I’ll never forget the day that I almost fainted in my kitchen.
A few months ago, I answered my phone and was greeted by a recorded message from interim Richmond School Superintendent Yvonne Brandon. Instead of the usual recording from RPS announcing a Snowball Dance or an upcoming teacher work day, it was Ms. Brandon informing parents that she would be open and available to answering questions about recent school audits and the like.
I was floored and, at first, thought that there must be some mistake. Perhaps the woman had gone crazy and snapped! This doesn’t often happen in River City, if at all — a high-ranking school administrator going out of her way to solicit feedback and questions, and making a sincere and straightforward effort to reach those members of the public she is supposed to serve.
Brandon’s outreach to parents and taxpayers was particularly striking in light of the so-called “public process” that was then underway by a handpicked search team to find Deborah Jewell-Sherman’s replacement as superintendent.
Today I was thrilled to learn that our new, permanent superintendent of Richmond Public Schools is… Dr. Yvonne Brandon.
Only problem is: The process behind her selection — as promising as the outcome may be — has cast a spotlight once again on some of the worst aspects of Richmond and of its business and political leaders — ingrained, clannish tendencies that continue to make this city a not-ready-for-prime-time community. In a Style Weekly article from October 2008, Chris Dovi reported:
Memphis, Tenn. recently considered acting-Richmond Superintendent of Schools Yvonne Brandon for its superintendent post. She didn’t get the job. But during Memphis’ open search process one of the other five finalists withdrew himself from consideration after residents searched the Internet and revealed he came with heavy political baggage, which was discovered after the official selection committee had vetted the finalist.
“He had issues in Buffalo, and he would have been questioned about his Buffalo superintendency when he came down here,” says John Branston, a local newspaper columnist and editor. The open search, Branston says, is a traditional process for the city.
What’s traditional there seems almost inconceivable to many city leaders here.
“I think the public at large is represented in two ways,” former School Board Chairman Ballard says. “They’re represented by who you put on the search committee and the public at large is represented by the School Board and City Council that we have. We do after all have a representative democracy — not a pure democracy.”
[Here is what is so weird about search teamer Ballard's quote above about not living in a pure democracy: He was one of the people screaming bloody murder that the public — i.e. him — was unable to attend closed-door meetings held by Doug Wilder's Education Committee back in 2006. Hypocrisy, thy name is Ballard.]
Zachery Reid, in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, also spelled out the, ah, representative nature of the superintendent search team’s process in a news report on Brandon’s hiring:
Brandon emerged as the top choice in a search that supposedly reached out nationally, though neither the board nor the committee it appointed to conduct the search produced any evidence of such. None of the candidates was named, and after a tepid attempt at transparency last summer, the board opted instead to exclude the public from the search.
The heavy lifting was done by a 15-person group of civic, business and educational leaders created by then-Chairman George P. Braxton. That group hired a national search firm to find candidates.
Braxton said then that an outside committee was preferable because it would keep the search from becoming political during an election year. At the time, three of the nine members, Braxton included, had announced they wouldn’t run for re-election. Ultimately, five of the nine seats changed.
Jewell-Sherman announced her plans for departure in early April, giving the board nearly a year to find a replacement. From the time when she actually left, July 31, state law allowed a 180-day window to fill the position with a permanent full-time replacement. The board took nearly every minute possible, officially offering Brandon the job less than four hours before the end of the work day on which the state deadline was to expire.
I wrote about this highly-dubious “process” in a Back Page editorial for Style Weekly back in July. An excerpt:
It was late afternoon when my daughter and I approached a neighborhood playground near Thomas Jefferson High School recently and saw a large handwritten sign in front of the building that read “Public Meeting.”
It was a curious sign because it didn’t say what the meeting was about. That’s one basic tenet of advertising broken, I thought. As a small group exited the building, I asked one man, “What was this for?”
“Choosing the public school superintendent.”
“Really?” I said, gesturing at my 6-year-old daughter, who was soon to begin first grade in a Richmond public school. “I might’ve wanted to sit in on that.”
“Well,” he said, laughing, getting into his car, “they spent most of the meeting talking about how no one showed up.”
As he drove away, I looked over at the nearby playground and thought about how simple it would have been to post a flier about the gathering there, and at other community spots where parents and public schoolchildren gather.
But that’s the kind of common-sense thing one would think of if one were, you know, a parent or someone who deals with parents on a regular, day-to-day basis. It turns out that the committee that School Board Chairman George Braxton appointed to find the new superintendent is short on expertise that could recognize this. Missing among the representatives of this selection committee are — wait for it — actual parents of Richmond schoolchildren or any active teachers in the public school system.
To be fair, Braxton didn’t totally neglect those voices; the president of the Richmond Education Association and a vice president of the Richmond Council of PTAs each had a seat. There was also a former Richmond school superintendent and one current Richmond public school principal; also seated was the superintendent of the Chesterfield schools and the director for the Center for Leadership in Education at the University of Richmond.
But to represent the greater Richmond community — that’s parents, teachers, taxpayers, crossing guards, you and me — Braxton chose five highly connected members of the Gang of 26, a group of area business titans who submitted a controversial proposal last year that, among other things, called for Richmond School Board members to be appointed and for city parents’ voting rights to be taken away when it comes to electing School Board members.
Not long after these so-called “public meetings,” the superintendent search team closed its doors and kept them closed. They also became the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Again, from my Style essay:
[The sparse attendance at the meetings] didn’t surprise Art Burton. “The negligible public turnout for the community dialogues was a significant vote of no confidence in the current process,” the 6th District candidate for School Board recently said.
The public was on to something. The Richmond Times-Dispatch recently reported that the selection process was “on hold pending the arrival of bids from national firms that specialize in superintendent searches.” It seems that there was a request made to solicit funds from these companies, but, as the newspaper reported, “the document appears to be a draft version, with a variety of errors and omissions.”
It’s unclear if the bush-league mistakes can be corrected in due time (state law dictates that Richmond has to choose a new superintendent by the end of January), but Burton says he knows why the ball was dropped.
“This selection committee was formed with no process in place, nor any duties or responsibilities identified,” he says. “And after it was formed, the group was informed that they would receive their assignment in June. The end result is a team that is uninformed about the hiring process or the necessary qualifications of a superintendent and the limited scope of their composition means that they are not representative of the entire community.”
In an attempt to defend the “business community” members who were guiding the search team, the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page conveniently disregarded their own paper’s news reporting on the team’s embarrassing (potentially costly) mistakes and instead began a disgraceful campaign of disinformation (which is still ongoing) that tried to assign blame to area parents for the “punk” process behind this important appointment:
We would like to say we join all of Richmond in wishing her well, except that news reports of sparse attendance at public forums regarding the superintendency reflect one of the problems she will confront.
And, in other news, man’s head attacks gun!
In the end, the RTD and I agree on one thing: This is a good choice. But the way Dr. Brandon was selected should give anyone who cares about transparency, common sense (and factual editorial writing) pause. I can’t put it any better than Bert over at James River Maven:
Today the board appointed Dr. Yvonne Brandon as our new School Superintendent in a process that was as far removed from government in the sunshine as one can imagine. All we know is that there was a search team (whose members were subject to a confidentiality agreement) that hired a contractor to find candidates. The contractor produced the names of five candidates. The School Board reduced that to three finalists. Then they chose Dr. Brandon. We have no idea who the other candidates were. We don’t know the process the board went through to make its decision. We were simply told that they decided.
It would be great to think that Dr. Brandon will continue to engage the public honestly and openly as she assumes the permanent role of guiding RPS. One can only hope that her model of civic engagement is absolutely nothing like the one that got her her job.
UPDATE: Bert at James River Maven has amended his post regarding the superintendent appointment. Read that here. Also: columnist Michael Paul Williams at the RTD has weighed in on the subject:
If Brandon was a clear choice, the process that led to her selection was opaque. We still know nothing of the other candidates. After hiring a national firm to assist, the School Board and a citizen search committee pushed the search right up to Tuesday’s state-mandated deadline.
Somehow, perhaps by default, it appears they got it right.
You can read his column by clicking right here.
