Superintendent Deborah Flores is setting a high bar for Gilroy
High School’s next principal and already has a
”
excellent
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pool of candidates to choose from.
Superintendent Deborah Flores is setting a high bar for Gilroy High School’s next principal and already has a “excellent” pool of candidates to choose from.
Thirty candidates applied to fill current GHS Principal James Maxwell’s shoes when he moves north to Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, Flores said. Instead of assembling a large panel of stakeholders to interview the applicants, Flores is bucking a tired tradition and streamlining the interview process at the behest of trustees, trustees said.
At a recent board meeting, trustees agreed that assembling a large interview panel is not conducive to effective and efficient hires. Having sat on numerous panels as a parent, trustee Rhoda Bress said she thought the panel made the interviews “flawed.”
“People who are needed to make the right choices are the people who really understand what it takes to be a principal,” Bress said.
Flores said the panel began as a small core of stakeholders that swelled to a group of almost 20 people. Many of the people added to the list came to the superintendent as requests. The list Flores presented to trustees included teachers, principals, representatives from the district’s various bargaining groups and a student, among others.
“Once you open the door, how do you say no?” Flores said.
But trustees were firm on their decision to leave Flores in charge.
“We’re holding you accountable, not this panel,” trustee Tom Bundros said to Flores. “It seems to be part of the DNA of the education community – whenever you do something you need to include everyone. That doesn’t happen in the private sector.”
Flores chose to scale back the panel to two teachers, a principal and a couple other members, including herself. But first, she will narrow the pool of about 30 applicants down to 10 candidates, she said.
Flores is looking for a number of qualities, including three to five years prior experience as a high school principal, several years teaching high school and “someone who can continue the great things that have happened at Gilroy High over the last four to five years,” she said. Flores said she won’t rule out applicants with experience as a high school assistant principal so long as their experience covers all aspects of running a high school – including curriculum, discipline, special education, counseling and athletics.
Being bilingual, being technologically savvy and having great ideas about how to increase student achievement and the rate of students going to four-year colleges – a statistic Flores said is lagging in Gilroy when compared to the county and state average – are “major plus,” she said.
The initial round of interviews will take place next week, followed by a second round of interviews within a day or two, Flores said. Flores, a trustee and likely Basha Millhollen – assistant superintendent of educational services – will conduct these interviews. From there, Flores hopes to select a couple candidates for site visits if time permits – the end of the school year is fast approaching for most high schools. On site visits, Flores will speak with a range of the candidates’ colleagues, whether they were included as references or not.
Concerned with the fast turnaround on the hiring process, trustee Fred Tovar said he “didn’t want to hire somebody just to hire somebody.”
“We won’t recommend anyone we don’t think is top-notch,” Flores replied.
Trustee Javier Aguirre asked if hiring an interim principal would put less pressure on the process, but Flores advised against it. Eliminating the large interview panel allows the district to move faster and thus extend the deadline for applications, she said.
The position was posted April 24 and was extended from the original deadline of May 21 to 4 p.m. today.
That GHS recently was named a California Distinguished School makes the position all the more attractive, Flores said. And although the economy may play a part in why the district has received so many applications for many of its vacancies – more than 100 candidates applied for the Christopher High School assistant principal position the district recently gave to Patricia Jolly – Flores said many of the applicants are currently employed.
Although panel members sign a confidentiality agreement and Flores was equally tight-lipped, she said that most of the applicants are from outside the district.
The district will run a background check with fingerprinting and reference checks, Flores said. Not only has she contacted the candidates’ listed references, she has in some cases asked for references from candidates’ superintendents if not satisfied with what they provided.
As one of the people who originally volunteered to sit on the interview panel, Gilroy Teachers Association President Michelle Nelson said she’s been “fooled” in the past when serving on hiring panels. Although she didn’t name names, she cited a specific example when one hire nailed the interview but a five minute conversation with Nelson afterward prompted her to think, “Oh my goodness, what have we done?” she said. She offered her services to “dig a bit as needed.”
Although Flores said she would have preferred for Maxwell to stay at GHS, she looks at this task as “exciting, but a bit of an anxiety-producing experience.”
“It’s such an important decision, I want to make sure we make the right one,” she said. “But it’s a challenge I enjoy.”
With a new principal at GHS and Christopher High School opening in the fall, “it’s an exciting new era in Gilroy,” she said.
