted with the rest of the Freiberg faction, Smalley and Pitre-Martin would have emerged as finalists.

King, who received everyone's vote but Freeman's, was the lone candidate with support across factions. But some board members and education watchers now are upset that's he's the only finalist, period.

A fit for King?

That's not to suggest King is unqualified.

“The candidate appears to be a strong, articulate, data-driven leader who holds high expectations for all,” according to the PROACT Search firm. “He believes in no excuses and ensuring that no child falls through the cracks.”

For seven years, the Broad Superintendents Academy graduate has led Rockdale County Public Schools, a 16,000-student district in the Atlanta suburbs. He's worked his way up in the traditional manner as a teacher and principal, and as an assistant superintendent in Clayton County, an urban district with 52,000 students. In December 2010, he was named Superintendent of the Year by the Georgia School Superintendents Association and Georgia School Boards Association.

Last year, King was close to landing the top jobs in DeKalb and Cobb counties, according to reports, but he says he's only started listening to offers in the past year. A seven-year tenure is unusual in a field where people tend to burn out or move on in less than half that time.

According to PROACT, the graduation rate in his district increased from 83% to 86% over the past three years, even while the percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch—the typical measure of poverty in education—also increased, from 55% to 62%.

King says it's important to “pre-analyze” where specific students are in terms of foundational literacy and math skills, to ensure that teachers are “teaching the right stuff.” Students who aren't meeting the standards receive additional instruction, while those who are already achieving at a high level receive enrichment.

“When you go into a classroom,” he says, “you very rarely should see children doing the same, precise thing.”

One of the big questions is whether King can handle a 43,000-student district in which more than 80% of the children live in poverty.

By some measures, King would be coming in with a less impressive résumé than Dilworth, who had led a 32,000-student district in Montgomery, Ala. Like King, Dilworth was a traditional candidate who moved up the ranks and graduated from the Broad academy. While performance scores have risen under Dilworth's leadership, he has never been able to unite the board or excite the community.

Freiberg wants to hear specifics about how King would turn around low-performing schools and how he might deal with an expected budget shortfall of about $30 million.

“How do we work with the state to figure out the best kinds of schools for the students in our district?” she says.

Incremental progress

Some education activists say board members didn't seem to have a clear idea of what they wanted going into the process, beyond a list of 17 qualifications that were somewhat vague and were not weighted in terms of importance. There was no formal scoring or ranking process.

“It's healthy to have searches fail,” Freeman says. “Having a search fail tells us what we're looking for.”

When the search for the next superintendent began last summer, there was a debate over how open the board needed to be. Adam Knapp, president/CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, supported a recruitment process in which just one finalist would have been made public and the board accepted or rejected that person. Tarvald Smith called for an open search in which all candidates submitted public applications; Smith's view won out.

But a public search can be politically difficult for the applicant. Imagine being a sitting superintendent and having to explain to the board why that district is no longer good enough. Imagine the trip back home, after being voted down by the district with the vacancy. Oftentimes, the most qualified candidates don't want to apply unless they feel they're unequivocally the top choice.

But school boards are accountable to the public, and a secretive search raises suspicions in the community and with newspaper editorial writers. When the board conducted a national search with an outside firm for Dilworth's predecessor, they ended up rejecting the firm's candidates and hiring Charlotte Placide from within.

“The news media,” Arbour says, “they never let people forget that.”

Placide was a good superintendent in many ways, he says, particularly when it came to managing the money.

“She never had a chance because everybody thought this was one of those special deals,” Arbour says. “If they had done an open search, she would have been better received in the education community.”

While no one wants to talk about it on the record, some local activists are putting out feelers to people they think might be interested in the job. Meria Carstarphen, who leads the 86,000-student Austin Independent School District, is often brought up as the dream candidate, though some people question whether it's productive to delay making a hire while everyone is waiting for the perfect person.

But it's worth noting that the East Baton Rouge Parish system has more going for it than a person might think. Progress, albeit incremental, is being made in the school performance scores, so it could be argued that the system is poised for big gains. The budget situation is tight, but it's not as bad as what other districts are facing. The board has a deep ideological divide, but at least there are only two main factions.

And whether you agree with Gov. Bobby Jindal's approach to education reform or not, at least K-12 is on his radar, which even some of his enemies in the education establishment say is a good thing. A superintendent who's successful could become an education superstar, and might have a chance to move up if White moves on in a few years.

Arbour doesn't see any good reason to reopen the search, saying, “Your best pool is your first pool.” When asked about the below-the-radar efforts to find new candidates, Freiberg chooses her words carefully.

“We are going ahead with the process right now,” she says. “I think that people feel they should be proactive. I don't want to really comment on that one way or the other. I understand that it's something that people will do. I don't think that's the wrong thing to do if you are adamant and feel very strongly that Dr. King is not the one who can do the job.”

Following up

Arbour says he's handling King's return to Baton Rouge. The tentative date for the follow-up interview is Feb. 13, though finding a day that's convenient for all 11 board members won't be easy.

He says King and White have expressed an interest in meeting each other, possibly over breakfast. Volunteers in Public Schools might host a public luncheon for the community, followed by an afternoon tour of some of the schools and a formal interview later in the evening.

Public disagreements by elected officials are seldom pretty, and they might exasperate people who just want everyone to get along, but that's democracy. The night after East Baton Rouge's special superintendent meeting, the Dallas Independent School District's Board of Trustees voted to close 11 schools, but not before being taunted and berated by the audience and watching police escort one activist from the auditorium.

For better or worse, BRAC has become one of the most prominent local public education watchdogs. The chamber didn't have one favorite candidate, Knapp says, adding that he didn't want to talk about who it thought were the strongest candidates. Based on the board votes, the chamber seemed to like Edwards, Smalley and Pitre-Martin.

As Knapp says, there is now an official finalist, and it's up to the board and the community to decide if he's the right person to reach what's now the official goal, according to the draft strategic plan: To be “a top 10 Louisiana district by 2020, building innovative and globally competitive educational choice for all families.”

In the short term, the goal is a little less ambitious: hiring a superintendent who can do better than a bare six-vote majority. A superintendent who can command the support of seven, eight or nine board members—either now or down the road—would have a much better chance of bringing the community together. While the 10-1 result on Jan. 25 suggests King is palatable to most everyone, it remains to be seen how deep his support truly runs.

It's clear that there is resentment, mistrust and even personal animosity between some board members. But what happens in public isn't just petty bickering.

To a certain extent, what's playing out on the school board reflects the ideological divide playing out statewide and nationally between individuals and groups who see themselves as the reformers and those who say they're the defenders of true public education. People who think radical change is needed to fix or replace “failing” schools, and those who say teachers are unfairly blamed for societal ills. Those who see school choice as a near-panacea, and those who worry about the schools and students left behind.

Freiberg urges the public to see the squabbles as a healthy debate between passionate people who, ultimately, all want the best for children.

“Our visions may differ, but that does not mean we care any less for the students of this parish,” she says. “We all want the same thing. It's just, we do not all agree on the process to get there.”