Christopher Peak Photo
Superintendent Birks.
I apologize, Superintendent Carol Birks typed late on Sunday night.
She emailed that to the person whom she’d offered a job two months ago as the district’s chief financial officer, only to rescind the offer.
After a 14-month search for a chief financial officer, the process is beginning all over again with a $10,000 contract for a head-hunting firm to find new leads on a candidate who wants to tackle a $30.7 million shortfall next year with a budget nobody has seen that may result in the elimination of 170 teaching positions.
Over the last year, the district’s human-resources team has interviewed 15 candidates for the position, but it found only two candidates that it liked. It made an offer to the first, but that was eventually turned down. Then it made an offer to the second, but it withdrew that after city officials got involved in the hiring process.
That reversal unfolded over the the last week. The superintendent formally rescinded the job offer on Thursday, then sent an apology on Sunday.
The halting process is described in emails that the candidate forwarded to the school board, which were released to reporters under the Freedom of Information Act.
A Leading Candidate, For A While
Lisa Mack at last week’s Board of Education meeting.
On Feb. 15, the school system’s human resources director, Lisa Mack, verbally told a candidate, who manages a $350 million budget in a neighboring state, slightly bigger than New Haven’s budget, that they would be offered a job as the district’s chief financial officer.
The team said a contract would be coming shortly, but that document never arrived.
Instead, the candidate received another phone call requesting a follow-up interview with Controller Daryl Jones, Budget Director Mike Gormany and Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans.
After that sit-down, the candidate didn’t hear from anyone in the district, so they reached out to Birks by email this month, on Apr. 1, to find out what was going on.
“I am still very much interested in the position, but I am a little concern[ed] of the most recent turn of events,” the candidate wrote. “Please let me know the current status of the offer. I look forward to hearing from you or a member of your team.”
A week later, on Apr. 8, the candidate forwarded the email to Mack, again trying to find answers. Mack replied that evening that she’d spoken with Birks and would send an update when she heard more information.
Two days after that, last Wednesday, the candidate again tried to reach out to Birks.
“It is important that we begin to communicate with each other to begin to develop a good professional relationship,” the candidate wrote. “Considering the financial situation of the district it would be great if you or someone from the district can provide me with as much financial information as possible outside of what is available online so I can hit the ground running upon my arrival.”
The next day, last Thursday, when the candidate called the district’s human-resources department, someone finally broke the news that the job offer had been rescinded. The candidate wrote an email to the full board expressing feeling “misled” and “embarrassed.” The candidate added that they did not think Birks handled the hiring “in a professional manner.”
On Sunday night, Birks said sorry, copying the full board on her message.
“In hindsight, I realize that we should have been more clear in our communication to you, for which I apologize,” Birks said. “I wish you well in your future pursuits.”
Birks told reporters that, after doing “a little more research,” she thought that the candidate would not be “a good fit for New Haven.” She declined to go into details, saying it was a personnel matter.
Connecticut Only?
Mayor Harp: Check the certifications.
On WNHH’s Mayor Monday this week, Toni Harp said that’s because the candidate didn’t have the right certifications.
“The superintendent wanted to look to see if she could find someone with more credentials specific to Connecticut,” Harp said. “Of course, he was upset because he was hoping to get that contract signed, and it wasn’t.”
The job posting, which has been up for more than a year, does not ask for applicants to have any administrative certifications, let alone one issued by the Connecticut State Department of Education. It simply asks for applicants to possess a BA in finance or accounting, with MBAs or CPAs “strongly preferred,” plus have seven years’ experience, preferably in a “large, complex government organization.”
However, even if it had asked for a certification, the frontrunner for the CFO position is certified as a school business administrator in their state.
Usually, those credentials transfer right over in less than eight weeks, the Connecticut State Department of Education says, as long as the person proves they received the right degrees, shows they passed another state’s certification test and pays $250 in fees.
The candidate had actually sent in an application back in October 2018 to obtain a Connecticut certification, but they were waiting on a contract before paying the final fee. They added that no one from the district had ever asked if they’d pursued a certification.
In an interview on Friday evening, the candidate said they believed that they didn’t get the job because they’d asked the wrong question in the interview with city officials, prying too far into their business.
“Maybe I asked a question that people didn’t really like,” the candidate speculated.
“I really hope that they find a CFO that’s going to do the right thing, because right now, without financial leadership in the department, it’s difficult for the superintendent to do both instruction and finance,” the candidate added. “You really need someone in as soon as possible: It’s too much for one person, even if that person has experience in educational finance.”
Searching For Conflicts Of Interest
Ed Joyner: Not HYA again.
School board members have also given Birks a hard time about her decision to bring in a search firm to scour for another crop of candidates, beyond what the district’s team was able to turn out with ads in 20 different job boards, alumni networks and trade publications. That agreement was negotiated on Mar. 21, before the candidate’s job offer had been rescinded.
The board said it was wrong for the Birks to go with Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, a national head-hunting firm based in a Chicago suburb that said it would charge $10,000 for the search, because the same firm had put Birks among its six finalists in the chaotic superintendent search repeatedly derailed by infighting that one swing-voting board member later said ended up with the wrong result.
“It doesn’t look good to award a contract to a company that had a role” in Birks’s hiring, board member Ed Joyner said at last week’s meeting. “The Bible said you should shun the appearance of evil.”
But recently, Birks has gone out of her way not to send money to Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates; in fact, she passed over the firm to lead the district’s strategic-planning process, even though it sent in the lowest bid of the three firms she asked for quotes.
For that contract, Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates said it would charge $54,500 total.
That’s at least half as much the $90,500 quote from Criterion Education just for the first phase, which Birks ultimately chose. And that’s close to one-fifth as much as the $257,500 quote from Four Point Education Partners, where another one of Birks’s transition-team leaders, Valda Valbrun, works as a senior associate.
In a statement about the CFO search emailed out to reporters last week, Birks said she felt “surprised” to hear talk of conflicts of interest. She said she decided to bring back Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates “because it is widely-recognized as a leader in executive searches.”
“Given the ongoing need we have to identify a Chief Financial Officer, I was pleased to arrange for their assistance in this search at a deeply-discounted cost within my authority as Superintendent,” Birks said. “I received no personal benefit from this arrangement, but the district will benefit greatly if this search firm can identify suitable candidates for this important responsibility.”
Birks added that in 2013 the school district hired another head-hunting firm, the New York-based Harris Rand Lusk, in 2013 to locate then-CFO Victor De La Paz. That time, the district paid $43,000 for the search, she said.
“These are very hard-to-fill areas,” Birks said.
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