The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board is preparing to interview a half-dozen applicants for superintendent, after an Illinois search firm narrowed the field of 37 applicants.
“We’ll be giving you what we think is the cream of the crop,” Debra Hill, of BWP and Associates, told the board’s search committee Tuesday. (She is not related to CMS Interim Superintendent Crystal Hill.)
Hill said the board will get its first look at information about “five to seven” candidates on April 17, and start doing Zoom interviews with them soon afterward. A Tuesday night session with three BWP consultants and a 38-page interview prep document provided by the firm provided the clearest look so far at a process that has proven problematic for CMS over the years.
By May, the board hopes to have a contract with an experienced superintendent who will provide long-term stability after a 12-year stretch when no superintendent made it to the three-year mark.
This search puts the early selection work into the hands of the search firm, which has already reviewed applications and done preliminary interviews with 10 people. And board members have signed confidentiality agreements that include keeping tight control of documents that identify applicants.
On Tuesday, CMS board Vice Chair Stephanie Sneed pressed the consultants for details of the process so far.
“So let me ask you a question, Dr. Hill — I’ve said that probably 10 times,” Sneed said wryly, as others on the committee chuckled.Narrowing the field
Hill said 37 candidates completed applications by the March 30 deadline. She said the promise of confidentiality helped entice “a super-strong pool.”
Her colleague, Kevin Castner, agreed.
“This is the strongest pool I’ve ever been involved with. I have great confidence that we’re going to create a hard decision for you,” he said.
Hill, Castner and Percy Mack checked information in the applications against a leadership profile developed by the board after extensive community engagement. They chose 10 for interviews, Hill said.
After those interviews, she said, the three agreed on about seven to present to the CMS board. “We now have to go back to them and say, ‘Are you still interested in this position?’ before we submit the slate to you,” she said.
Before the April 17 meeting, Hill said the consultants will check references — “both recommendations that they listed in their application, as well as contacting people that we know who work with them to get the real skinny on whether they’re as genuine as they say they are.”First round of interviews
On April 17 the full board will get a one-page summary of each candidate on the slate and decide how many of them to interview. The board will agree on a set of questions for each candidate and do the first round of interviews by Zoom.
For years, CMS traditionally brought a handful of finalists to meet the public, but that stopped after the 2012 search, as national trends moved toward confidentiality.
“Although media, staff, and some members of the community may be curious about the candidates and the reaction of individual Board Members to them, we strongly urge confidential interactions from Board members in all matters relating to candidates. Breach of confidentiality can place the District and Board Members in jeopardy,” the preparation report says. “Be guarded with your comments to others and keep all of your notes and the candidate’s confidential files where only Board Members will have access to them. We will also identify those records that can be made available to the public without violation of privacy regulations.”
During Tuesday’s session Hill emphasized that “pillow talk,” conversations with friends or back-channel queries about candidates “can come back to bite you.” She told them about a board member who called people to ask about an applicant “and that got out.”
“Ultimately the candidate was advised not to even consider the district because they were not a minority and would not be considered,” Hill said. “And that opened the board up for a legal suit in terms of racial discrimination.”Choosing finalists
After the first round, the CMS board will select up to three finalists, who will come to Charlotte for in-person interviews. Hill said if the board then wants to check references, the search firm will provide guidance on how to do that.
She advised strongly against sending anyone to visit the districts of external candidates.
“While this was a popular practice in the past, it has been pretty much eliminated in present day searches,” the prep report says. It says visits are expensive, risk premature disclosure that someone has applied and “may not necessarily provide a true picture of the operations of the district since this can be a ‘staged’ event.”
BWP also advised against any kind of “public comparison of candidates.” The report notes that it will be up to the CMS board to decide whether there will be “additional community involvement with the semi-finalist or finalist candidate.” But it says inviting staff or the public to weigh in on multiple candidates “will always create dissension. People will never unanimously agree and the final candidate will always be considered a compromise Superintendent.”
The firm recommends disclosing who has been hired only after that person has signed a contract. “A prepared news release should be provided simultaneously to the media in your community and the new Superintendent’s community.”
A history of stumbles
Over the years, CMS has tried a range of approaches to hiring superintendents — and hit snags with all of them.
In 2012, Heath Morrison was among three finalists who met the public. He was superintendent in Reno, Nevada, and had been named national superintendent of the year. His energy, charisma and knowledge of CMS stood out, and Morrison got off to a strong start in Charlotte.
But he was forced out two and a half years later amid accusations that he had lied to the board about school construction costs and mistreated an employee in his office. And PROACT, the firm that recruited Morrison, became mired in controversy, partly over concerns that it was promoting candidates who had paid the company for training.
After his departure, board members explored hiring a replacement without a search. But some wanted Deputy Superintendent Ann Clark, while others hoped to recruit Maurice “Mo” Green, a former CMS deputy superintendent who was leading Guilford County Schools. Green ended up taking another job, and the board signed Clark to a short-term contract while launching a national search.
That search led to the 2017 hiring of Clayton Wilcox, superintendent of a small district in Maryland. The public didn’t meet him until after the news conference announcing his selection, which he didn’t attend. Wilcox soon faced questions about his management style and his business decisions. He resigned after two years — with an agreement that neither he nor the board would discuss the reason.
In 2019, the board promoted district ombudsman Earnest Winston, who had no education degrees, had never been a principal and was supervising 26 people in CMS. The state had to grant permission to appoint him without the traditional qualifications.
The board fired Winston a year ago.
Hill told the board one thing was clear from community input: This time around people want a leader who has experience in a high-level position in a large district with a record of getting academic results.
