Secondly, you criticize Dr. McGaughey for announcing her departure several months in advance as an opportunity to reward “loyalists with appointment to key staff positions to enhance the legacy of the soon to be dearly departed.” Nonsense! Dr. McGaughey took the responsible route of informing the School Board about her departure so that it has the opportunity to seek out worthy candidates in time to replace her.
In case you are not familiar with how school districts operate, I should inform you that this time of year is when many administrators (and teachers) are seeking out potential new employment opportunities. Had Dr. McGaughey simply given “two weeks” notice, potential candidates for the job would be hard to find.
Not only that, but the Board would be faced with having to hire its new superintendent without the opportunity to thoroughly review a larger pool of potential candidates. One could make the argument that, if Dr. McGaughey wanted to reward an in-house candidate, she should have waited until the last possible moment to announce her departure, thereby leaving the Board with only inside candidates available to fill the position.
Finally, you write: “Dr. McGaughey came directly to the Superintendent’s chair from a principal’s position…” That is simply false.
Dr. McGaughey served as Culver City High School Principal from 1990-1995. She then served as Director of Educational Services for the Charter Oak Unified School District (’95-’96) and as Assistant Superintendent, Educational Services, for the Culver City Unified School District (’96-’97) before being hired as Superintendent in 1997.
Your mischaracterizations and factual inaccuracies in this story should be corrected.
Geoff Maleman
Mr. Maleman is in charge of public relations for the School District.
Ari’s Response: If the Mexican border were as strenuously defended as the ladies and gentlemen of the School District, not one sneaky illegal alien would enter this country. Mr. Maleman, the No. 1 P.R. maven in Southern California, has greatly enhanced the rusty image of the School District since returning to his public relations chair a few months ago.
But I digress.
Let us not tarry with trivia. We shall turn our hymnals, instead, to matters that may be trivial but are far more tantalizing.
Given the occasional intemperate impulses of this — shall we say unorthodox — School Board, it would not be “rampant speculation” to suggest even a resident of a Tallahassee cemetery may be a candidate for the Super’s old shoes, much less a key member of the Super’s staff.
Having exclusively reported Dr. McGaughey’s unanticipated retirement on Thursday of last week and her Letter to the Community on Friday, the logical followup task was to determine prime candidates to be her successors.
The first two words of last Monday’s speculative story were that “Early speculation” centers on Patty Jaffe as Dr. McGaughey’s successor.
If you call it “rampant speculation,” Mr. Maleman, that merely suggests we serve two different masters. I was reporting on the leading choice as identified by several sources within the School District.
Your second point, that the Board likely will seek applicants from within the District and without, was acknowledged in the ninth paragraph.
Regarding Point Three, whether Dr. McGaughey should leave immediately or in four months, the story relayed concerns by parents and others that departing executives should go as soon as possible. That will diminish the opportunities during this soft period to confront the temptation of feathering a legacy.
You, Mr. Maleman, may say that it was responsible of Dr. McGaughey to announce her retirement one hundred and twenty days early to give the School Board time to scour the bushes of America for a worthy replacement.
Admirably charitable on its face, may I suggest an alternative motive? If I worked for a School Board that knocked on my door nearly every afternoon — as this one does — inexplicably offering to enrich my contract, apparently because I am a cool Super, I, too, would hang around until my eyebrows grew crusty.
Let us not become weepy-eyed and melancholy about this subject.
On the very evening of Dr. McGaughey’s discreet retirement announcement last week — away from public view, the way these chaps love it — there was a dispute over her latest salary cookie.
The argument was over whether Dr. McGaughey’s contract — in one of its earlier mutations — called for 2.5 percent longevity raises for the years ’04 and ’06. Her claim prevailed as I understand it usually does.
My question: How did that disputed oversight from ’04 suddenly come to attention five minutes before the Super’s retirement announcement?
Doesn’t sound to me as if the School District is under airtight control.
Or is the School Board’s motto for Dr. McGaughey, “You want it? You’ve got it.”?
If I were the Super, I would buy a jumbo-sized bottle of Truth Serum. My tax man never would believe I had received that many salary enhancements in one year.
Next point: I may be wrong, but in the most arcane, lightly furnished corner of my psyche, I doubt that the Good Ship School District would have dissembled and sunk to the ocean floor, overnight, if Dr. McGaughey had immediately surrendered her firm grip on the wheel.
At no time during the second half of Dr. McGaughey’s reign have I been aware of her imprint on policy or philosophy. On the grounds of peer pressure, a Super probably is required. Everybody else has one. How would it look if Culver City didn’t?
I am troubled because leadership opportunities — central to a Superintendent’s job — continually have passed this District by.
Where was Dr. McGaughey thirteen months ago at the time of the health insurance flap for three members of the School Board?
While the School Board took a step back and stroked its chin reflectively before stepping forward and stroking its chin reflectively, the Superintendent was invisible. Again. It may not be in Dr. McGaughey’s nature to be assertive. It should, however, be high in the job description.
Where was Dr. McGaughey last October when racial tensions were boiling in Culver City? The School District groped for an appropriate answer to three hundred and thirty-seven Ladera Heights students who were petitioning to transfer into the District. The Super was MIA.
This delicate political and social crisis, liberally salted with racial suspicions, cried, begged for leadership. No one was home.
If Dr. McGaughey departed before lunch, I gravely doubt that the School Board would behave less deliberately in the hiring process.
Finally, I was dead wrong, as you point out, in saying that Dr. McGaughey came to her present job directly from a principalship. No excuse. But that route does not seem to have worked.