With the new school year three days old and Labor Day in the wings, School Board member Scott Zeidman says the latest plan is to begin interviews directly after Christmas in the quest for a new Superintendent for the School District.
In continuing to block out the calendar, that means Patty Jaffe will retain the Interim Superintendency until at least Valentine’s Day, unless she is the Chosen One.
Resuming a theme he introduced here two days ago, Mr. Zeidman said that “because Patty is so good at her job, we don’t have to rush out and hire the first available candidate.”
Meeting for the first time yesterday afternoon with the hired headhunting company The Cosca Group, Mr. Zeidman said the five Board members were handed “a very fluid timeline, so we know what we will be doing the next three or four months. But the timeline is so fluid, it isn’t worth the paper it is written on.”
In the spirit of populism that lately has swept up the City Council, the Board agreed that hiring a successor to Dr. Myrna Rivera Cote will be a communal family project. You have an opinion, they want to hear from you.
Determined to wring its money’s worth from the open-ended $20,000 contract with Cosca, a Bay Area company, the Board gave CEO Frank Cosca a list of about two dozen community groups from whom his people are to solicit prospective profiles of the next Super. Seeking to acquaint the headhunter with Culver City, said Mr. Zeidman, “we identified the strengths of our District, the concerns we have, and 20 different potential qualities we want in our new superintendent.”
One of those would be not leaving, practically overnight, in the School Board’s opinion, when Board members weren’t anticipating such an upheaval.
The Cosca Group will report back next month with its advertising campaign for Board approval. The 35-person company is comprised mostly of former superintendents. That could be important, Mr. Zeidman said, “because it means they know many of the persons who will be applying.”
