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Torre: Public shouldn’t know “who said what.”
School board members shared their opinions about what they’re looking for in the next superintendent — and decided not to let the public in on the conversation.
The board met behind closed doors Tuesday evening for half an hour to discuss a job description for the position of superintendent. The meeting came as the board searches for a replacement for Superintendent Reginald Mayo, who plans to retire on July 1 after two decades on the job.
The school board, which has named itself the official “search committee” in the superintendent search, hired a private firm, PROACT Search, to help with that task. It aims to hire a candidate by mid-July, school board President Carlos Torre said Tuesday.
Tuesday’s meeting capped a weeks-long process in which the school board has sought to get public input on the search from parents, teachers, clergy, and other people with a stake in the school system. After complaints about too short notice, a “rushed” and “not transparent” process, and meager attendance at public forums, the school board renewed efforts to get the public to weigh in on a question: What do you want to see in the next superintendent?
When it came time to answer the question themselves Tuesday, though, board members chose to do so behind closed doors, drawing concern about “transparency” from one alderman who has been critical of the process. They had the legal right to do so. The question is whether they should have done it.
“I don’t know what’s to hide. What’s to say behind closed doors that you couldn’t say in public? I don’t get that,” Smart said. The search process has been unpopular with the public.
After a short public meeting at 54 Meadow St. Tuesday evening, the school board retreated into executive session for half an hour. Torre said the purpose was to discuss the the qualities board members would like to see in a superintendent.
He said throughout the search process, people who met with PROACT to give input on the matter were granted anonymity. PROACT reported, for example, that “clergy” wanted to see a certain characteristic in a superintendent, but not which pastor made the remark.
PROACT compiled all of that feedback into a draft “profile” of the kind of superintendent New Haven is looking for. Board members Tuesday discussed that profile, and gave their own opinions. The board plans to finalize the profile by Thursday and post the job immediately, Torre said.
Despite board members’ unique role in setting policy and hiring the superintendent, Torre said, their input should not be treated differently from anyone else’s. He argued that just as clergy had been granted anonymity when they gave their opinions about the search, so should board members.
If the board discussed the topic in public, he argued, “then everyone would know who said what.”
With those words, he retreated behind closed doors along with board members Michael Nast, Mayor John DeStefano, Susan Samuels and Elizabeth Torres. (The other three board members were absent.)
Half an hour later, the board emerged and concluded the public meeting without taking any vote. Torre said the board had reviewed the “profile” of the superintendent.
In private, they answered such questions as: “Do we need to change anything in the draft profile? Are there things in there that you would like to see?”
They corrected one error, he said: New Haven has 47 schools, not 45.
Torre was asked about the danger of having that conversation out in the open.
“We’re pulling together a profile,” he responded. “That profile needs to go out to the general public all at the same time.”
He further argued that “it would be unfair for some candidate, or some agency, to have some notion of what’s in the profile before everybody else does.” He was referring, obliquely, to Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries, who is considered the shoo-in for the job.
“Not everybody’s here in the board meeting,” Torre said.
DeStefano was asked whether the board should have gone behind closed doors to conduct Tuesday’s conversation, given all the effort it made to conduct a public, citywide conversation on the topic. He defended the move.
“I think it’s good that the documents will all be public and available for everybody to look at,” DeStefano said. “What we were talking about in there was the construction of what that would look like. It’s not anything that’s not going to be available.”
Will Clark, the school system’s chief operating officer, interjected to note that Connecticut law exempts superintendent search committees from having to publicly announce their meetings, let alone open the meetings to the public. In this case, the entire board has named itself the search committee.
DeStefano clarified that the Independent was inquiring not what the law is, but what the board should do as a matter of public policy.
“You’re asking them to go beyond the law,” Clark told a reporter. “Why are they following the law, I guess is what you’re asking?”
Public complaints about the board’s alleged lack of accountability and transparency has led to the city’s Charter Revision Commission to put a question on this fall’s general election ballot about whether to make the Board of Ed partially elected.
Torre said the school district has a historic practice of drafting job descriptions in-house before taking them public. Despite the citywide effort to include the public in drafting the job description for the superintendent job, he said aspects of the job search would remain closed.
“We didn’t even have to announce this at all,” Torre said of the closed-door meeting. “We are dealing with a superintendent search. Connecticut law allows us to simply just meet,” without letting anyone know.
“We didn’t have to say anything here at the board meeting” about the meeting, “but we chose to,” he said, “because this has been one of the most open processes I’ve ever participated in, and we want to keep it that way.
Torre said he plans to sit down Wednesday with schools communications chief Abbe Smith and board member Alex Johnston, and incorporate board members’ feedback into the superintendent’s profile, then release it to the public Wednesday or Thursday. The board and PROACT would then narrow the pool of applicants to three to five people by July, then introduce finalists for public questioning. The board aims to pick a final candidate by mid-July, he said.
Johnston, who got caught in traffic associated with a fatal train accident and could not attend Tuesday’s meeting, joined the executive session by phone. He said he was not involved in the decision to have the discussion behind closed doors; he referred comment to Torre.
Wooster Alderman Michael Smart, who chairs the Charter Revision Commission, said the ed board’s decision to meet privately on the search Tuesday evening does “not sit well with me.” Smart was one of just a handful of parents who showed up to a meeting in April about the search; there, board members got into a debate with parents and got a lesson on why parents don’t show up to public meetings. (Smart was not at Tuesday night’s Board of Ed meeting; he was voting on the city budget at a Board of Aldermen meeting.)
Smart said at meetings held by PROACT and by the Charter Revision Commission, members of the public have called for “an open process” and “transparency” in the superintendent search.
“This is clearly not the case,” he said.
“We have a common interest to make sure the entire process is open.”