Hiring the Headhunter

Rainy Day Recess, Episode 33 - April 15, 2025

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Intro

[00:00:02] Christie Robertson: Welcome to Rainy Day Recess, where we study and discuss Seattle Public Schools. I'm Christie Robertson.

[00:00:08] Jasmine Pulido: And I am Jasmine Pulido. And today's episode is called Hiring the Headhunter. We're talking about the April 9th school board meeting where the board reviewed proposals from executive search firms and started the process of choosing who will help them hire the next superintendent. 

Superintendent Search Timeline

[00:00:28] Christie Robertson: Before we get into the proposals themselves, let's back up and place this meeting in the timeline, because this is just one piece of a much bigger process. Superintendent Jones announced he was leaving on March 13th.

[00:00:39] Jasmine Pulido: And his last day will be September 3rd, the first day of school.

[00:00:47] Christie Robertson: That means they need to hire a new superintendent, which was last done in 2021, when Jones was hired after Denise Juneau left.

[00:00:55] Jasmine Pulido: Right, hired after being an interim. And they tried to search for someone to be permanent and ended up hiring Superintendent Jones.

[00:01:02] Christie Robertson: From my recollection, they just offered him the job. I don't think they interviewed anyone

[00:01:10] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, they didn't do a search at all.

[00:01:12] Christie Robertson: But I remember it being controversial, because he had worked for the district before, and Chandra Hamson had flagged him as potentially great superintendent material and said, “Look, let's just hire him as an interim superintendent without doing any engagement, and then we'll do engagement for the real search. And he won't apply for that real search.” And then when the time came around, they just hired him.

[00:01:30] Jasmine Pulido: Hello, this is Jasmine jumping into the script with a fact checked. So I did look up on the SPS website the previous superintendent search, and on February 28th, 2022, they posted that they had hired HYA (and HYA is Hazard, Young, Attea, and Associates) to do a search for superintendent. They did a couple community engagement sessions, and then there's an update on March 4th 2022... Ooh. So that post that they had hired HYA is February 28th, 2022. And then four days later,  they announced that they were going to pause the national search and instead negotiate a contract with Dr. Jones. 

[00:02:12] Christie Robertson: Here's Board Director Vivian Song on March 4th, 2022. This quote made possible by the awesome website SPS by the numbers created by parent Albert Wong.

[00:02:35] Vivian Song: Public schools have a level of intimacy with the public that simply does not exist in other forms of government. And it's because families are trusting with us, their most precious possessions. We do not have or require that kind of trust of other levels of our government – not our city, county, state, or federal branches. 

I spoke to an educator and a parent last night. And in her words, “maybe it's not the right person, but the public did not get the chance to know it.” 

The Seattle Public Library just announced on Wednesday that their interim chief librarian, Tom Faye is their final candidate. Their board hosted public forums for its two finalists in February. Videos for each candidate are posted on a website. We have given the public more of a view into who we trust for the care of our books than for our kids. 

Even the time accessibility of this meeting, I take issue. We are meeting when parents are dropping kids off at school, when teachers and classroom staff are working. They're not able to listen to our deliberation on the dais.

We directors are often asking our district staff what kind of community engagement was done for the board action requested. I don't believe we directors are holding ourselves to the same standard we hold our district staff to. And for all of this, I wanted to say that I am deeply sorry. Deeply, sorry.

Yet where we are now, and the decision today, is not about the process, but rather about entering contract negotiations with Dr. Brent Jones. And I just want to share that I have spent 30 hours interviewing stakeholders as part of my independent preparation for our superintendent search, separate from the work that Hazard, Young and Attea was contracted to do. And much appreciation to the mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, county and city council members, state Representative Sharon Tamiko Santos, who is the Chair of the House Education Committee, Dr. Sean Pan, chancellor of the Seattle Community Colleges, five previous school board directors, community-based organizations that work in direct partnership with our district, and, critically, central office staff, principals, educators, and parents who are generous with their time, feedback and their want for our districts, our students' success. 

And one theme has emerged for me – consistency. Building leaders, staff, and parents spoke to me about how challenging this pandemic has been for themselves and for our students. This school year, despite the intense challenges and unpredictability of the COVID-19 virus, under the leadership of Dr. Jones, we have managed to keep our kids in classrooms. In particular, they and I were impressed with his leadership during the Omicron wave, standing up public health services for tens of thousands of people in just a few days, taking quick and decisive action to keep as many students in classrooms, and the virus as much as possible out of our classrooms. To give our students the consistency and stability they need to do the learning that we want them to do. And engaging central office staff at all levels. The consistency and alignment of what our vision is for our district, our students, which is a relentless focus on student academic outcomes. 

This consistency is a direct consequence of the leadership that Dr. Jones has already brought. We're quite there on a building by building basis, but I'm really confident that under Dr. Jones' leadership we will get there. And talking to the people who have worked directly and alongside with him, managed him, worked for him, a remarkable consistency in their feedback about his character, his deep commitment to community service, his ability to listen, his ability to collaborate. People like working with him. For him. 

This is really important because a unique challenge is to have seven individuals as your boss. Yes, we should govern as a body. But we are still seven individuals with seven different lived personal and professional experiences that by design we are bringing to the dais. And we do not have a good record, plainly, for constructive relationships between previous superintendents and previous boards. I think this board has work to do, but I already think that Dr. Jones has demonstrated his ability to work constructively with THIS board. 

And so for these reasons, with my gratitude to Dr. Jones and his family and recognition of what a huge job this is, to be a superintendent, to be a leader for a district with 50,000 students, their willingness to give us two more years, I will be voting in full, full support of giving President Hersey authority to negotiate a contract. Thank you.

[00:07:22] Brandon Hersey: Okay. Thank you, Director Song-Maritz. We appreciate your perspective. That was wonderful. 

[00:07:26] Christie Robertson: Okay, back to 2025.

[00:07:33] Jasmine Pulido: All right, so the RFP timeline: The requests for proposals for a firm that would lead the superintendent search were issued on March 26th, and then those proposals were due on April 8th. We're recording on Friday, April 11th, so that was earlier this week. And then on April 9th there was a special school board meeting to evaluate those proposals, to decide which firms they would interview. 

[00:07:56] Christie Robertson: Which means directors had all of a day to do their scoring. And President Topp had them come in with the RFPs being read and scored by the directors before they got there.

[00:08:11] Jasmine Pulido: And then how did they find these proposals?

[00:08:13] Christie Robertson: There must be like some dissemination system where firms know when RFPs are put out. And the firms had to rush, because they had less than two weeks.

[00:08:21] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. I mean, I'm surprised they got five proposals. But I'm glad they did. It was such a tight timeline. The board action report outlined why it would be better to search for our firm instead of doing it in-house. One was that it's. Too big and complex for the board and or the staff to manage by themselves. It also offers structured community engagement and candidate vetting. And then lastly, board policies and WSSDA, which is the Washington State School Directors Association, guidance recommend doing so.

[00:08:56] Christie Robertson: Yeah, pretty much it's really for the structure. And they talked about this at the previous meeting. If you read the RFPs, it sounds like they go out and find the superintendents for you. But those who have the experience seem to know that's not actually the case. You find superintendents through your networks. And these firms manage the practicalities of it. So that was really helpful to me as I was looking through the RFPs to know that what I'm looking for is “what structure do we want to see provided for this search”.

[00:09:29] Jasmine Pulido: And did anything stand out to you when you looked through them? 

[00:09:33] Christie Robertson: The thing that struck me as the biggest differences had to do around community engagement. And maybe that's partially because that's what I'm interested in. That's what I think our listeners may be interested in is – drastic differences, really, in how community engagement works for the different firms.

[00:09:49] Jasmine Pulido: So should we go over the proposals and scoring?

Proposals and Scoring

[00:09:55] Christie Robertson: Yeah, let's talk about the proposals. And actually, I forgot that they had gotten eight proposals in that short amount of time. But only five of the RFPs met their minimum requirements, so the board directors only had to score five.

[00:10:09] Jasmine Pulido: Do you know what the minimum requirements were? 

[00:10:15] Christie Robertson: Oh, yeah. I remember them talking about it last time. It had something to do with, like, that they had been around at least a few years, that they had done at least a few searches, that they had some experience with big cities, stuff like that.

[00:10:22] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, okay. That seems reasonable. So the five firms they did end up reviewing were McPherson and Jacobson, HYA, which is Hazard, Young, Attea (sorry if I said that wrong) and Associates, also Rain Associates, JG Consulting and the Hawkins Company.

[00:10:44] Christie Robertson: I have absolutely no familiarity with any of those. 

It turns out that HYA – Hazard, Young, Attea, and Associates is the search firm that they started to use to look for a permanent superintendent while Superintendent Jones was the interim, and then decided to just hire Superintendent Jones. So they very briefly worked with HYA at that point, three years ago. 

Back to 2025.

[00:11:14] Jasmine Pulido: So once the proposals came in, the board scored them. And that's what they came to the meeting with. So this April 9th meeting was to go over those scores, see if they want to change them based on the conversation that they had in public together, and to talk about next steps – if they were good with moving forward with interviews with the top three firms.

[00:11:35] Christie Robertson: Yeah. Or they were allowed to just pick one firm at this meeting.

[00:11:38] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, they were? I didn't know that.

[00:11:39] Christie Robertson: So that was part of the discussion they had at the end. 

[00:11:42] Jasmine Pulido: One of the things I did notice that they mentioned at the meeting is that hiring a search firm they stated would be $100k or less. So I appreciated them giving the dollar amount of how much it would cost to now run this process in the middle of everything else that's happening.

And I just wanted to also mention that Hersey, at the very beginning of this meeting did mention that he had a relationship or association with someone in one of these firms. He was basically saying that he just wanted to be transparent. Someone he knows is in those firms, and that's not going to affect the way he scores.

[00:12:17] Brandon Hersey: I have a professional colleague that is a consultant at HYA. His name is Micah Ali. For those of you who were on the board before, Micah presented the board through CABSE, an organization that he's affiliated with, an award a few years ago. As you'll see in my responses, I want to be super clear – it did not reflect in my evaluation whatsoever. But just out of an abundance of caution wanted to make sure that I disclosed that I do have a colleague that is a part of the organization that is applying. And he was not a part of that organization when we received the award to my knowledge. So, just wanted to keep everything as above board as possible. 

[00:13:03] Christie Robertson: So they put up a big spreadsheet of all the directors’ scores for each firm. and they were scored on their approach and methodology, their track record, community engagement, their familiarity with SPS, and the timeline. And then each director filled out a pro and con sheet for each firm. And then the staff compiled the data.

[00:13:24] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and this is actually a pretty straightforward meeting. So they turned in the score sheets and then they went to break so staff could total. And then they came back from break, and they're like, “here are the totals.” And this is not including pricing. The way that they do the scoring, pricing is 20% of the score. So that part was not included yet.  

And so the initial results – I'll just name the top three: 

* HYA at 72.29 points

* Ray & Associates at 66.71

* McPherson & Jacobson at 65.43 points.

So not that big of a margin as far as scoring

[00:14:05] Christie Robertson: No, although HYA did seem to be an outlier, like, comparatively. Most of them fell in the same range. And apparently this is how they do all RFPs, is that first they do all the scoring on qualities that they're looking for, and they discuss that and they finalize it, and then they add in the pricing. And they're like not allowed to change it after that. That's why they had this big discussion about, “are we sure we are fine with these scores? Because when pricing comes in, something that we really like might get knocked out if it doesn't have a high enough score here.”

[00:14:23] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, so they did finagle a little bit their scores. Like, “oh, I'm willing to put five more points on this person just to give them a little bit of a buffer.”

[00:14:42] Michelle Sarju:  and I'd be willing to bump up mine based on this conversation, I only, they scored 77 out of 80 and I'd be willing to say, okay, add three points. 

[00:15:04] Evan Briggs: So I could bump them up. I'll give him five more points in the engaging community and system stakeholders category. So I'll give him a 15. 

[00:15:16] Jasmine Pulido: And also, one thing worth mentioning here is that director Rankin was not at this meeting. And so whatever comments or influence director Rankin might've contributed to that conversation were not there. 

[00:15:23] Christie Robertson: Her scores were there though.

[00:15:24] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. Her scores were there, but she couldn't change...

[00:15:31] Christie Robertson: They had scores from all the directors, but she couldn't change anything. 

And also it was quite a short meeting. 

[00:15:35] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. So anything else you want to say about pricing?

[00:15:42] Christie Robertson: Let's see. They took a break to add the pricing scores in. And when they came back, pretty much the top three stayed the top three. So no surprises, nothing got bumped.

[00:15:52] Jasmine Pulido: Mm-hmm. But I think, so, HYA was in the top definitively initially. And then afterwards, I think McPherson and Jacobson was top. 

[00:15:59] Kurt Buttleman: I'm going to ask contracting specialist Greg Barber to read the results.

[00:16:07] Greg Barber: Okay. The results for RFP 032503 – Superintendent Search – after the price analysis is: 

* ranked one McPherson Jacobson at 84.311 points 

* HYA was ranked second with 83.277 points. 

* Ray and Associates was ranked third with 83.217 points. 

* JG Consulting was ranked fourth with 81.077 points, and 

* Hawkins was ranked fifth with 79.984 points.

[00:16:37] Christie Robertson: Yeah, so I think HYA was the most expensive, and so it got bumped to second, even though it was quite a bit on top at the beginning. As I said, what I'm most paying attention to here is the community engagement part. I have really only seen one hiring process in SPS, and that was Superintendent Jones'.

Superintendent Searches in Other Districts

[00:17:01] Christie Robertson: I was curious about how it worked in other districts. So I watched some finalist interviews in other districts. And they did go through a process with Jones, I think, where they, like, put out a, “what do you want to see in a superintendent?” And Jazz, it kind of reminded me of the Well-Resourced Schools community engagement, where... It's like when you're thinking really abstractly like that, you're going to always end up with the same, like, “I want a superintendent who's organized. And a good boss. And engages well with the community.” Like, just generic stuff.

I feel like it's going to be really important to actually have community meet the finalists. Because comparing people is different than comparing your ideas of what you want from a superintendent. Kind of like those abstract Well-Resourced Schools conversations versus “what about actually closing this specific school?” 

[00:17:55] Jasmine Pulido: Are you saying something like a presidential debate, but between superintendent candidates, something like that? 

[00:18:00] Christie Robertson: Yeah. not a debate necessarily. But what I've seen done in other districts is a single finalist will come and meet with community and answer a few questions. Just so they can get to know that finalist a little bit. And then a few days later, maybe another finalist will come. And then community might fill out a scoring of their own.

[00:18:20] Jasmine Pulido: Interesting. We used to watch a lot of, like, cooking competition shows. And they'd have this, like, competition where the community has a meal by some chef. And they get a, like, 50% of the voting. And then of course there's still the panel of experts, and they have 50% vote. But the community gets a pretty big buy-in into what happens.

[00:18:40] Christie Robertson: I think it would be very helpful if the superintendent gibes well with our diverse communities.

[00:18:52] Jasmine Pulido: So you want someone who's charismatic?

[00:18:54] Christie Robertson: I think charisma can be a helpful feature in a superintendent. It's like a CEO position, right? It's like, it's a relationship. You're actually not doing that much of the practical work of the district. You are a figurehead in some degree. And it can be helpful if people like you. 

[00:19:15] Jasmine Pulido: You're a big relationship builder for sure. I do think it's an important quality in order to make sure community is brought along. Along with communication. They could be charismatic and not communicate to the community. But being a person who communicates often and is charismatic in building those relationships within the community. Yeah, I agree with you there.

[00:19:37] Christie Robertson: Yeah, and I'm not trying to say in contrast to Superintendent Jones at all, but I think there's also a degree to which it's a sales position. Tying into what you're saying that you are trying to run initiatives and those initiatives need to be sold to the community and the many communities that comprise our district – teachers, principals, union, legislators... You might be doing the exact same initiatives, but if they can be presented in a way that people can get on board, that makes things go a lot better. And some of that is just personality and can't be conveyed by predefining “What do I want to see in a superintendent?” And then having the board take that rubric and have the board rate the superintendent on that. 

So. Going into the specific proposals, I was surprised that many of them did not have a ton of information about community engagement. And many of them didn't really have a finalist stage engagement involved. 

Including McPherson, which is the one that is now the top when you factor in price. There's no finalist stage engagement built into that proposal. It says, “we could do that if you want,” but their like structure doesn't just have that built in. Whereas HYA has, like, a whole rating system – a QR coded finalist feedback thing for community that I feel like would be very welcomed by Seattle.

[00:20:23] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, but if we ask the community, like, “do you want to pay extra for this?” though?

[00:20:27] Christie Robertson: I have already heard from a couple people that are like, “the most expensive one is the one that everyone preferred.” But to me, is this the place to skimp? This is going to be the leader of our whole district. HYA did have the highest price – $120,000.

[00:20:44] Jasmine Pulido: So it's over $100k.

[00:20:46] Christie Robertson: It is over a $100k. Maybe they're going to negotiate price? A couple of the directors, their biggest concern was the timeline of HYA. So they were like, “can we negotiate about the timeline?” And the answer was “you have to judge these RFPs as they are, and if you do interviews you can ask about that.”

[00:21:03] Jasmine Pulido: You have to negotiate in interviews. 

[00:21:06] Christie Robertson: But an extra $20k for hopefully a superintendent that’s going to be around at least three or four years and is going to be in charge of a multi-billion dollar budget? Might not be the place to skimp.

[00:21:19] Jasmine Pulido: As far as return on an investment for $20k, yeah, I think that would be there, assuming that they can deliver a superintendent that's going to stick around for a while. I also see here that the Hawkins company who came in fifth actually led Seattle's last superintendent search.

[00:21:36] Christie Robertson: Oh, ok! 

[00:21:37] Jasmine Pulido: Mm-hmm. And had the lowest cost.

[00:21:40] Christie Robertson: Yeah. 

[00:21:41] Jasmine Pulido: HYA also said that they vet candidates for closing opportunity gaps, which I thought was really interesting.

[00:21:45] Christie Robertson: And I believe the top two both had some kind of a guarantee. If something happens within the first year, they'll help you find another one at just cost.

[00:21:55] Jasmine Pulido: Wow, that's quite a guarantee.

School Board Director Discussion 

[00:21:57] Christie Robertson: I think HYA was a number of the directors’ top choice. They also seemed fine with McPherson. And there wasn't a lot of discussion about the community engagement aspect. So I hope they think about that a little bit more. But one thing I was very happy about was – they had the opportunity to just pick one. Like, they could have just said well, McPherson's on top after price, so let's just pick McPherson. Or they could interview the top three search firms. And it was unanimous that everybody wanted to do interviews. So I think that's good that they're taking the time to do that extra vetting.

[00:22:35] Jasmine Pulido: I also thought it was good that they were really keeping an eye on student outcomes and how much the firms that were applying were focusing on student success. I also think it's great that we do have some district staff that are going to be part of this, 

 Yes, Buttleman introduced three staff people. I was kind of surprised it was that many. but then he like got the name wrong of one of them and he said that a couple of them were new. 

[00:23:05] Christie Robertson: that doesn't mean they don't have experience, but the team itself appears to be. Quickly 

[00:23:11] Jasmine Pulido: Hmm.

[00:23:12] Christie Robertson: together, 

[00:23:13] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's true. I actually forgot about that part.

[00:23:16] Christie Robertson: maybe we can play that.

[00:23:17] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. 

[00:23:19] Dr. Kurt Buttleman: I'll just briefly introduce the staff who are here with me. All three are relatively new to the district, so this is a, a learning moment for all of us and for you, having never done this before, with uh, superintendent hiring process. So as president Top said, I'm Kurt m an assistant superintendent for finance, and it's my pleasure to introduce Nick Iona, who's our procurement manager. I think the board met him at a meeting a week or two ago when this process began. To Nick's left is Greg Brady. Greg Barber.

He is been with the district since July of last year and has done a lot of work in tough circumstances. He is been the lone contracting services person for a long time until he was joined by Mel, my Mya Eldridge who joined us also in January. So we brought all three of these professionals today just to have some continuity throughout the process in case one or some of us. Can't be here throughout the entire process. 

[00:24:10] Jasmine Pulido: 

[00:24:10] Christie Robertson: And as we said before, two board directors were here for the last search. Brandon Hersey and Liza Rankin, and the rest of them, as far as I know, have not participated in something like this.  

Okay. Let's talk about what's next.

Next Steps in the Superintendent Search

[00:24:23] Jasmine Pulido: the board has now narrowed it down to three firms, and so they're going to schedule interviews for April 18th for McPherson and Jacobson, HYA and 

 Ray and Associates each interview is going to be about 45 minutes. And the board members are going to submit questions ahead of time. So that deadline is April 14th, which is falling conveniently on spring break.

[00:24:48] Christie Robertson: That's right,

[00:24:48] Jasmine Pulido: So thanks to our board directors for working on spring break, 

[00:24:51] Christie Robertson: the deadline for the questions is Monday and then their interviews are Friday. so they have to show up for a three hour meeting on friday of spring break.

[00:25:00] Jasmine Pulido: And then there's a two part decision day that's going to be April 23rd. What day is that?

[00:25:06] Christie Robertson: It is the regular school board meeting day Wednesday.

[00:25:10] Jasmine Pulido: So they're going to be making a decision in less than two weeks. They're going to finalize scoring and select a firm in the afternoon of April 23rd, and then that evening at the regular board meeting, they're going to vote to amend the board action report with the chosen firm

[00:25:27] Christie Robertson: Kudos to president Top who has just dialed this in.

 wrangling it in for sure. 

And to all the board directors, as you said, and staff who will be there working over spring break to get this done so that we can have from April until sometime mid to late summer to find a superintendent.

[00:25:46] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and I'm hoping this they'll do more community engagement 

[00:25:50] Christie Robertson: A hundred percent. 

Let us know what you think is important in the superintendent search. What do you think about the money issue? Have you seen other superintendents searches and what were they like? Email us@helloatrainydayrecess.org.

[00:26:06] Jasmine Pulido: enjoy your spring break and we'll see you at the other side of that having rested ourselves, hopefully.

[00:26:13] Christie Robertson: Yes.

Outro

[00:26:14] Christie Robertson: You can find our show notes at our website, www.rainydayrecess.Org, or you can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. 

we are a listener supported podcast. You can donate to us on our Patreon rainy day recess. 

[00:26:29] Jasmine Pulido: Special thanks to Lester Mayo and Manzana Movement for our music. I'm Jasmine Pulido 

[00:26:34] Christie Robertson: I'm Christie Robertson. stay curious, stay cozy and join us next time for Rainy Day Recess.