Published in the September 11 Edition
If a community’s school district is the most important factor in determining its quality of life, then hiring a superintendent – the top job in a school district – is arguably the weightiest job in town.
It was interesting last week to observe a smallish but very vocal group of Fox C-6 residents ask – make that, demand – that the district go out of town to hire its next superintendent.
The difficulties Fox has faced in the last year or two have been well documented. They came to a head this spring and summer with the retirement announcement of Superintendent Dianne Critchlow, a hometowner. That development coincided with a flurry of legal threats, bad publicity, an upcoming state audit and – most importantly – the need to hire a new super.
Fox has been proud – almost defiantly proud – of hiring and promoting from within. Spouses, children, aunts, uncles, cousins – the district’s family tree is a spider web the History Channel couldn’t untangle.
That tradition, of course, has had its critics. For the most part, though, they’ve been on the sidelines, occasionally bringing up the subject of nepotism even as the parade of spousal and in-law hirings marched on.
If the school board takes the public input to heart and purposefully searches for outside candidates, what a sea change it will be for Fox.
But not necessarily for the better. Let’s look at a few examples of how it works traditionally at other county school districts.
We’ll start with the smallest, Crystal City. I can say with some confidence there is a not a town in Jefferson County with more hometown pride than Crystal City. Some who don’t live there might roll their eyes and use different words to describe their perception of Crystal Citians’ opinion of Crystal City. Let’s just say there is a lot of hometown pride there.
How often, though, has Crystal City hired a hometowner to run its schools in say, the last 65 years? Zero.
The current supe, Phil Harrison, is in his second year. He previously worked in Dunklin County in Southeast Missouri. He was preceded by Ron Swafford, a native Texan, who worked in Doniphan, Mo., when Crystal City hired him in 1999. He took over for Jim Maze, who served 24 years as superintendent after being recruited from Campbell, Mo. We can get all the way back to 1949 with the next two supes – Clinton Pope and David Max. Both men were recruited from somewhere else.
So, yes, it can be done, and still preserve extreme hometown pride.
I’d also list De Soto at the top of the list of hometown pride communities. It has hired out-of-town superintendents for years, usually with success. The current supe, Trish Burkeen, is hometown with an asterisk. A south St. Louis native, she started at De Soto as a math teacher, then went into administration and eventually was promoted to superintendent.
Festus, like Crystal City, covered a long stretch of years with just a few superintendents – none of them locals. Starting in the 1940s with Ralph Tynes, Festus then turned to longtime administrator Robert Tucker, then brought in Robert Taylor from Bethany. Those three RTs covered six decades. They did it well and they weren’t locals, although Tucker, like Burkeen, had been in the district for years before taking the top post.
The 20-plus year tenures of the Tyneses and Mazes of the world, like that of Fox icon James Rickman, are a thing of the past. Even 15-year toppers like Taylor or Swafford are hard to find. Taylor’s successor, Randy Sheriff, stayed seven years.
In fact, the most senior superintendents of the 11 public school districts in Jefferson County today are Paul Ziegler of Northwest R-1 and Stan Stratton of Dunklin R-5. Both have been at their jobs seven years.
Admittedly, this is a random walk down Superintendent Street. You have your pure hometowners, such as Fox High grads Critchlow and Jim Chellew before her. You have the hometowners with asterisks who may have worked in the district for years, like Tucker, Ziegler and Burkeen, before assuming the top job. Then you have rank outsiders with no preconceived notions, no cousins working in the cafeteria and no idea – for a while – how to get from one end of town to another. There are pros and cons to each.
Being superintendent is a complex, demanding job. Successful ones have good political skills in dealing with state regulators, school board members, administrators, faculty, staff and parents. They must have a good grasp of finance, a firm sense of ethics and fairness.
Oh, yeah, and a few ideas about educating kids.
A classic – if cynical – definition of an expert is someone who lives more than 50 miles away. It would be as silly to judge someone only on that as it would be to automatically eliminate someone else because he or she lives four blocks away.
Feedback is good. In the case of Fox, feelings are still pretty raw, so it’s understandable how a knee-jerk reaction could get started.
The truth is, local and far-off hires can both work. The school board should ignore the geography and concentrate on hiring the best candidate.
