Tag Archives: Kenneth Spells

Holy Data Wall! Minneapolis Superintendent Candidates Are on Display

November 18, 2015

Tonight’s the night, everyone. The long process to find a Superintendent for the Minneapolis Public Schools will take a step forward, as school board members will cut the field of six semi-finalists down to three top contenders.

But as the candidates work to differentiate themselves, there are so many more questions than answers floating in the education stratosphere, such as:

  1. Have Minnesota’s Open Meeting laws significantly impaired who applied for the job? The law has required the district to publicly name candidates, have open interviews, and, tonight, hold a public discussion about the candidates among the board members. It seems there are advantages to this, but perhaps it has had a chilling effect as well.
  2. Does the fact that Interim Superintendent Michael Goar is himself a candidate mean fewer people were willing to put their own names on the line? Are there some strong internal candidates, for example, who may have held back because of this? 
  3. Like it or not, the average salary for urban superintendents hovers around the $250, 000 mark. Minneapolis pays less than this. Is this a factor, in terms of who has been attracted to the position?

And, perhaps most importantly, what information is search firm Hazard, Young, and Associates (HYA) giving to school board members about each candidate?  HYA has been affiliated with the billionaire-funded Superintendent factory known as the Broad Academy. Broad promotes a fast-track program so that those outside of education can become CEOs, er, Superintendents, of public school districts, in the name of no-nonsense, data-drenched reform rescue ops.

I won’t waste space here detailing the trail of disaster this has created (and, yes, not every Broad-trained Superintendent has been awful), but it something to be considered. HYA does not seem to have put forth any Broad candidates this time around, probably because the community listening sessions HYA held carried a strong message from the public: Do not send us any Broadies!

So…who have they sent to us? I’ll offer a quick look at the candidates who are thought to still be in the running, after the first round of interviews took place this week:

Sergio Paez, formerly of the Holyoke, MA school district. Paez is said to be strong on ELL issues, which the district clearly could use, since a growing percentage of students are not native English speakers. But, Paez’s claims to fame, during his brief Holyoke tenure, are disturbing. First, perhaps getting a little carried away by the allure of data, Paez instituted a “data wall” policy in elementary schools.

According to a Massachusetts news report, this didn’t go over well with the community: “‘Under Dr. Paez’ direction, teachers are currently required to post student data including test scores, reading levels and other academic scores and information in their classrooms and other public areas of schools,’ said Paula Burke, of Lawler Street, parent of a third-grader at Donahue School. ‘Not only is this a form of public humiliation, but it interferes with positive student learning …,’ she said during the public comment period.”

Then, when the head of the Holyoke Teachers Union spoke out against such practices, it appears Paez  tried to illegally silence him. 

Image result for jinger gustafson
Jinger Gustafson

Jinger Gustafson is an administrator in the Anoka-Hennepin school district, which is the Minnesota’s largest. She comes with positive reviews from Anoka–former Anoka teachers union president Julie Blaha says Gustafson is a collaborative admin that district teachers would be “disappointed to lose–and has the advantage of being a local candidate. 

Anoka seems blissfully untainted by reform, which might make it a challenge for Gustafson to step into the hotbed of outsider influence in Minneapolis, where the “public schools are failing!” mantra has taken root. 

Kenneth Spells, current Superintendent of the Alton, Illinois school district, just outside of Ferguson, Missouri. Spells has an almost quaint background for today’s education climate, having risen through the ranks as a teacher with nary a “transformational talent pipeline” fast track in sight. That should be appealing. But, while the Alton schools appear to match Minneapolis’ in terms of large average class sizes (29) and a high percentage of special education students (19 percent in Alton; around 18 in Minneapolis), the Alton schools are 82 percent White, with very few–if any–ELL students. Minneapolis is a radically more diverse district.

Spells also talked about creating a “kindergarten boot camp,” which is a hopelessly unfortunate title, however well intended, but he also talked about the benefits of the co-teaching model.

Michael Goar is Minneapolis’ Interim Superintendent, so, if he doesn’t make it into the top 3, things might get even more awkward around the Davis Center. Although Goar is the only candidate in the top six without a shred of teaching experience, he also has presumable strengths to bring to the table, such as his experience as a MPS student, his previous experience in the district–as an HR manager and then as “CEO.” He’s got ties to Minneapolis and some known supporters on the board, and is said to have interviewed well during Round 1, on November 17.

Image result for michael goar
Michael Goar

But…Goar followed former Minneapolis Superintendent Carol Johnson to Memphis and then Boston. And what followed him from those cities is not exactly flattering. First, in Memphis, Goar abruptly resigned in 2007, amid a scandal over fraud and waste in the Memphis schools’ food service department. Good luck trying to find a news report about this from the time, though. As of August and September of this year, all of the articles about the Memphis controversy have been removed from Memphis’ Commercial Appeal newspaper (individuals can submit requests, through Google, to have certain things removed from the Internet; reputation restoration companies can also be hired to do this, I am told–but these are just two possible explanations).

The controversy in Memphis centers around James Jordan, who was hired by Michael Goar–then Memphis’ Chief Operating Officer. I do have access to some articles from the time, and here is a brief overview of the problem:

A preliminary audit of the Central Nutrition Center at Memphis City Schools shows myriad waste, deception and evasions of state bidding laws led to a loss of more than $3.6 million since July 2006.

“My gut reaction was, ‘Oh no.’ I was horrified,” said school board member Jeff Warren.

Among the most egregious failures: The district ordered so much frozen food that 42 truckloads – or 243 tons – spoiled.

The 21-page draft, which was released to board members this week, reports that losses coincided with the arrival of James Jordan, director of nutrition services, who resigned Oct. 11.

Though revenue for 2006-07 was up by more than $2.5 million, expenses increased in excess of $6.2 million.

Some blog posts that detail this situation still exist, too, and they seem to indicate that Memphis residents were struggling, back in 2007, to get a handle on what was going on with their district-which was suddenly immersed in crisis. One blog reader posted this item, written by then-Memphis education reporter Dakarai Aarons:

COO Goar resigns from schools post
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Michael Goar, chief operating officer of Memphis City Schools, resigned abruptly Monday. Interim Supt. Dan Ward told board members Monday night he had received Goar’s resignation earlier in the day.

Goar previously had announced that he would leave in December to join former Superintendent Carol Johnson in Boston, but was expected to remain in Memphis through November.

Goar came to Memphis in 2003 with Johnson from Minneapolis, where she was previously superintendent.

Goar had been criticized recently for numerous problems exposed in an audit of the district’s nutrition services center, which lost nearly $3.7 million since July 2006. The director of nutrition services had been hired by and reported to Goar.

–Dakarai I. Aarons

The scandal followed Goar and Carol Johnson to Boston, but seems to have really centered on Goar, according to an audit of the Memphis schools that was completed in the wake of the “Food Fiasco,” as it was called:

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) hired the director in July 2006. From the start, the director was treated as if he was a long-time employee. He was accorded several benefits not normally given at his level of employment. The prospective employee was flown to Memphis at the CNC’s (Central Nutrition Center) expense to meet with Board members. The CNC paid $600 for his flight, to rent him a car, and for one night’s lodging. At the direction of the COO, he was placed on the top step of his salary grade. The practiced protocol has been that when a MCS employee moves into a higher position he is placed on Step 0. A new employee would be placed on Step Two if his work experience warranted it. This means this director started at $17, 195 a year more than a MCS employee would and $12, 238 a year more than a typical new employee in the same position would. There is not documented evidence that Human Resources verified employment or references that would justify this salary step.

The (audit) is focused on the CNC but it’s clear that Goar had an indulgent and lavish hand with salaries and expenses for upper administration. His actions outlined here call for a serious audit and review of his actions with others.

The (audit) doesn’t make clear how Goar came to learn of Jordan and then hire him so extraordinarily. A Google search didn’t turn up anything. Did they work together previously? Was Jordan recommended; by whom?

This all went down in the middle of a budgetary crisis for the Memphis schools, with school board members calling the district “cash-starved,” and requesting that then-Superintendent Johnson “cancel” 2 percent pay raises for “all school systems employees,” according to a Commercial Appeal article from March, 2005. (In recent years, “failing” Memphis schools have been subject to state takeover.)

Goar, of course, moved on quickly to Boston, where he worked under Johnson’s wing until 2012. At the time, Johnson was unrolling a plan to turn the Boston district into “small networks,” while simultaneously handling an exodus of staffers like Goar:

The organizational proposal comes at a time when Johnson is faced with replacing a number of high-level staff members after several who have worked with her most closely departed over the past several months. Among the most notable was the departure of Deputy Superintendent Michael Goar, who had been working with Johnson since her time heading up school districts in Memphis and Minneapolis.

Johnson announced in July that she would be shaking up her administrative team, after a series of incidents came to light that raised questions about a possible breakdown in communication and oversight up and down the ranks. But Johnson said today she had been looking to overhaul the executive team months before the July announcement and had surveyed principals in the spring, which revealed a high-level of frustration among principals toward the central office on Court Street.

Boston, during the Johnson/Goar years, also operated under a fiscal “crisis” model, which included threats of job losses for the district’s custodians and bus drivers, for example, as well as the charter-driven pressure to remake the city’s schools. 

Of course, Goar’s ties to Boston remain strong, with millions of dollars in contracts (bid? no bid?) awarded to the Boston-based District Management Council (DMC), and thousands spent on the Harvard and DMC-connected “Public Education Leadership Program” training for school administrators.

Whether or not Goar’s actions are just part of the difficulty of running urban districts in the era of high stakes political pressure, or perhaps indicative of something more troubling, will be up to Minneapolis school board members.

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