Is Fresno District getting money’s worth from a six-figure superintendent search coach?
After months of delay in launching a national superintendent search, the Fresno Unified leadership team is planning a Labor Day retreat to meet with a coach under contract for $100,000 to help come up with a plan for hiring a permanent superintendent.
“I think the main goal is for us to get on the same page prior to doing a search for a superintendent, to make sure that there’s a clear direction,” said Trustee Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas.
The board is several months behind schedule, having not yet met with the coach or developed goals. The terms of the contract require the board to create a plan to identify deliverables within the first three months of the two-year agreement. That period ends July 29.
To set priorities and goals, the board should obtain feedback from the community, according to The Council of Great City Schools, which is providing the coaching help. Soliciting community feedback can be achieved through surveys and during existing, already-scheduled activities.
Outgoing superintendent Bob Nelson announced his departure in January and transitioned as an advisor for the board and for Interim Superintendent Misty Her since May. After a failed first try at an internal search, the board announced conducting an expanded search, but it hasn’t given any updates since April.
The board has been in touch with the Council since April and originally planned a two-day retreat over the Memorial Day weekend. That was postponed because of transportation issues for the new coach related to weather.
Fresno Unified spokesperson Nikki Henry said the overall timeline for the search would be adjusted based on the delayed dates for the retreat.
The Council of Great City Schools is a member organization comprising the largest urban school districts in 39 states. For 2024, Fresno Unified’s membership dues are $53,421. Trustees also spent more than $37,800 the last school year to attend the Council’s conferences.
The coaching contract is separate, and the leadership and professional development being offered includes confidential and closed-session participation and real-time coaching during school board meetings, as stated in the contract. However, a Council representative told The Bee that they won’t actively intervene in the meetings, give directions in discussions, or monitor the conversation or time allocations on topics.
Their job is not to tell the board what its priorities are, but to support and answer questions when needed, said the representative.
Fresno Unified and the Council didn’t respond to The Bee’s questions about how many years the district has been a member and the amount spent on prior dues. An online search shows that Fresno Unified attended the Council’s executive committee meeting in 2018 and received the award for “Excellence in Financial Management” in 2017. The opportunities for meetings and awards are highlighted as member benefits on the Great City Schools website.
Trustees didn’t return messages from The Bee asking about the potential benefits of joining board associations and attending their events and conferences, and about the goals and timeline for the planned retreat. The district’s chief of staff, Ambra O’Connor, responded to The Bee, saying several trustees are on vacation during summer break, and that typically, the board will work towards the goals settled at an event within 30-60 days.
Michelle Asadoorian, a previous Fresno Unified board member for eight years, questioned the wisdom of the consulting expense and said the board should have moved faster in deciding the superintendent search process.
“If you’ve got a strong candidate in the district, you can do an internal search. It’s easy; it saves you time; it saves you money,” she said. “Their own HR department could have handled that.”
Fresno Unified hired a $40,000 headhunter Leadership Associates for the superintendent search earlier this year. The firm withdrew in April after the board canceled internal interviews amid public criticism about transparency.
Asadoorian said former superintendent Nelson, who gave his notice in January, left plenty of time for the district to fill the position. It is harder to find the right candidate during the school year, because contracts usually start and end the same as the academic calendar.
She thinks the current board lacks cohesiveness, clarity and knowledge about their roles. But relying on national organizations and going to conferences might not be helpful, she said.
“Many times we would report back (what we got from the conferences) to the whole group,” she recalled about attending conferences when she was a board member. “I don’t ever remember a time when any of those ideas were picked up. Never.”
“So after a while, I kept saying, why are we going? What’s the purpose that you’re spending a lot of tax dollars,” she said.
The teachers union described the coach expense as a “big waste.” The $100,000 could be used to hire one full-time teacher, or four para-educators, said Manuel Bonilla, president of the union.
“Anything they say in regards to that lack of training is utterly ridiculous; they go to associations (events) multiple times a year,” he said. “That they need some outside consultant to tell them how to do this work is ridiculous.”
Bonilla said the bigger concern is that the board doesn’t listen to their community and stakeholders, who have been telling the board from the start to fulfill their responsibilities in conducting an open and transparent search.
“We told them these were the things that need to be worked on,” he said. “But they want to listen to consultants, so they pay this amount of money for the Council to come in and do a report when they could have just listened to their teachers.”
This story was originally published July 11, 2024 at 6:30 AM.
