Meeks: Superintendent must hit ground running

Originally printed April 24, 2010.

The third and final candidate for superintendent of the Iowa City School District -- Brad Meeks, superintendent of Farmington, Minn., schools -- brought the conversation back to the concepts of "trust" Thursday.

Answering a question about why his district's administration has such a good working relationship with the teachers' union, Meeks explained that "the big thing is trust." When Meeks arrived in Farmington back in 2003, there was a hostile relationship between the union and several previous administrators. The contract negotiations, Meeks said, were done with administration and union representatives in different rooms, and the emotions tended to run high on both sides.

After hiring a new human resources officer, Meeks said he worked on improving the relationship so that the negotiations could be done in the same room. And after he had enough "trust" in his administrative staff -- and they had earned the "trust" of the union leadership -- he could be confident that negotiations would go on respectfully and efficiently.

Meeks has been a somewhat controversial figure in Farmington. Back in 2005, the Farmington school district and city had a dispute about the location of a new high school. The district found a location on the north end of the district, but the city wanted a location closer to the center of town to attract business. A lawsuit eventually was filed and went to mediation in 2006, which resulted in the school being built in the originally proposed location.

(On Thursday, Meeks said that the issue has been dealt with, relations with the city have improved over the past few years and the community has moved on.)

Meeks was the only superintendent who brought up how his district had managed to have three schools improve their test scores enough to be removed from the Schools in Need of Assistance list. In answer what steps were taken to accomplish this feat, Meeks praised the quality of his staff and said that the district pumped more resources into the schools, added K-12 math specialists and increased the number of times that students were tested so that the educators could know which areas needed to be improved.

When answering, Meeks didn't always offer the most polished responses. Yet he was comfortable about being silent for a few seconds to consider his answer. And while there were a few times when he continued talking past when he actually had something to say, for the most part he seemed to be providing a thoughtful answer based on his experience in the 6,400-student Farmington district.

After the board exhausted its questions, Meeks asked a very practical question of his own: What do you want a superintendent to accomplish in the first six months?

The answers from the board members highlighted how difficult a transition it is going to be to go from Lane Plugge to any new superintendent. After all, Plugge has served as superintendent for 11 years -- a longer tenure than anyone on the board. Plugge has become the institutional memory for the board.

Thus it was made clear Thursday that the board really needs a new superintendent who can hit the ground running. One who -- after a short period of getting to know the personalities and problems of the district -- will offer practical steps toward solutions.

The school board is scheduled to discuss the new superintendent in a closed session at 6 p.m. Sunday in the Central Administration Office. Meeks' interview -- along with the interviews of the two other finalists, Steve Murley and Mark Bezek -- will broadcast all weekend on ICCSD Cable Channel 21.

Press-Citizen Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 887-5435.

Murley: Clarifying the roles of boards, superintendents

Originally printed April 23, 2010.

If Steve Murley gets hired as the new superintendent of the Iowa City School District, he'll get a lot of fresh data for his dissertation research: Exploring how and why superintendents get evaluated by a lay board while every other educator in the public school system gets evaluated by educators.

"That's an awkward role for both (the board and the superintendent)," Murley said during Wednesday's public interview with the Iowa City School Board.

Murley, who hopes to finish his studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison in December, said his research suggests that school board members address this awkward role by focusing more on the areas in which they have some level of expertise. And as a result, superintendents tend to get evaluated -- whether during hiring decisions or during reviews -- more for their role as an operational leader rather than their role as an educational leader.

As the superintendent of the Wausau (Wis.) School District, Murley saw those two leadership roles -- operational and educational -- collide last year when the executive committee of the Wausau Education Association held a "no confidence" vote in his leadership during the bargaining process. Murley explained Wednesday that cutbacks from state funding -- as well as changes in the state's terms of compensation and caps on district revenue -- led to a perfect storm in which Murley asked for salary freezes, retirements and extra work from all the district's bargaining units.

The tension surely wasn't helped by Murley having spent years as the HR director for the district before becoming superintendent. Because Murley had been the one who handled grievances and established work schedules and rules, he knew how to use the contract effectively -- some union folks may even say deviously -- and the issue was resolved with the teachers agreeing to lower than normal raises along with some retirements.

On Wednesday, Murley said that, once the contract issue was settled, the reconciliation process was able to begin. He has held regular joint leadership meetings with the administration team, the board and the union to "have some very difficult discussions" that are allowing the district to "move forward."

Throughout the interview, Murley emphasized the need for clarifying roles -- after all, in the absence of clear responsibilities, people will just do "whatever they think is right" -- as well as the need to build relationships by putting angry parties in the same room together and working through issues.

But more important than any single answer was the fact that Murley answered all the board's questions both substantially and succinctly. Board members seemed to be scrambling to ask additional questions after their list was exhausted. There even was time for Murley to ask board members to state their vision for what the district would be like in 10 or 15 years. (And the interview still managed to conclude about 15 minutes earlier than scheduled!)

In that short time, Murley showed he knows how important it is to develop communication systems during times of calm to clarify people's roles during times of crisis.

He knows that sometimes, when you are hearing from one section of the community, you have a hard time hearing all the voices from other sections of the community.

And he knows how important it is to move slowly with major changes so that enough people -- especially district employees -- can be involved on the front end of the discussions. (He has learned that, when seeking out employees' input, it's important to make sure it's about issues that are actually "meaningful to them.")

Despite the many operational and educational successes Murley touted Wednesday, the Wausau area still is very different community from the Iowa City area. Murley oversees 8,500 students, 1,200 employees and a $112 million budget. In contrast, outgoing superintendent Lane Plugge oversees about 11,900 students, about 1,600 employees and a roughly $120 million budget.

Whether or not the Iowa City School Board decides Murley is the right fit for the job here -- as opposed to Brad Meeks, who interviewed Thursday, or Mark Bezek, who interviewed Tuesday -- it will be interesting how Murley describes this particular interview process in his dissertation.

Press-Citizen Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.

Bezek: Searching for 'faith, trust and transparency'

Originally printed April 22, 2010.

Some of the people who keep track of such things tell me that Mark Bezek hit all the right notes Tuesday when it came to addressing the types of educational research and management literature that school district superintendents are supposed to keep track of. With all that listing of 20 management pillars, with all that explanation of what it means to be a "change agent," the current superintendent of Elk River, Minn., Schools managed to show that, in his words, "I know enough to be dangerous in a lot of things."

But if Bezek did hit all the right notes, it was sometimes hard to follow the melody. He had his motifs of "faith, trust and transparency" and his counter melodies about "letting good people do their job," but he never established a strong chord structure as he improvised responses to such questions as:

• What are your strengths? (Assembling a team of good people and building relationships with them so that, when brainstorming with senior staff, "I want to be the dumbest one there.")

• What are your weaknesses? (Bezek said he would face a learning curve to understand the ins and outs of Iowa school finance and would be looking to administrative staff to help him get up to speed.)

• How have you handled both uninvolved and rogue school board members? (Because superintendents can't "discipline" board members, Bezek works through the local board leadership and encourages board members to take advantage of professional development that "teaches them what their roles are." After all, "you can't have happy campers without happy counselors.")

• Give some examples of how you have communicated well with the public? (Since Bezek has implemented and improved a communication department in Elk River, he said the community now "loves the communication from the district.")

• How have you implemented new programs? (Bezek went back to his time in Fergus Falls, Minn., to talk about how he implemented an alternative education program and how he worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a magnet school program at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center.

• How do you measure the success? ("We're data freaks. We don't just collect data. We use data in a ... very personal manner.")

• How do you prepare a board for politically sensitive issues? (By giving hard data and explaining how the issue relates to best practices or to the best of what's happening in other communities.)

• How do you address achievement gaps and growing racial, ethnic and socio-economic diversity? (Elk River, while otherwise "mirroring" Iowa City, has not experienced those changes to the same degree yet. But they are preparing for such changes by implementing cultural competency curriculum and by realizing they need to address new families through direct outreach efforts.)

Although Bezek's answers might have included all the buzzwords on people's various check lists, Tuesday's interview still matters less than checking the extent to which Bezek's words actually match up to what he accomplished from 2001 to 2006 as superintendent of Fergus Falls Public Schools and since 2006 in Elk River. And that double checking is all the more important because Bezek responded to many of the Iowa City-focused questions by acknowledging, "I haven't studied your district enough to be able to answer that."

Bezek's answers also highlight the learning curve each of the three finalists will face because the school board couldn't find one single finalist who actually works in Iowa and understands the idiosyncrasies of Iowa school finance.

The school board met Wednesday with the second finalist, Steve Murley, superintendent of the Wausau, Wis., School District. And the public interview for the final finalist -- Brad Meeks, superintendent of Farmington, Minn., School District -- will begin at 6:15 p.m. today.

Press-Citizen Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.