Schoemehl memo on naming an interim and a permanent Superintendent at the same time

NOTE: This memo was forwarded to media from Bill Haas. There is no guarantee that this email has not been doctored or is even that's authorship is as claimed. That said, I wouldn't post it if I didn't consider it reliable.

Subject:In Defense of Action Date:Sat, 5 Jun 2004 14:51:21 -0500From:"Vince Schoemehl" To:mdb3455@bjc.org, rra@mohistory.org, "Ron Jackson at Home (E-mail)" "Ron Jackson-Work (E-mail)" "Dr. Amy Hilgemann"

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The rationale behind my suggestion of naming an interim and a permanent Superintendent at the same time are delineated below. I recognize we’ll be criticized for not looking at the universe through a search but this should be balanced with the following considerations:

Avoid the Drama; Focus on Progress: If we do a search the focus of the media will be on the “drama of the process” and we’ll lose public focus on our change initiatives. The media will begin their focus with the “process of selecting a search firm” – will the community be involved in the process of interviewing the firms, etc. It will then shift to the process for “who’s being considered” – are they candidates reflective of the community, etc.? Then to the “fairness of the selection process”, did the community have adequate input, etc. The media and our critics will be delighted if we engage in a prolonged process that keeps us from focusing on the improvement of student outcomes. The “search process” and all of its perceived flaws will be the story for the next six months or so; then the story will shift to the selected candidate; then it will wrap up with some lame coverage about what the Interim Superintendent didn’t get done in the past 12 months – “another
year wasted.” I’d rather “cut for the ball”, make a decision and get on with it. We can then force the focus to be on what we’re doing with instruction rather than process.

Demonstrate Stability: This past year has been filled with intense change and the coming year will be a year of the same. Radical change is still needed and if the Interim Superintendent does what we want this will be another year of intense change. It would help those currently associated with the district (parents, employees, etc.) as well as potential associates (potential new employees and potential new parents) to understand that we are developing a five year plan and we have the leadership in place to implement that plan.

Recruiting the Best: We need to recruit top notch talent on the academic side of the house; a CAO and others. Highly skilled employees (people who have multiple employment options) want to know who will be leading them; that the leadership scheme is stable; that promises made about programs and thematic directs are sustainable. A search will take at several months; that means we likely won’t have the opportunity to recruit the best people for these positions while a search for a Superintendent is underway. Again, the best employees seek situations in which they know what the leadership succession looks like.

Sustaining the Momentum for Change: We’re at a critical moment in time. We have to select an Interim Superintendent who can accelerate the pace of change and move it to the academic side of the house. The best chance for maintaining this momentum in a hand-off from the Interim Superintendent to the permanent Superintendent is to have them working together for the next year. That is unlikely to happen through a national search for someone employed in a different district, even a different city and certainly in a situation where we won’t be making a decision for several months.

The safe thing to do is undertake a search and I understand that people are a bit shell-shocked after this past year. I also recognize this suggestion carries some risk; the suggested person for the permanent Superintendent may not be the right one – there’s always that chance. But on balance I think the rewards of stability, predictability, and going with a known quantity, outweigh the risks of making a pre-emptive choice.

Vince Schoemehl