Columbus schools may restart leader search
With only one Columbus City Schools superintendent candidate left after a seven-month national search that reviewed dozens of applicants, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost now says the school board may have violated Ohio law, potentially voiding the entire selection process.
Yost sent a letter to the school board Tuesday saying he has “concerns that the process the Columbus City School District used to select a new superintendent may be in violation of ” Ohio’s Open Meetings Act, which requires all official decisions to be made in public meetings.
If so, the decisions that have led to acting Superintendent John Stanford being the sole remaining candidate for the full-time post are void “ab initio,” or from the beginning, Yost’s letter said, raising the prospect that the board might have to start the entire process over.
“This letter serves as notice that the Ohio Auditor of State’s office has begun a preliminary inquiry into the process used to narrow the field of candidates. The district is directed to retain all copies of records, notes and electronic media of any proceedings related to the process of selecting the new superintendent.”
The Dispatch reported in early January that the school board, despite promising transparency, had privately created a short list of candidates to interview, but it wouldn’t reveal who was on it. The district turned over no names in response to an Ohio Public Records Act request because, it said, it had engaged in only verbal communications with its search consultant, Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates.
“This isn’t ‘American Idol’ where contestants are ranked and then cut off a list one by one,” board President Gary Baker said at the time.
The district announced in mid-December that 19 candidates had applied, but The Dispatch later reported that the board not only had been interviewing a secret list of candidates but had added names not on the list of 19. There is no public record of how the board decided to winnow that larger list to the three finalists whose names the district announced Feb. 7 — five days before the board actually voted publicly to focus on those three.
At the end of its regular public meeting Tuesday, the board headed into another in a long series of closed, private sessions to discuss the superintendent’s search. Such “executive sessions” are legal to discuss personnel issues, but Ohio law prohibits the board from making any decisions in private.
Baker told The Dispatch that the board was preparing to discuss in private executive session what to do after Akron Superintendent David James, the only other finalist, withdrew his name from consideration last week.
Asked if James’ exit limited the board by default to Stanford, Baker said: “Well, we’re going to talk about that this evening,” adding that the board hadn’t had time yet to review Yost’s letter.