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Statement on Board Vacancies

8/2/2016

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Our selected Superintendent search firm, HYA, stated last night that a good candidate will want to see parent/community buy-in and a Board of Ed that is not at odds with each other.  If we don’t have these things in place, the Beacon City School District will have difficulty appealing to the best possible candidates.

At the same meeting, Anthony White announced that BOE Member Frank Garnot has resigned as of August 1st.  We believe that our last two resignations are completely irresponsible and very poorly timed, to say the least.  These Board Members were asked time and time again up until our last election if they planned on staying on this Board, to which they replied that they were dedicated to continue their service.  We believe that this clear lack of commitment to the board, especially the seemingly intentional timing of Jose Munoz's resignation in June, are indicative of the serious issues our school district has been facing - an appalling absence of dedication to the best interests of Beacon's children.  With your help, ABS is working hard to rectify these issues once and for all.  The district now has to make the decision on whether or not to spend more money on a special election to fill these positions. A special election is estimated to cost our school district approximately $13,000.

Our options are as follows:
1) Hold a special election to fill the 2 vacant seats
2) Allow the BOE to enact a board appointment for the 2 vacant seats
3) Leave the seats vacant until the next election (May 2017), which would then be an election to fill 5 BOE seats
4) Vote to remain a 7-member Board from now on. This would require a change in BOE by-laws, which would be determined by public vote. If we had a 7-member BOE, then 4 votes would be required to reach a majority, rather than 5, which is what we currently have with a 9-member Board.

​
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Notes: Special Board Meeting Aug. 1

8/2/2016

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Notes from Presentation of Superintendent Search Firm, HYA

​Phase One
Public will have a major chance to tell the Board what they want
  • Focus group meetings:  Begin Last week in August through first few weeks of Sept.
    • Board will assign people to be in the focus groups
      • School Board Members
      • Central Office
      • Administration & Teachers
      • Parents
      • Any other groups decided upon: clergy, business owners, arts leaders, non-profits, students, clerical union etc.
      • Community at Large will have an evening dedicated to them (forum)
  • Online Survey
    • English & Spanish
  • Creation of an FPR
    • Extremely important document
    • Document created to compare all candidates against
  • Timeline Decided


Phase Two
  • Search firm will bring vetted candidates to the Board
    • Run a soft background check at this time
    • They use the FPR created in Phase One
  • Date for when the Search Firm will bring slate of candidates decided in Phase One
  • Round of Interviews with the slate of candidates
    • Run these interviews as close to each other as possible
  • 3rd party background check with final candidate

Phase Three
Transition Plan with Board Expectations
  • What are your Three Objectives as a Board
  • Contract Negotiations and Hiring
  • What is your Vision
  • What are your expectations?
    • You want to know these expectations so that you can evaluate the Superintendent against those expectations

Board Questions:

-The Board is working on a vision should they have a good idea of the vision first?
    Vision would be a plus but for time reasons come to a consensus on 2-3 things to start.
-When should we have the Superintendent start?
    Preferably (his opinion) before the school year starts.  A July 1st start would be best and the pool of candidates would be larger.
    However, you can make a good case to have them start mid-year but Board would have to be clear on their expectations.

-Question on Superintendent coming from a first year contract somewhere else?
    He would be leery about  people who are moving in the 1st year of their contracts from somewhere else.

-Is the pool of candidates dry?
    There is definitely a smaller pool of candidates.  The expect to receive 25-30 applications.  This may be due to the extra pressures of the job.  They will contact 14-15 and bring a slate of about 5 candidates to the Board.  If a candidate doesn’t fit the criteria that is outlined in Phase One then you don’t want them.

-Do finalists meet the community
    Depends on the deliberations in Phase One.  Sometimes the Board will take the finalist out to dinner.  Sometimes a tour of the school where they will meet staff, students, and parents.
However, the best candidates are those that are doing well in their current jobs.  So, you want to protect their anonymity.

-Aside from advertising how do you go about finding candidates?
  • contacts with a city consultant
  • contacts with Boces and National and State level associations
  • use of other consultants they can reach out to that may know worthy candidates that were not right for their particular searches
  • large pool of contacts and resources.

-What do you do if candidate leaves in 1st Year?
    We do search again free guaranteed. In the 2nd year, if the majority of the Board is still in place they will do the search again for free guaranteed.

Public Questions

-What if the Super doesn’t stay because the Board pushes them out for example?
    No matter what the reason for leaving is they will redo the search.

-Will your search be dedicated to 1st year superintendents as well as experienced?
    He doesn’t know because it depends on the information the community gives back and feeds to the firm.  Sometimes you may have a candidate in a deputy superintendent role that would be a perfect fit.  You won’t know until the search begins.

-We had a discussion in January where BOCES said that it would take 9 months to find a Superintendent.  Beacon needs to get it right.  We have many contracts that will be negotiated this year.  Is the 4-5 month timeline enough time?
    He disagrees with the 9 month timeline.  If it were that long it would be hard to keep the district focused on the search.  It takes about 16 weeks.  Which is different in the fall and spring because of number of candidates, but they are determined to get it right.

-During the transitional period you spoke of a lost candidate.  Was that because of compensation?  When does that get decided?
    The Ads will not have compensation and will just need to state that salary is competitive.

-You spoke on your Methodology regarding focus groups.  How set is it?  She is concerned about internal groupings and how can they be candid if they don’t have trust within their grouping?
    The treatment of these groups will be decided in Phase One.  If the board foresees a problem within a group then their may be a special group that needs to be formed.  The groups would need to come to the Board with their concerns.

-Your company will need to be an ambassador for Beacon even with our battered history.  What is the sales pitch for Beacon?
    This is a major part of our job and sum of merits.  There is no reason we can’t sell a community.  However, the candidate will need parent/community buy in and a Board that is not at odds with each other.  If they don’t have these things the district will be a hard sell.

-There seems to be so much work to be done.  Do you think we should have a special election for new Board members?
    Anthony White cuts this question off to announce the resignation of Frank Garnot.  
(no answer to the original question)

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