Kyle Hayden

The Lawrence school board on Monday voted to approve Superintendent Kyle Hayden’s transfer to the role of chief operations officer, but not before hearing calls from several community members for greater transparency.

Former school board member Leonard Ortiz was the first in a string of public commenters to address the mistrust, as he described it, generated by what he felt has been a hasty and ill-conceived process since the district announced Hayden’s then-tentative transfer 10 days ago.

It was the process — not the individual at its center, he stressed — that Ortiz found fault with. While Ortiz noted his concerns about equity and fiscal responsibility in the decision to form the COO position, which in many ways resembles that of the bond construction manager the district hired in 2013, his remarks Monday night mainly addressed the culture of “privilege and entitlement” created by what he saw as a nontransparent administrative appointment.

“Believe me, I didn’t want to be here tonight. I’m not an antagonist. I’m not a troublemaker. I’d rather be home with my family like many here tonight,” said Ortiz, who served on the school board from 2003 to 2007. “But because there continues to be a lack of trust between the community and the board, we’re here.”

“And one way for the board to be able to regain the trust of the community,” he added, “is for the board to regroup and start over by initiating this particular action item in a way that is transparent and honorable.”

School board members recognized the community’s concerns but went through with the vote to approve Hayden’s transfer to COO. Hayden, who attended the meeting as superintendent, excused himself from the room during the board’s discussion and vote.

Five out of seven board members voted in favor of the transfer, with Jessica Beeson abstaining from voting — but still voicing support of the board’s decision through a written statement — to attend her daughter’s elementary school graduation. Melissa Johnson, who joined the board just last month, abstained from voting out of concern that she hadn’t spent enough time on the board — or been given enough time since the district’s announcement earlier this month — to properly weigh such a decision.

After news broke May 12 that Hayden planned to step down from his superintendent role and take on the new role of COO starting this summer, the school board called for a special meeting five days later, on May 17, to approve the proposed transfer and contract. At that meeting, the board decided to delay the vote until Monday’s meeting to give themselves — and the public — more time to consider the matter.

Clarence Lang, a professor of African and African-American studies at the University of Kansas, thanked board members Monday for their actions in delaying the vote. It’s important, Lang noted, “to give credit where credit is due.”

While Lang said he accepts the board’s reasoning about the necessity of the COO position, he also saw the process as “cloudy,” he said, following a “pattern in decision-making that undermines the trust” of district parents and other community members.

“I think it’s reasonable for us to expect that if there’s a position to be created, that there should be an open application process and there should be some public vetting, whether that application process is internal or otherwise,” said Lang, who also belongs to the local chapter of the NAACP. “And it’s troubling that filling the position is tied to the superintendent stepping away from his current position, and I hope that you all can appreciate that the optics of this are very, very bad.”

Lang said he also viewed Hayden’s transfer as reflective of longstanding equity issues in the district, where people of color serving as teachers, administrators and other certified professionals are few and far between. Many on the school board, Lang noted, have recognized this “diversity gap in the district, but declaring someone best-qualified, as several of you did last week, for a position without a search is the very sort of thing that perpetuates that gap,” Lang said.

Ursula Minor, who serves as president of the local NAACP chapter, also urged school board members to consider internal candidates from the district’s current leadership — which includes a few administrators of color — in the search process for an interim superintendent. Minor also called for that process to be as public as possible.

Marcel Harmon, the board’s president, said the board will consider internal candidates in the process. He also said that, while interviews with candidates will take place during executive session, it’s the board’s hope that candidates will make themselves available for interviews with local news organizations. That’s a decision that will ultimately be left up to the candidates, he said, adding that the board tentatively plans to announce the candidates at least a few days before ultimately choosing an interim superintendent.

When Peter Karman’s not attending school board meetings, he’s at his day job working for the U.S. government, Karman told the board Monday night. The frequent school board participant spoke about his role in “helping to change the default stance in government from being closed to being open.” It’s a goal he hopes the Lawrence school board will work toward as it begins the process of rebuilding trust with the community, Karman said.

“I’ve seen in the last six months that the board has been very open and receptive when the public comes forward and says, ‘We’d like more information, we’d like the opportunity to provide input,'” Karman said. “My suggestion to the board would be, default to that.”

Don’t wait until the public asks to be included in the democratic process, Karman added. “Assume that we’re interested,” he said.

Karman also recommended that the board engage in an honest conversation among itself, not assigning blame on anyone, he said, but discussing what could be done differently next time. It’s a process he feels could be a “very hopeful ritual” for the board moving forward.

And school board leaders Marcel Harmon and Shannon Kimball, the board’s vice president, seemed receptive to that idea.

“I’ve been as much in support of creating the COO position and filling it with Superintendent Hayden as I was for the bond. We did a great job communicating why we needed the bond,” Harmon said of the district’s recent bond issue, which passed easily with nearly 75 percent of the vote earlier this month. “It’s obvious we didn’t do a very good job in communicating why this was equally important and really beneficial to the community and the district.”

“So, as president, I’ll shoulder the blame for that,” he added. “And I appreciate the urgings and comments about the board needing to reflect. I agree. I think this is something we will reflect on moving forward.”

As COO, Hayden will earn a salary of $150,000, taking a pay cut from his current salary of $205,000. He will start in his new position July 1, with an interim superintendent tentatively filling his superintendent role around the same time.

In other business, the board:

• Heard a report on the district’s leadership team for the 2017-2018 school year. As part of the district’s tentative restructuring, assistant superintendent Anna Stubblefield has been promoted to the role of deputy superintendent, pending board approval. Jerri Kemble, the district’s current assistant superintendent of innovation and technology, will serve in the newly created role of assistant superintendent of learning and leadership, supervising the merging of the district’s teaching and learning department with the innovation and technology department.
• Heard a report on the inaugural year of the district’s Teacher Leadership Academy for aspiring administrators. Program supervisors Stubblefield and Samrie Devin, the district’s director of human resources, reported positive outcomes for the experimental initiative. Both said they hope to continue the program next year, though plans are still being devised, Stubblefield and Devin said.