Shades of Barbara Erwin: Another Search Firm fails the Vet Test

This story sounds familiar - yet not. The Cincinnati school board apparently listened to a lowly citizen instead of trusting their search firm and avoided a big headache.

This from the Enquirer:

Schools yank contract
Consultant overlooked candidate's settlement

Cincinnati's school board voted Monday night to halt its contract with the search firm that has been helping it find a new superintendent.

It did not appear the board would keep the firm on board.

The $40,000 contract is being "suspended" for performance issues, according to the resolution the board passed unanimously.

"We really believed in the process we're using; we're just disappointed in the lack of
information we received from the firm," board President Eve Bolton said.

The firm, Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, has been advising the board and a citizen committee since the end of March.

The Glenview, Ill., search firm recently developed a pool of 29 applicants for the job. The firm presented nine recommended candidates to a citizens' advisory committee, which then scored them and recommended five, based on written application materials.

The firm agreed with their list.

Within hours, a tipster Googled the five names and discovered that Earl Watkins, superintendent of Jackson, Miss., public schools, had been sued by an employee for sexual harassment and the district had paid $805,000 to settle the suit.

Several board members expressed frustration with the search firm, which they said was supposed to have vetted the applicants...

That reminds me. Whatever happened to Barbara Erwin? Quiet retirement in Arizona?

Apparently not.

I heard from a long-time trusted source out of Illinois this week that Babs took her resume to Indiana and is now the Executive Director of the Indiana Public School/ University Partnership at IU.

Anybody else wonder what her resume looks like now?

As long as she's back at Indiana, maybe she can explain to the folks at her alma mater how she got her Indiana teaching certificate before she graduated IU. The Indiana Department of Education's Professional Standards Division couldn't figure it out.