Community to Help Pick Next Superintendent

Students, parents, staff and community members will all be involved in the selection of the next superintendent to lead the Rapid City Area Schools under a plan outlined by the Board of Education today. Beginning this week, the District will post an online survey that asks respondents to identify the most important characteristics of a good superintendent.

The Board will also establish seven stakeholder committees to provide input to the Board and meet with finalists. According to Board President Wes Storm separate committees will be created for each of the following groups: community, parents, business, teachers, principals, classified staff, and CSAC executive staff.

People interested in serving on the community committee are invited to submit their names to Shirley Fletcher in the Superintendent’s Office at Shirley.Fletcher@k12.sd.us or by calling 394-4031. Committee members must be available to meet on January 7 for an orientation and conversation about what the District is looking for in a new superintendent. They must also be available from March 9-16 to interview candidates.

Dr. Richard Christie from Ray and Associates, the search consultants hired to work with the Board, presented a timeline for the search process. Highlights include:

• January 7 – Meetings with constituent and stakeholder committees.
• January 18 – Finalize job announcement to reflect the District’s desires and priorities.
• January 19 – Consultants begin active recruitment.
• February 11 – American Assoc. of School Administrators convention, Phoenix, AZ.
• February 16 – Deadline for all application materials.
• March 6 – Consultant presents semi-finalists to the Board. Board selects finalists for interviews.
• March 9-16 – Board and committees interview candidates.
• Mid-March – Selection of top candidate and offer.

After collecting advice from the community at large and from the stakeholder committees, the ultimate hiring decision will be made by the seven members of the Board of Education. Storm said that the Board hopes to have a new superintendent chosen by the end of March. Responding to a question by Board Member Suzan Nolan, Dr. Christie said that if the applicant pool does not satisfy the Board, Ray and Associates will continue the search process.

Superintendent’s Salary Likely to Increase

After emerging from an executive session to discuss compensation issues, Storm provided an overview of the consultant’s recommendations regarding the superintendent’s salary. He noted that district’s in the northern Great Plains with comparable student populations and staffs are paying between $162,000 and $202,000 plus fringe benefits to their superintendents. Given Rapid City’s size, the Board believes it will have to advertise the superintendent’s job to start at $173,000 plus fringe benefits. This salary represents an approximately 35 percent increase over the salary paid to current superintendent Dr. Peter Wharton. For more on the salary issue, see Kayla Gahagan’s article in the Rapid City Journal.

Board to Set Schedule for Superintendent Search

The search for a new superintendent for the Rapid City Area Schools gets underway tomorrow (Saturday, 12/19) at 8:00 a.m. The Board will meet with representatives of the search firm to discuss the recruiting process; ways to solicit citizen input; the establishment of committees of staff, parents, administrators and community members; and the overall schedule for screening candidates and interviews.

The consulting team has already prepared a survey designed to elicit some sense of the skills and qualities that the District and the community are looking for in a superintendent. The public may also be asked to comment on which qualities are most important right now given the many issues facing the District.

Framing the Search Process

In selecting a new superintendent, school districts are often faced with a chicken and egg question when it comes to strategic planning. Should the Board develop a strategic plan and then hire a superintendent with specific skills that fit with the District’s priorities? Or, should the Board hire a new superintendent with the skills needed to lead the strategic planning process and then hope that this person will also have what it takes to implement the plan once its developed? The Board in Rapid City will benefit from a number of long-range planning efforts that have been completed in recent years under Superintendent Peter Wharton, including a facilities plan, a strategic plan for Native American education, and a well-developed District Improvement Plan. But the existing overarching strategic plan is out-of-date and is not likely to provide guidance to candidates for the position.

When it gets down to recruiting and selecting candidates, the Board will also have to think about whether they want to promote from within or hire from outside the District. Often this kind of decision is influenced by the current challenges facing a school district or any organization. If a board feels that the organizational culture is strong, the vision is sharp and trust levels are high, it makes sense to promote from within to keep the plan on track. If there are problems in the culture, trust levels are low and change is needed, many organizations will look for a fresh face to lead the process of change.

At tomorrow’s meeting the Board will attempt to wrestle with these issues and more.  A copy of the agenda for the meeting is here: Board agenda 121909. Read Kayla Gahagan’s story in the Rapid City Journal.  The meeting will be held in the Community Room at CSAC at 300 Sixth Street.

Search for a New Schools Superintendent Begins

The search for a new superintendent for the Rapid City Area Schools got underway this month. The Board of Education invited executive search firms to submit proposals to manage the recruitment and interview process that will lead to hiring a new leader for the District by next spring.

Hiring a superintendent is the most important decision a school board makes, according to the National School Boards Association. A search firm will serve as an outside, professional administrator of the search process. The firm will work with the Board to hold meetings to solicit community input, track applications and ensure that the process is not biased by insiders or compromised by breeches of confidentiality.

“No single decision is more critical than the hiring of a new superintendent for the school district.”                                                                                     Thomas Hutton,  National School Board Association

Proposals from search firms are due by the end of October, and the Board is expected to select a firm early in November. On behalf of the Board, the search firm will then develop a timeline for the process and a strategy for advertising the position. Before interviews take place, the Board anticipates that it will hold meetings with the public and various stakeholder groups to identify the attributes and qualities that the community is looking for in a new superintendent. A summary of this community input will be presented to the Board before the interview process begins.

After candidates submit their applications, the search firm will work with the Board to identify individuals the Board would like to interview. The interviews will take place early in 2010, and the Board hopes to make a final decision by April.

If you’re interested in reading what the National School Boards Association has to say about recruiting and hiring a new superintendent, read the special insert to their newsletter: NSBA supt search suggestions. For background on the District’s search for a superintendent in 1998 and comments on Dr. Peter Wharton’s tenure in Rapid City, see Kayla Gahagan’s June 26, 2009 article in the Rapid City Journal.

Wharton to Retire at the End of Next Year

With his support on the Board of Education waning, Dr. Peter Wharton has announced that he will retire after his contract expires at the end of the 2009-2010 school year. Wharton ran into trouble in the spring of 2008 when the district announced that it faced major budget problems. At public hearings board members expressed frustration with the way the administration had handled the budgeting process. That frustration remained evident last June when the board broke with precedent and did not approve a new three-year agreement for the superintendent, letting the clock tick on his existing contract instead. This week, as it appeared increasingly likely that the board would let the clock run out on his contract, Wharton bowed gracefully to the inevitable.

Wharton came to Rapid City in 1998 after serving as a superintendent in Michigan. It was a pivotal time in the history of education in South Dakota. A new funding formula adopted by the Legislature foreshadowed tighter budgets and increased accountability. When he arrived, the district, like many in South Dakota, had a healthy fund balance — equal to 20.4 percent of the annual budget for operations. The district began that year with 13,882 students taught by 940 teachers and other certified staff.

Over the next five years, the number of students in Rapid City schools fell by 5 percent. While the number of certified staff fell by an equal percentage, a sustained pattern of declining enrollments and state aid increases that failed to keep pace with inflation, dried up the district’s rainy day funds. The general fund balance fell to less than 10 percent of general fund spending.  

As superintendent, Wharton encouraged the board to take significant steps to cut costs. He recommended closing several aging elementary schools, increasing teaching loads at the high schools, expanding class sizes in the elementary schools, cutting foreign language instruction in middle school, trimming the counseling and gifted education staffs and introducing pay-to-play programs for middle school sports. 

Using the district’s capital outlay funds to lower operating costs, Wharton presented the board with a plan to internalize the district’s busing program, eliminating the need for an outside contractor. He and his team also built two new elementary schools — Valley View and General Beadle – to improve the learning environment for children and lower the cost of operations. 

These efforts, combined with a series of one-time funding increases from the state, began to improve the district’s financial position. Although state aid continued to decline in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, the district’s general fund balance began to rise again to a healthy 15.5 percent in 2006.

While the district worked to keep spending in line with declining enrollment, however, student achievement began to raise serious concerns. Between 2003 and 2007, the district’s reported drop-out rate rose from 2 percent to 5 percent while the graduation rate fell sharply. Meanwhile, the average score for college-bound students on the ACT decreased from 22.3 in 2003 to 21.8 in 2006. Perhaps most importantly, student scores on the state’s Dakota STEP test did not keep pace with the state’s expectations and the district was put on the state’s academic watch list.

Wharton worked with the board to address both the declines in academic achievement and the drop out rate, paying particular attention to the needs of low income and Indian students in the district. The district built a widely-praised new “community” school at General Beadle and, with grant money from the Bush and Vucurevich Foundations, sought to develop strategies and interventions to encourage Indian students to finish their education.

But new strategies for increasing student achievement raised costs for professional development and literacy and math intervention. Although enrollments had levelled off at about 13,000 students, the district was once again in deep budget trouble. By 2008, the general fund balance had once again fallen to roughly 10 percent of annual spending. There was a growing sentiment that Wharton did not have a long range strategy for dealing with the district’s financial and academic problems, and a growing number of employees had lost faith in Wharton’s leadership.

When he first came to Rapid City in 1998, Wharton was widely praised for his openness to change and enthusiasm for education. He is still seen by many as a leader with a strong heart for teachers and children and as an individual who wants to be a problem solver. His relationship with staff, however, has suffered with reports of incidents of intimidation and harsh responses to dissent. Many teachers assert that morale has never been lower. 

After ten years at the head of South Dakota’s second largest school district, any superintendent would be scarred by tough budgets and run-ins with employees and constituents. Dr. Peter Wharton says he plans to enjoy his retirement and expects to keep on learning. In the meantime, as the board begins the difficult task of recruiting, selecting and hiring a new superintendent, the district seems to be at a new inflection point. Tight budgets are not likely to ease for several years. Meanwhile, the pressure on student achievement is likely to increase. The next superintendent of the Rapid City Area Schools will need to win public support and build employee morale just to hold onto the quality of education the district delivers today.