Aliyya Swaby Photo
Caraballo: Cast a wider net.
The Board of Education voted to hire from within to fill three top positions — as two board members split from the pack to vote nay, adding to growing criticism about how the schools superintendent is filling positions.
The two no votes came from Alicia Caraballo and Daisy Gonzalez, who have previously criticized the district’s hiring process for what they call a lack of transparency and poor prioritization.
The break reflected emerging cracks on a board that for years operated in unanimity.
Superintendent Garth Harries said he did not know until just beforehand that the vote would be split, but said he was aware of the concerns about hiring “policy and governance.”
He asked the board Monday night to approve placing Lola Garcia Blocker, Gemma Joseph Lumpkin and Adriana Joseph in top district positions, in a summer reorganization of central office leadership.
Click here to read Harries’ entire memo to the board.
Click to see the personnel report and its addendum.
A Split Vote
Three board members — Gonzalez, Michael Nast and Carlos Torre — were not physically present at Monday’s meeting so they called in their votes. Of eight board members, five voted yes, two voted no and one disappeared mid-vote.
Torre’s phone connection cut out in the middle of the vote, and he did not reconnect in time to have his say. When contacted Tuesday, he said he was in a museum in Chicago near closing time and had to head to an underground parking lot mid-vote. “The call dropped,” he said.
“I would have voted with the rest of the group,” Torre said. “There are things that happen that you may not be in agreement with,” but Harries does have the power to make personnel appointments, he said.
But after some consideration, Torre changed his mind. He said he probably would not have voted at all.
The president of the board, Torre said he chooses not to vote, especially when he is chairing Board of Ed meetings, unless there is a tie. “Whether the phone call had dropped or not,” Torre said, he probably wouldn’t have voted.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Harries (pictured) June 8 asked the board to vote to create two new positions: chief of staff and chief of youth, family and community engagement. Board members unanimously voted in favor of that decision. The positions were not filled at that point; Monday’s vote was to approve filling them.
Gonzalez said she had “expected it to take a little longer” to fill those positions. Harries should focus on “making sure we have our administrators, teachers in our classrooms and functioning equipment in our classrooms” before focusing on district-level hiring, Gonzalez said.
“I didn’t think it was the right time. I think we should have held off at least until the start of the school year,” she said. “My concern is more to make sure our kids are being taken care of.”
She said she was gone on vacation with her husband for the last few days and could not be at the vote in person. “I asked them to text me when it was time. I wanted my voice to be heard. I wanted them to know exactly how I felt,” she said.
Torre declined to comment on the specifics of why the vote was split: “We’ve been discussing these things in executive session,” in which the board can discuss issues of personnel, ongoing litigation or real estate without public presence. But he said the lack of unanimity was “very rare” on the board. “Traditionally it has been unanimous.”
Often, he said, personnel issues are “ironed out” during executive session, but this time, “obviously some things were not ironed out with everybody.”
Three New Chiefs
Garcia Blocker, recently the director of College and Career Pathways, will as of this week serve as the district’s chief of staff — a position Harries initially nixed upon becoming superintendent in 2013.
Harries wrote in a memo to the board that he hired Blocker in that position because it “reflected my strong sense that organizational alignment and responsiveness needed the full time focus of someone with the authority of a Chief of Staff.”
When contacted Tuesday, Garcia Blocker said she did not take Caraballo’s and Gonzalez’s nay votes personally. Part of her job as chief of staff will be to streamline processes such as hiring. “I’m sure there are other processes in the district, other policies in the district, that need to be addressed in order for us to effectively advance the School Change 2.0 agenda. The hiring process is one of those,” she said.
Now she is doing both her new and old job at the same time. Soon, Harries and other district leaders will figure out how to rearrange the College and Career Pathways department, Garcia Blocker said. “That hasn’t been defined yet.”
During the 2013 primary “reorganization” of the district leadership , Harries got rid of the chief of staff position, replacing it with “executive manager for district strategy and coordination.” He hired Gemma Joseph Lumpkin for that position in 2013.
In this year’s shuffle, he hired Lumpkin as the chief of youth, family, and community engagement, after reviewing an initial 10 applications. The board approved the creation of the position at its June 8 meeting.
Lumpkin, Harries wrote in his memo to the board, “can claim credit for some of the most difficult and important policy successes that the district has achieved,” including developing a restorative justice program and spearheading Youth Stat, an initiative to keep troubled teens in school.
She said that she plans to continue that work in her new position and to “deepen our work with youth development and bring in family engagement,” linking organizations and initiatives that serve young people. Lumpkin said she would not comment on the board vote except to say it “wasn’t expected … At the end of the day, the superintendent has a very clear vision for how he would like the organization to move forward. Ultimately the board accepted the superintendent’s vision.”
“At the end of the day, these appointment should be about kids being better off as a result of the faith the superintendent has put in us,” she said.
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Harries hired Adriana Joseph as Lumpkin’s deputy. Joseph was formerly the interim chief of wraparound services, after Sue Weisselberg left the position to be the deputy state budget director in January.
Joseph’s position was the only one Harries did not post before making the appointment. No other candidates were considered. “It didn’t make sense to do a search where there was a pre-ordained outcome,” Harrie said. “I knew I wanted her in the organization and I knew I wanted her as deputy.” In discussion with the board, he decided to “not engage in the search process.”
Caraballo said she doesn’t “agree with positions being filled without being posted … Obviously you need to make sure you get the best you can in terms of leadership on all levels. But we also want to ensure that our resources are going to our students.” At last week’s meeting, she had asked for more transparency in the hiring process, and for board members to be provided with details on the number and type of applicants in advance of public meetings. (At that time she criticized the process for hiring new principals.)
Joseph said she plans to “continue a lot of the work that was happening under wraparound,” connecting students academic and non-academic needs. “My plan under Gemma [Joseph Lumpkin] is to continue around the community partnership piece, specifically how we interact with the community as a whole,” she said.
District “Pods”
NHPS 2015
Harries also said Monday that he will create a system of four “network pods,” groups of district staff from multiple offices to each oversee sets of about 11 to 13 schools.
About 57 percent of staff who responded to last academic year’s central office survey said they thought the district effectively supported schools. Harries said the pods would help boost that support.
Each “pod” will be headed by a director of school support (formerly director of instruction) and supported by “leadership coaching and system development from Cambridge Associates and the Center for Great Schools Partnership,” Harries wrote in his memo to the board.
Harries said he projects the final leadership team for the upcoming academic year will save the district money compared to last year. “There are ways in which central office is under capacity” compared to peer districts nationally, he said.
He said he also prioritized hiring minority staff and will continue to do so.
The district is still seeking directors of school support, as well as staff for College and Career Pathways, English and language arts, reading, IT, English Language Learner support and data analysis.
What a lame response from the BOA Board Chair. Typical of his leadership style for these past decades!