Just when you thought the Minneapolis superintendent search could not get any weirder….
Superintendent candidate Dr. Sergio Paez is in town today and tomorrow, presumably to try to generate good will and reestablish himself as the one for the job, Currently, he has no contract with the Minneapolis Public Schools, and is not a district employee. (Now, if he was superintendent, and he was hosting open coffee hours all over town, that would be something else, all together….)
He is still perched at “potential superintendent” status, after being named, by a 6-3 margin, as the candidate of choice by the school board in December–in the wake of an $85,000 national search. He was then immediately subject to further, contract-stopping scrutiny and thus does not officially have the job yet.
Whether or not Paez is the best choice to lead Minneapolis forward is still up for debate, and will be taken into full consideration by the school board at a January 12 public meeting, as it should be.
Until then, it seems odd that, while in town, Paez is being treated to all kinds of meet and greets with Minneapolis constituents, board members and high rollers. I can’t blame him for coming here, a week ahead of the board’s reexamination of his candidacy, to try to drum up support. It would be a blow to go through this turmoil and not come out with a job on the other end of it.
And, of course, our public conversations about what he would or would not bring as superintendent of the Minneapolis schools should not become personal. Smearing Paez isn’t the goal here, finding the best leader for Minneapolis is.
This morning, sources say, Paez was seated at the Avenue Eatery in north Minneapolis, meeting with some NAACP and Black Lives Matter folks, to be followed up by a meeting with former Minneapolis mayor and education reform advocate RT Rybak.
Later today and tomorrow, he is hosting two “coffee hours” that are open to the public. He is reportedly meeting one-on-one with board members, too, (if they so choose), and southwest Minneapolis school board rep Tracine Asberry has scheduled two other meet and greets for him, at neighborhood establishments. (I have not yet heard of any other board members doing this.)
My head is spinning; how about you?
It seems as though the board should be meeting, together, to discuss whether or not to go ahead and offer Paez a contract–without the added influence and distraction of Paez’s PR spin thought the city. After all, Asberry and fellow board member Josh Reimnitz were tasked with a December 18 “fact-confirming” trip to Paez’s former district in Massachusetts, but have yet to turn their findings over to the board.
Are we in danger of putting the candidate before the community?
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Dr. Sergio Paez is coming to town, and he wants to have coffee with you.
In an email sent on December 31, Paez–the current candidate of choice for superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools–announced that he will be in Minneapolis for two days, starting January 4.
Dr. Sergio Paez; Photo by Don Treager
In the email, Paez said he plans to hold “2 coffee hours” while in Minneapolis. The first will be on Tuesday, January 5 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Avenue Eateryon West Broadway Avenue. The second will be Wednesday, January 6 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at FireroastCafe in south Minneapolis.
Paez says he is coming to Minneapolis to “be able to talk to people about anything they have in mind and to learn more about MN in the process.” His email makes no mention of the fact that, although the Minneapolis school board chose him as the district’s next superintendent in December of 2015, he is now in the unexpected position of having to fight for the job.
Immediately after the board named Paez their top choice at a December 7 meeting, troubling reports surfaced from Paez’s days as superintendent of the Holyoke, Massachusetts schools. The reports, completed by the Massachusetts Disability Law Center, detail allegations of abuse at Holyoke’s Peck School program for special education students.
Paez was not directly implicated in these allegations, and maintainsthat he and his staff acted properly when informed of the reported abuse. Also, the Holyoke teachers union has questioned the law center’s report, and recently told a Massachusetts news station that “low staffing levels and limited resources” are part of the problem at Peck.
Still, it seems Paez is coming to Minneapolis–on his own dime, I am told–to salvage his chances of becoming Minneapolis’s superintendent.
Maybe it will work.
If Paez creates a lot of warm fuzzies by learning “first hand what the community believes is important to transform the district”–a goal he expressed in his recent email–then perhaps the board will be persuaded to forget their cold feet and go ahead with contract negotiations, which were suspended after the Holyoke allegations surfaced.
Meanwhile, my thoughts keep returning to a late December MinnPostpiece by local writer and teacher Nicole Helget about the “leadership crisis” in our schools. It isn’t specifically about Paez, but is worth considering as Minneapolis tries to move forward.
Nicole Helget; Photo by Jason Miller
Helget’s piece starts with a bang, hitting readers between the eyes by zeroing in on the “crisis in administration from K-12 to higher education.” She continues on, calling school districts “kingdoms” where predetermined decisions are made behind closed doors, and subsequently “fobbed” upon “teachers, students, and communities.”
There are many blows that sting in Helget’s piece, including the idea that putting a woman or person of color in charge should bring about meaningful change, but often doesn’t–thanks to hidden gatekeepers who are seeking to perpetuate, and not alter, institutionalized racism and sexism.
Helget then ends with this: schools need new leadership styles, and not just new leaders. “We have to change the culture of education,” she writes, in order to achieve this:
Our goal in education includes preparing people who can work, of course, but our goal…is to prepare people to adapt to all the changing aspects of our world and to help build the next economy, not become slaves to the current one.
The Minneapolis school board is scheduled to decide Paez’s fate at a regular January 12 meeting, which will include the standard public comment period. If you’ve got time this week, you know where Paez will be.
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Hold that contract, Minneapolis school board members.
Dr. Sergio Paez
Just two days after the board chose Sergio Paez to be Minneapolis’ new superintendent, a troubling news report surfaced from Paez’s previous employer, the Holyoke, Massachusetts public schools.
Paez was superintendent of the Holyoke schools from 2013 until this past summer, when the state took over the district, citing chronic academic underperformance.
But that’s not what is raising alarms now.
A December 9 articlefrom the Boston Globe bears this headline: “Holyoke school abused disabled children, report says.” Reporter Bryan MacQuarrie then describes in detail some shocking allegations against staff at Holyoke’s Peck School, which serves–or is supposed to serve–“emotionally disabled” children in grades four through eight.
Here is some of what Massachusett’s Disability Law Center found at Peck, during an investigation:
The Disability Law Center’s review, which began in May, looked back for about a year before that time and conducted more than 45 interviews with students, parents, former staff members, and others.
One 67-pound student was restrained 50 times, including about a dozen times when the pupil was held prone on the floor, according to Eichner and the report. The child complained to a parent of being unable to breathe, and that some of the restraints had been painful, the center said.
“Prone restraints can lead to serious injuries or even death,” Eichner said. Some restraints lasted for longer than 20 minutes, the investigation found.
Children were thrown to the floor for not moving, pulled out of chairs for refusing to get up, tackled to the ground, and restrained for refusing to change into a uniform, investigators were told.
HYA rep Ted Blaesing
Judging by this report and the news article, the abuses at Peck were under full investigation during Paez’s time at Holyoke (which has just 11 schools, overall). Yet HYA, the search firm hired by the Minneapolis school board to garner “high quality” candidates, assured the board–publicly, repeatedly–that all of the finalists for the superintendent position had been subjected to a rigorous examination of their work histories and their references.
How could this story from Holyoke have escaped HYA’s “rigorous” spotlight? This puts the Minneapolis school board in the tough position of having to reexamine the candidate they thought would be the best person to lead Minneapolis forward.
Reporter MacQuarrie was aware that Paez had just been awarded the superintendent’s position in Minneapolis:
The allegations surfaced during the tenure of former Holyoke superintendent Sergio Paez, who lost his job after Massachusetts education officials voted in April to place the district under state control.
On Monday, the Minneapolis school board voted to appoint Paez as that city’s next school superintendent. Members of the board did not respond to requests from the Globe to comment on whether the allegations would affect his hiring.
Perhaps that petitioncircling through Minneapolis last weekend, demanding that the school board restart its superintendent search, will now carry more weight. It had 950 names as of Monday night, when the school board voted Paez in.
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Welcome, Dr. Sergio Paez, to the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Dr. Paez
Many people were shocked to learn that Paez was chosen to become Minneapolis’ next superintendent, over interim candidate and hometown favorite (for some), Michael Goar.
The decision was announced at an exhaustingly drawn out special school board meeting on December 7, where a long list of desired superintendent characteristics was sweated over in great detail by the board, with almost no indication–until the very end–that Paez would get the job.
The board room was mostly quiet throughout the nearly three hour meeting, despite sign-wielding protestors, who were demanding the board restart the search. These protestors were–randomly–clustered in seats right in front of the silently observing, stalwart Students for Education Reform (SFER) crew that has been present at many recent MPS meetings.
It was an interesting and telling mix, as well as a preview of the various factions Paez will encounter here in Minneapolis.
SFER is a national education reform organization, started in 2009, supposedly by a couple of nice college kids out of Princeton University. Fact check, please! SFER is simply another super spongy Astroturf group seeking to cash in on, and remake, public schools by declaring them failures, and then heavily promoting market-based “fixes,” such as more school choice, more “innovation,” less tenure, etc.
CT SFER kids rallying for charter schools. Edushyster photo.
SFER has outposts at colleges around the country, kind of like the Sierra Club or Amnesty International, where they’ve been able to attract (and financially reward) young, idealistic students who will, perhaps unwittingly, carry water for the very adult interests that are pulling SFER’s strings.
I am sure the young people who get hired by SFER to put tape over their mouths during union-district negotiating sessions, or to shill for certain candidates during school board elections, or to march in favor of judging teachers by their students’ test scores, are probably sucked in by a desire to do something about the real educational inequities and institutionalized racism that exists in our schools, and, of course, our society at large.
Their activism and youthful desire to change the world provides a nice cover for SFER’s behind the scenes machinations, which revolve around a top-down campaign funded exclusively by very wealthy adults who know how to put their best foot forward, in order to conduct business as usual (with some help, of course; SFER, the national org, has a fancy New York PR firm on a retainer).
Conneticut blogger Jonathon Pelto has written two recent investigative pieces on SFER. Here’s Pelto’s take on what this group is all about:
Dedicated to promoting the privatization of public education, more taxpayer funds for privately owned, but publicly funded charter schools, the Common Core, the Common Core testing scheme and a host of anti-teacher initiatives, Students for Education Reform, Inc. (SFER) was created in late 2009, according to their narrative, by a couple of undergraduate students at Princeton University.
Claiming to have over 100 chapters across the country, the ‘student run’ advocacy group has, as of late last summer, collected more than $7.3 million since its inception to fund their ‘education reform’ activities.
Oh! That explains how they can pay students to camp out at excrutiatingly long school board meetings.
SFER was a presence during the 2014 Minneapolis school board race, and they will be present again, in 2016, along with their compatriots from MinnCAN, Educators for Excellence, Teach for America, and other well-heeled, decidedly non-populist reform groups.
But who else will be present? The group of local activists seated in front of the SFER crew at Monday’s school board meeting hopefully will be.
This group was small, and consisted of parents, teachers, and school support staff–and at least one student, who looked far too young to be part of SFER. Despite its small size, the group came wielding a petition that circulated through Minneapolis over the weekend, declaring all three finalists for Minneapolis’ superintendent inadequate, and too, well, too SFER or MinnCAN-like. Too corporate. Too big business. Too wedded to the money and priorities of outside entities with a scripted agenda.
Without any hedge fund cash, or any design help from an out of town PR firm, this local petition gathered 918 signatures in just a few days, asking the school board to restart its superintendent search.
Now, I see, it is up to 950 names.
The petition didn’t work, in one sense, because the school board did not vote to restart the search process.
But that goal was a long shot, at this stage in the game. The school board members themselves are clearly exhausted, and stretched thin by the months-long search. They are only human, after all, and paid virtually nothing to wade through the politics, policies, and shifting priorities that are part of the job.
Michael Goar
And to start over would look fractious, and perhaps further feed the failure and dysfunction narrative that spins so constantly over our public schools. (Remember Netflix CEO and billionaire Reed Hastings’ call to end democratically elected school boards? He is not alone in wishing for this.)
But it did work, in another, perhaps more important sense: Michael Goar was not chosen to become superintendent (the petition is full of quite pointed commentary on Goar’s tenure in MPS). Just three of the nine board members–Siad Ali, Carla Bates, and Josh Reimnitz–voted for Goar; all of the other board members wanted Paez. And this is significant, as Goar’s year-long trial run as interim superintendent was controversial, and disruptive, in the eyes of many.
Paez is undoubtedly only as human as Goar is, and will probably not offer any immediate, magical fixes for what ails the Minneapolis schools. And what ails it most, according to last night’s board meeting, is a loss of trust in MPS’s leadership, and a need for some relationship repair.
“We need someone who can bring our community together,” and “rebuild trust,” Tracine Asberry told MPR News last night. She did not seem to be alone in that sentiment.
And, not insignificantly, Paez was favored by at least two board members–Rebecca Gagnon and Nelson Inz–because they were impressed with his knowledge of teaching and learning, and what they saw as Paez’s commitment to educating the “whole child,” and not just the portion of the child who may or may not perform well on test day. (Board members also touted his success with ELL students).
We don’t know yet what Paez will do when he takes over as superintendent. Will he make shocking missteps (data walls, anyone?), or will he build bridges? While Paez was superintendent in Holyoke, MA, the district was taken over by the state. Could that happen here? Some people in Minnesota would love to see MPS go down, and be replaced by a New Orleans-style network of “high performing seats,” rather than schools. We should all be aware of this.
And will he know–or learn–how to put a racial and social justice framework first, without bowing to the hidden demands of groups like SFER?
Proceed with caution, Dr. Paez.
While Students for Education Reform (SFER) will pontificate that they are “all about the children,” their political activities in Minneapolis, Denver and elsewhere tells a very different story.
–Jonathon Pelto
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I am not one to get between Michael Goar and his dream job, but maybe the Minneapolis school board should.
Since being ushered in as Interim superintendent in February, 2015, Goar has spoken in lofty terms of his desire to be the real deal superintendent for the Minneapolis Public Schools. Example: In a February interview with StarTribune education reporter Alejandra Matos, Goar had this to say:
“My career path has led up to a superintendency…It’s a calling, and I love this school district because I know what is possible.”
Pause. It is odd to think that someone who has never been a teacher or principal in any capacity would say that his “career path” has led to becoming superintendent. Is this about being the boss, or leading a school district?
Still, the school board did undertake a months-long search for a new superintendent, perhaps to show that Goar was not the shoo in he has probably been set up to be.
Mini History Lesson:
Goar returned to Minneapolis from Boston in 2012. A short time later, he became head of Generation Next, which is funded by the United Way and organized around closing the “achievement gap.” (Generation Next had just come to Minneapolis then.)
After seven months with Generation Next, Goar left to become CEO of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Why? How? At whose request? So many questions! Was this CEO position ever posted? Or was it handed to Goar?
Fortunately for Generation Next, Goar’s departure to MPS in July, 2013, didn’t leave the group with a troubling leadership “gap,” as former Minneapolis mayor RT Rybak was ready and willing to take over for him. At the time, Rybak was in need of some legitimacy, after stating he wished he had “done more” about education during his twelve years as mayor. Today, he is still leading Generation Next, and getting paid close to $200, 000 to do it, which is as much as Minneapolis’ superintendent makes.
Therefore, Goar was in a good position in MPS when former Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson announced her resignation in late 2014. Of course, Goar was there to step in as interim, which he did in February, 2015. Rybak approved, and told Minnesota Public Radio in January, 2015 that he wanted Goar to get the job, permanently.
And, now he is one of three finalists for the job, after skating through a mostly weak pool of candidates gathered by search firm Hazard, Young, and Associates (HYA). Bonus: he is also the preferred candidate of five of the nine Minneapolis board members: Siad Ali, Jenny Arneson, Carla Bates, Josh Reimnitz, and Don Samuels.
But Tracine Asberry, Kim Ellison, Rebecca Gagnon, and Nelson Inz did not select Goar as their top candidate.
And that’s telling.
Goar undoubtedly has his strengths as a candidate. He’s local, he’s a graduate of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and he has a compelling backstory as an orphan and non-native English speaker. He has clearly done well for himself and there’s much to admire in that.
But is this enough to recommend him for the role as leader of the Minneapolis schools? In a recent blog post, I pointed out some of Goar’s record as an administrator in Memphis and Boston, where he seemed to hone an ability to land on his feet, no matter what.
More than this, we have his current record as interim superintendent to examine closely. Here are some concerns regarding Goar, his current legacy, and how it stacks up with the “Summary of Desired Characteristics” created for MPS as part of the superintendent search process.
“Lead with a depth of pedagogical knowledge.” Goar has never been a teacher, not even for a year or two. Sure, non-teachers can have a “depth” of pedagogical knowledge, but does Goar? His leadership during the Reading Horizons debacle–when he, or his office, continued to insist that this flawed company’s products were to be used in all K-2 MPS classrooms–should raise questions about how profound his understanding of teaching and learning is. Also, the push for more “autonomy and accountability” for some schools within MPS–and not others–seems more about free market reform (competition, choice) than about an equity-based plan for lifting up all MPS students.
“Nurture and maintain an organization in an environment of mutual trust.” Multiple sources have said that MPS, under Goar, has become a tougher place to work, with numerous long-time, top-level employees walked out of the district’s central offices for thinking too, ah, independently. Destabilization, mysterious restructurings, jobs seemingly handed to people–all of these things should be closely investigated by the publicly elected school board members that Goar is supposed to answer to. (And, there is still no publicly available org chart for MPS.)
“Listen and discern information from a multitude of sources.” There have been a slew of Goar-led changes dropped on the staff and families of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Examples include the secretive changes to the district’s citywide autism program, the immediate adoption of a required seven period day for all high schools and middle schools, along with mandated changes in school start times. Under Goar, the district has also canceled the Area meetings where parents came together to more closely address district-level staff, and altered the District Parent Council. Particularly disturbing:Goar has been allowed to preempt the public speaking portion of school board meetings by addressing issues from the district’s perspective before parents, staff, and community members are permitted to express their own concerns. This has had a stifling effect on community involvement, which was chillingly paired with a misbegotten attempt to silence anyone who had a negative comment at the November 10 school board meeting. These trends are worth further examination.
“Possess business acumen and is knowledgeable of sound financial management.” The latest MPS budget, which was finalized in June, 2015, was over budget, despite Goar’s frequently cited cuts to central office staff (someone should insist on seeing a list of who was cut, and which jobs were then reposted at a lower salary). The district had to borrow from its own reserves to even things out, thereby jeopardizing its good bond rating. Additionally, Goar has paid out big dollars for consultants’ contracts, including one that advised MPS to adopt a “student-based” funding model, which district staff then struggled to explain to families during a series of budget info sessions in 2015. Goar’s administration was also implicated in a misuse of district-issued credit cards. The employee who reported this left the district, after twenty years of service.
Goar’s competition for the top spot includes Charles Foust, who is a “School Support Officer” for the Houston schools–a district with a neoliberal education reform rap sheet a mile long. From Teach for America recruits to “no excuses” charter schools, the Houston schools seem to have never met a top down, quick fix that they didn’t like. Foust is all about school transformation, but from what vantage point? And, would he stick around Minneapolis when the transforming got tough?
Then, there is Sergio Paez, who lost his job as superintendent ofthe Holyoke, Massachusetts schools when the state took over the district this past summer.Paez is strong on the ELL side, which is good, but has yet to explain his “data wall” policy, where he required Holyoke elementary school teachers to publicly display children’s progress–supposedly anonymously–on assignments and tests. Here is Paez’s perspective on this, according to a 2014 New England Public Radio report:
Holyoke Superintendent Sergio Paez says the charts are used throughout the school district, and says they keep students anonymous.
“Obviously [we are] preserving the privacy, and ensuring that it is productive, and is progressive, and is helpful to our students,” Paez says. “If it is not following those conditions, then it is not being implemented correctly.”
Paez says data walls are a common practice in public schools around the country. Paez is in his first year in Holyoke, and has stressed the use of data to help turn around the struggling district.
Of course, Paez has one advantage: Holyoke, MA is one of the District Management Council’s “Member Districts,” just like Minneapolis, so, if he comes here, he will be familiar with the Council’s attempts to accomplish a businessy rejiggering of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
So, what’s next? The school board has a few options:
Give Goar the job, which makes sense in some ways. He’s familiar and several MPS board members seem to appreciate that he has experience in large school districts.
Hire either Paez or Foust, which seems less likely. Does either one of them have enough experience or insight to rise above Goar?
Restart the search process, and perhaps find some more candidates from within.
In this climate of upheaval, when the niceties surrounding our “progressive” city are falling away, Minneapolis citizens are understandably otherwise engaged. The Fourth Precinct protest in north Minneapolis is persistent, and about much more than one man’s story. It is about systemic oppression, racial and economic segregation (historically and currently), and lack of equal access to the “good life” many of us take for granted in Minnesota.
It is about the people pushing back against the powers that be and the promises they use to maintain their status. Will Minneapolis’ superintendent search be about the same thing? Or will Goar be given his dream job?
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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:
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.
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?
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 affiliatedwith 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.
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 backgroundfor 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.
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 scandalfollowedGoar 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 underJohnson’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’scustodiansand 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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