CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board has given itself no more than one year to find a permanent superintendent to lead the district.
This comes after the board fired former superintendent Earnest Winston with a little under three years on the job.
The district will first need to find a firm that specializes in national superintendent searches.
The board previously conducted national searches, the most recent for former superintendent Clayton Wilcox – the man who held the job before Winston.
The timeline from closing applications until interviewing finalists lasted four months in 2016.
Previous National Searches
In April 2016, the CMS Board confirmed they hired McPherson & Jacobson, L.L.C. to help in the search for the next superintendent.
They need to replace former Superintendent Ann Clark's contract which ended in June 2017.
"McPherson & Jacobson, L.L.C. is a Nebraska-based firm specializing in national searches for public and non-profit organizations across the United States," CMS said in a release. "The firm will help the Board identify the top criteria for superintendent selection, recruit and screen applicants and assist for one year during the transition period."
Prior to hiring McPherson & Jacobson, the district sent out an RFI or request for information letter. Its purpose was to find the search firm to professionally assist and facilitate the search process for a new Superintendent according to the document.
The timeline to select the firm was roughly two months.
Questions for particular firms to answer include their experience with superintendent searches in the 100 largest districts in the country, the cost of a search, and how quickly the search could be conducted.
The board received multiple RFI's before settling on McPherson & Jacobson.
An article by the School Superintendents Association, listed search firm costs between $2,000 and $100,000.
The Timeline
The search for the next superintendent to lead the second-largest school district in North Carolina will be challenging.
“There are fewer superintendent responses for superintendencies because of the pandemic," Norm Ridder, a consultant for McPherson and Jacobson, a firm that conducts nationwide searches, said "But also, there's some political issues out there as well that are not very comfortable for superintendents to work, we're kind of finding that our numbers are down.”
McPherson and Jacobson have conducted searches since 1982. They've worked with districts in Las Vegas, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York. Districts sizes ranged from 28 students to 150,000.
"We are at a record pace as far as numbers of districts are serving," Ridder said. "And I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the pandemic stress that occurred over the last couple of years. And so I think it basically people are getting tired and or retiring early."
Once a firm is hired the process is typically separated into a few phases.
Engagement
The first is engagement. It includes hearing from stakeholders like community members, parents, and students.
"One district we did, or just completed now has over 700 responses online, which is a tremendous amount of responses, which means that that community is really coming out of the woodwork and wanting to be part of the search process," Ridder said.
In 2016, CMS held search community forums and released a 28-page stakeholder input report.
The firm hired for the search said it sent out 1,086 invitations for people and organizations to participate in group sessions.
They ultimately met with 43 small stakeholder groups in 48 meetings.
"The need for more and for improved communication was prevalent among all stakeholder groups," the 2016 report says. "Stakeholders perceived a lack of follow-through on decisions and a lack of transparency around decisions that has eroded confidence in the efficacy of all decisions."
It also added that stakeholders though Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools lacked leadership and system thinking for sustainability.
"With the high turnover of superintendents within the last ten years, there is a clear lack of leadership, a lack of equity among schools, and a lack of trust," the report continues. "The lack of system sustainability has led to many inequities among the schools."
These issues continue to plague the district five years later. School board members cited lack of communication, inability to execute on goals, and low-performance scores for firing former superintendent Earnest Winston.
Recruitment
The second phase of the process is recruitment.
"The recruitment phase, minimally 30 days, optimum for us is about 45," said Bill Adams, the vice president of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, a national superintendent search firm. "And anything more than 60 days probably isn't going to yield a whole lot.
HYA has done searches for districts as large as 610,000 students. They've worked with districts in Los Angeles, Seattle, Maryland, Florida, South and North Carolina.
"We've got to have a level of compensation, that's going to be competitive, it's going to have to be very competitive in this age that we're in the age of resignation, and COVID," Adams said.
In the past 10 years, CMS has paid superintendents between $262,000 and $307,000.
Candidate selection
The third phase is candidate selection. Depending on the services rendered by the school board it could include extensive background work.
Adams likened it to the due diligence work you do when buying a house before you receive the title.
"It's a criminal, civil, financial, and driving record," Adams said. "But it also includes credential verification, both the credential the individual claims to have as well as the institution or agency that issued the credential. And then a five-year media review and a social media review."
The board will conduct a number of interviews with candidates and are ultimately responsible for hiring the superintendent.
They will publicly vote for the person's contract in a school board meeting.
Transitional phase
The last phase is the process is the transitional phase where the board, with help from the firm, introduces the new superintendent to the community.
In addition, the firm will stay on for around a year to assist in this period.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.