Ann Arbor school board members cancel site visits to finalists' districts after airport delays
Ann Arbor school board members who planned to travel to the three superintendent finalists' districts this week canceled their trip Monday due to travel troubles.
Trustee Glenn Nelson said he and trustee Christine Stead arrived at Detroit Metro Airport on Monday only to see their flight to Des Moines — where they would be visiting Michael Munoz's district, Des Moines Public Schools — was canceled.
After hours of attempting to find another flight to Des Moines that would be on Monday or Tuesday to fit with scheduled travel plans, the board members decided they would not be able to make the trip to Iowa.
In order to be fair to all superintendent finalists, Nelson said trustees decided to cancel scheduled trips to the Oregon Trails School District and Pennsylvania's North Allegheny School District, the districts of Shelley Redinger and Patricia Green, respectively.
“Our principle was that we would treat all candidates exactly equally, so it was either all three or none,” Nelson said. “Rather than say we can fit in two, so we won’t visit X, but we will visit Y and Z.”
Monday was the final day of storms that dumped more than 9 inches of snow on much of southeastern Michigan.
Nelson, Stead and trustee Susan Baskett were the three members of the Ann Arbor Board of Education scheduled to visit the three districts this week.
The process of hiring the next superintendent of Ann Arbor Public Schools continues next week.
Green, superintendent of North Allegheny schools, will hold her final interview with board members at 9 a.m. March 5 before a series of community forums for each candidate to answer questions from community members, which are slated to begin at 1 p.m. at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor.
The next day, Munoz, chief academic officer of Des Moines schools, and Redinger, superintendent of Oregon Trails schools, will have their final interviews with board members before trustees make the final decision on who will be the next superintendent of AAPS.
Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com.
Comments
MissEm
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 5:51 p.m.
Glacialerratic, please give the links or sources to get more information on the candidates. I've been out ot AA and am just beginning to follow the coverage. You seem to know more than the other commentors. Your sources would be very helpful
Dobsonion
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 2:19 p.m.
Hopefully, AA school board members have compared notes with retired Saline school board members regarding Superintendent interviewing. After a marvelous long-time super, there was a questionable hire and a disastrous hire (the current hire seems to be working out well). People who've been through the process and taken their lumps would have a TON of great advice to give AA school board. This is a very important process.
Carole
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 1:20 p.m.
Please post the exact amount of funds that have been expended for the hiring of the new superintendent-- this includes funds expended on the firm that was hired. I know the search is not complete, but funding to date would be most interesting -- on top of that a nice $65,000 increase for the new individual -- at least the former superintendent took a cut in salary just like everyone else.
Kyle Feldscher
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 4:21 p.m.
Carole - This is a story I plan to follow up on after the superintendent search is finished. With the search process nearly complete, I feel it would be best to wait until the process is over to get the full information.
glacialerratic
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 12:39 a.m.
Munoz was probably on another job interview anyway. He's an off-the-shelf product of the search firm hired by the Board. And Redinger's clearly driven by career ambition more than anything else. This search has not produced a single persuasive candidate. Too bad.
Townie
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 12:36 a.m.
This was a ridiculous boondoogle and never have been scheduled. What could a visit of a few hours to a district tell anyone? And I suspect we're paying some outrageous amount of money to some search firm as well. The joke is that it seems like the school board inevitably makes the wrong choice anyway after all that money is spent.
Bob Martel
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 12:26 a.m.
I had the opposite reaction. If these UNPAID volunteers (i.e., School Board Members) thought it important enough to make the trip to investigate the finalists, why not just reschedule? This is an important decision, surely it can wait another week or two?
bob
Thu, Feb 24, 2011 : 12:21 a.m.
Schools just lost at least $300 per pupil and Ann Arbor has the $$ to fly board members to check out potential superintendents? Maybe someone should define "budget cuts" to the board members.