Schools

District 197 Chalk Talk: Superintendent Search Begins, Innovation Grants Outlined

The Dec. 19 meeting of the District 197 School Board, in brief.

The West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan School Board agreed Monday night at to interview consulting firms in January to kick off the search for the next permanent superintendent.

Interim Superintendent Tom Nelson made his case in favor of using a consulting firm. "Consultants have networks, they know who’s out there, who may be looking," said Nelson.

Consultants can also take care of time-consuming research and community outreach, said Nelson, that district staff would otherwise have to do.

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Drawbacks? Consultant fees can run from $10,000-$20,000, said Nelson. He also said that the board can be as involved in the process as they choose to be, but the loss of power in the decision-making process is a risk.

Board member Pat Barnum said that the staff successfully searched to find Nelson himself, without a consultant. "What that showed me was we’re quite capable of finding one ourselves."

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The concern for Barnum is whether the board can maintain control of the process. She also said that consultants have driven up superintendent salaries in the metro.

There were also concerns that allegiances to the consulting firm could supersede allegiance to the district, referencing the move of last summer to Farmington. Haugen was contacted about that opening by the same firm that helped place him with District 197.

Board member Laurie Tostrud disagreed with that claim. She said that superintendents make their own decisions whether to leave a district or not.

  • A final report from the is not ready yet, said board member Mark Spurr. He said the turnaround time scheduled between the draft and final reports was too ambitious, and in the meantime, a "robust discussion" has provided valuable comments on the report. Board member-elect Brenda Corbett said she would have liked to have seen more —something that Spurr and board member Cristina Gillette said would have been ideal, but would have required additional recruitment time.
  • Two reports were submitted to the record in response to information requests posed by the board at previous meetings. The first documented more information about . 
  • The second report lists how $500,000 in equity and innovation grants were spent. The biggest expenditure, $175,165, was put toward wireless upgrades at Sibley. Another $101,222 is funding a new class, "iPad U," at Heritage Middle School. A grant of $50,000 designated for Garlough has yet to be approved by the superintendent—the school wants to build an outdoor classroom called a "yurt." The innovation grants has also funded a technology integration/differentiation paraprofessional at , a part-time gifted and talented/differentiation specialist at ,  a part-time "innovation coach" at and four iPad carts.
  • The Sibley administration presented information on two new schedule options and the existing seven-period day schedule. Principal Robin Percival said that 488 students are enrolled in study halls, while another 90 or so are signed up for early release or late start. That means of the 1,350 students at Sibley, about 40 percent are not signing up for seven periods of instruction. She asked that a committee of stakeholders be formed in January to evaluate options and develop a new schedule for fall of 2013. Board member David Dill said that the passage of the referendum in November has provided the district time to research changes like the high school schedule.
  • It was the of Robin Rainford, Laurie Tostrud and Cristina Gillette.


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