Why Not the Best by Norman Todd

Blogger Comment: This is a long post but well worth reading.

I talked to three of the state legislators who met with
Sonia Diaz on Wednesday morning and then contacted the
Public Education Department. The state legislators have
told me: (1) whoa! calm down! don't get so excited! (2)
Their intent was not to choose sides or support Sonia Diaz,
it was simply to urge everyone to calm down, cool off, and
take some time before making any irrevocable decisions or
taking any strong actions, such as filing a lawsuit (Sonia had
hired an attorney, Larry White, by the time of her meeting
with state legislators on Wednesday morning). (3) Their
main concern is stability and continuity in the district. (4)
They are also concerned about the fallout from terminating
Sonia Diaz's contract -- a possible lawsuit and expenses of
litigating, negotiating and buying out the remainder of her
contract; the delay and uncertainty of having an interim
superintendent, going through the search process, and then
hiring another new superintendent; the fact that "good"
candidates for superintendent would be reluctant to apply
for the job and/or come here if the job was offered to them,
so we would most likely wind up with a "second rate"
superintendent.

Here are my thoughts --

(1) I'm relatively calm now.
(2) The legislators' intentions may have been good, but
they really inflamed the situation. Sonia Diaz saw their
actions as support for her reinstatement and no doubt that
strengthened her position and her resolve. People like me
saw them meeting alone with Sonia Diaz, making the
statements they did ("we can't afford to lose her") and also
assumed the legislators supported her reinstatement. The
school board members resented the legislators' attitude and
their intrusion into the board's business. So, despite all
good intentions, the legislators' meeting didn't have the
effect of calming anyone down or making anyone behave
more rationally or dispassionately. Maybe a lesson for
the future?
(3) I'm also concerned about stability and continuity in
the district. But whereas the legislators are concerned
about stability in one position -- the superintendent -- I'm
concerned with stability and continuity in hundreds of
positions, all over the district. I've had dozens of conversations
with parents, teachers, principals and staff from schools all
over town; with people who work in the central office; and
with people in the community who don't have kids in the
schools but who are interested in what's going on. I am
absolutely certain that reinstatement of Sonia Diaz would
cause major upheaval all over the district and it would cause
dozens and dozens of employees to quit, retire, or leave.
People just don't trust her and don't want to work with her,
and if she comes back many of them -- those who can --
will leave. That is instability and a "revolving door" on a
HUGE scale -- not just instability in one superintendent's
position. I'm much more concerned about keeping the
people who run the schools, teach the kids, and operate
the district than I am in keeping one employee.
(4) When you make a mistake, the best thing to do is to
realize it, admit it, and do what you can to correct it. That's
often embarrassing and costly. Hiring Sonia Diaz was a
mistake and it may cost us something to correct it. But the
cost of denial, of "staying the course" regardless of the
consequences, of sticking with a bad choice for the sake
of "stability" are enormous, long-term, and may be almost
impossible to reverse. (Legislators -- can you spell "IRAQ"?)
But I'm not convinced that the district is liable to Sonia Diaz.
I think she breached her contract repeatedly -- one example
is September 13 ("tornado day") when she arbitrarily and
unjustifiably abandoned her duties and went off "on a frolic
of her own" to garage her Mercedes. If a teacher had left
a classroom full of kids that afternoon to run home and
shut the windows, would the teacher still have a job?
Absolutely not -- and Sonia Diaz abandoned a whole
district full of students, not just one classroom. There are
numerous other instances of conduct that may rise to the
level of breach of contract on her part. And I also think that
most bullies don't really relish a fight; if we let her know that
we will not settle and we are determined to fight any lawsuit
to the final appeal, maybe she'll pack up and go.

Which brings us to replacing her.

First of all, before we do anything else, we need to start
believing in ourselves, in our kids and our schools, in our
teachers, principals and staff. What kind of superintendent
will we get if we start with the attitude that "oh, we're a poor town
with failing schools and an incompetent school board and
underachieving students and principals who don't work
and teachers who don't teach and a bloated bureaucracy
in the central office and parents who don't care and . . ."
How about this attitude instead -- we're a proud community
of diverse cultures and incredible strengths, a community
that supports its schools and values education for all
students, a place that is growing, that passes school bonds,
that tries hard to make its schools work -- that we know we
have lots of challenges but as a community we are completely
united in the belief that education matters, that we can and will do
better for our kids, that we will do whatever it takes to raise
expectations and performance, and that this is OUR TIME
to take the next step and move up into the next tier of schools
and student achievement. What superintendent wants to
share our dream, work hard with us, help us meet our challenges
and be a part of the success that we will achieve? Aren't
we more likely to get a good superintendent if we say,
"WHY NOT THE BEST FOR OUR KIDS?" than if we hang
our heads and say "we'll settle for whatever we can get."

Second, we need a better search process for a new
superintendent. We need a process that's more in tune
with our community and more responsive to our wishes
and needs. In my opinion, we would get better results
if we formed a local committee to conduct the search --
people like Garrey Carruthers, Delano Lewis, Patsy Duran,
Michael Martin, Karen Bailey, Ed Boykin, Emma Jean
Cervantes, J. Paul Taylor -- advertise locally, regionally,
and perhaps nationally in one or two publications, and
then have our local search committee look for the strongest
candidates among those who apply. When we used a
national search firm we abdicated control of the process --
they "recruited" and chose the candidates we would pick
from -- and the candidates were their clients, people they
were trying to sell all over the country. None of them had
any special affinity for Las Cruces or any burning desire
to belong to our community and address our challenges.
The result was that we hired Sonia Diaz, an unknown,
based on the search firm's background check and their
recommendations. In my opinion, never again!

Third, I think we need to have different expectations of
both a superintendent and the school board. From
both of them we should expect more leadership and less
management. The school board meets too much,
involves itself in too many things, tries to micromanage
the district, and suffers from impatience and constantly
shifting priorities and expectations. If the board wants to
meet every week then at least one of their meetings
every month should be at a school, out in the community,
so they can be accessible to parents and teachers, see
what's actually going on in the schools, and get a better
understanding of this entire district. Both the board and
the superintendent should get out in the schools and the
community and start exercising leadership. Leadership
in my opinion would involve listening, watching, asking
questions, expressing support, defining goals, recognizing
challenges, accepting occasional failure, analyzing what
works and what doesn't work, helping create better
processes, sharing what works, celebrating success.
In the past the board and the superintendent both seemed
to think that they could issue an order or a directive and
that would change the situation. But if it were just a matter
of sitting in the central office and issuing the right commands,
we wouldn't be where we are today. Education isn't that easy.
It's too complex to respond to a simple directive -- "Teach
literacy." "Teach numeracy." Education is an art and a
science and a unique calling, and we need a board and a
superintendent who want to involve themselves in growing
that process. There aren't a lot of simple, easy, direct,
short-term things that will really improve learning. It's a
long-term, constant thing. It's like data-driven instruction:
we need to set clear, measurable, attainable goals, monitor
progress, share what works, analyze and improve what doesn't
work -- and do it over and over and over until it becomes a
constant process. It's hard work and it's messy and it
takes patience and determination and lots of support
from the community. But it can be done.

We need to stop wringing our hands, being upset, talking
about each other, and expecting the worst. We need to
fix this mistake and then make sure our future decisions
are better -- much better.

We need healing in our district; we need to respect one
another; we need a big dose of truth and reconciliation;
we need people who aren't afraid to fail and are eager to
succeed; we need a joyous, expansive style of leadership
that sets high expectations, believes in our ability to meet
those expectations, shares success and failure, that keeps
setting the bar higher and then helps students and teachers
and parents and principals reach that new height. We need
some patience and resolve. We need to know that there's
no magic bullet and no magic superintendent; that lots of
things work, we need to pick what will work for us and then
stick to it. We need to believe in the best for ourselves,
our kids and our community, and stop settling for anything
less.

We can do this! We just need to get started.