Most of MSCS board commits to complete superintendent search
Process would be a first for the merged district
Most Memphis-shelby County Schools board members are committed to seeing the superintendent search to the end, they told The Commercial Appeal, which would mark the first time the merged district has ever selected a leader through such a process.
In the decade since the historically large and brief merger of the Memphis city and Shelby County school districts, the two superintendents, Dorsey Hopson and Joris Ray, have been appointed to the leadership role, both times elevated from current positions within the district’s top cabinet.
Community calls for a search process came with district tumult last summer, with critics of the school district calling for a full search as a referendum on the selection and tenure of former superintendent Ray who exited his position amid an unfinished investigation into his three years at the helm. The board abandoned a national search in spring 2019 in favor of Ray, who was the interim superintendent at the time.
Depending on whom is asked, the steps the board has taken in the wake to select a superintendent have moved either too fast or too slow, been completely transparent or lacking in detail. The criticism is expected: Most agree the decision of a new MSCS leader is the most important choice the school board makes.
Input from surveys of students, staff, parents and other community members has underscored an overwhelming desire for trust with the process and the new superintendent: Integrity, transparency and ethics have topped the charts for qualifying characteristics.
Seeing the process through “gives the public the opportunity to see that we are looking for the best candidate for the job,” MSCS board member Michelle Mckissack told The CA. “I haven’t wavered from that since we began our search.”
Mckissack was among seven of the district’s nine board members who responded to Commercial Appeal inquiries about commitments to completing the search. Each of the seven, including board chair Althea Greene, support finishing it. (Board members Stephanie Love and Sheleah Harris did not reply.)
The board also appears poised to meet its timeline on the selection, which would have a new leader installed in time for the new school year, plus some time over the summer to get acquainted with the role. Formal recruitment is occurring for the next month under nationally recognized search firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates. Applications for the position, which opened this week, close at the end of March. Finalist interviews are scheduled for April.
“We are going to devote full time to making sure you have ... a slate of exceptional talent, and one who will be the perfect fit for the long haul. I hear your frustration about past issues and churn and leadership,” Max Mcgee, who is leading the Memphis search for HYA, recently told a group tasked with advising board members on the search.
HYA will whittle the applicants to a slate of four to eight “semi-finalists” to present to the board, he said. The board will move from there to interview a selection of finalists, though the body has not yet said how many finalists there will be.
Several advisory committee members push for transparency as community resoundingly supports superintendent with “integrity”
Board members have made various pledges toward a complete search since August, when the position was vacant. The board placed Toni Williams, the district’s chief financial officer, in the interim slot. Both Williams and Greene, now the board’s chair, said at the time that Williams had no interest in the role. Since, Williams has stopped taking that hard line and has been an active leader. Greene has said in response to community support of Williams’ interim tenure that Williams is able to apply.
Local Memphis candidates are expected to volley for the position, and Mcgee has said the role preliminary garnered interest from three applicants in other states. He expects about 20 qualified applicants to respond to a job opening at this time of year, and some 12 to 15 of them will be interviewed.
In general, most finalists are from the state or the region, Mcgee said. But anywhere between 20% and 40% of the candidates are likely to be from outside of Memphis, he said, based on information from other searches.
HYA used feedback from a set of surveys and community input sessions organized by KQ Communications to develop a job description for the role. The board retained the local communications group — which also provided communications throughout the board’s ultimately incomplete investigation of Ray — to organize communications surrounding the search.
Some 5,000 responses were used to inform KQ’S report, from surveys to community forums. In addition to a desire for a leader with “integrity,” survey results showed respondents care about a leader with education experience, and, though not as heavily mentioned, someone who can be business-minded about the district, which is a top employer.
The surveys did not ask questions with specificity to the district, but sought more general input about the type of person who should be superintendent. The community forums were similarly open-ended, often generating general frustrations with MSCS by attendees.
Some members of an ad-hoc advisory committee were fixtures at the meetings, which otherwise had generally low attendance. The committee has met three times, once in an introductory meetings and once monthly so far in hour-long meetings in 2023.
So far, the committee has served mainly to ask questions and offer criticisms of board actions about the search rather than to actively shape the decisions. Its first discussion meeting, where members offered commentary on a search firm, happened the day after the district evaluated each of the four firms. Records show that on the 4-point scale, HYA scored two hundredths of a point above Ray and Associates, another long-tenured search firm.
“We don’t necessarily...do processes like this very often. Where that search firm can offer expertise, maybe even a sample of what they’ve done before that we could work off of,” Gisela Guerrero, an organizer with the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope (MICAH), said during the January meeting. “It’s hard to, at least for me, to grab out of the air what I want this...process to look like.”
By the February meeting, HYA’S Mcgee was offering explanations of the firm’s processes, asking the committee to submit recommendations for the firm to consider as it searches for the next superintendent.
Some of the most vocal and publicly present members of the committee have been, like Guerrero at MICAH, part of organizations that have been critical of the district’s search decisions, and interested in seeing a complete search process. Both Memphis Education Fund and the Memphis Lift called for a full search in 2019, and have representatives on the committee asking the same this year.
Sarah Carpenter of Memphis Lift helmed another committee to inform her input as a committee member. Often over dinners at the Memphis Lift offices, the parent-advocacy committee convened to discuss what they wanted to see, delivering earlier in February a position statement that also included process requests: Public interviews with finalists and a commitment to understanding through interviews and even travel how finalists worked with the communities they are from.
Venita Doggett with the Memphis Education Fund has encouraged the board to hold finalist interviews publicly, an option the board “may” allow, according to policy. Most board members who responded to The Commercial Appeal readily supported making the interviews with finalists public.
“I recognize that this search is one of the most important decisions that this board will undertake as it will set the trajectory for the district for the next several years. That is a weighty responsibility. It is imperative that we get this right and we ensure that the community, parents, students and teachers have access and voice in this selection,” Doggett said during public comment at a recent board meeting, calling for adherence to the policy.
“...We can’t afford to lose any more time, any more years — we’re 10 years past the merger and demerger — to unfocused, chaotic and unsure leadership,” Doggett continued.
Greene, the board chair, said in a press release from KQ that the board will hold public interviews of candidates in April, and the community will have a chance to submit questions.
Reach Laura Testino at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-5123763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino.