University of Louisville Releases Financial Auditor’s Review Following Court Settlement

This from WFPL:

The University of Louisville on Monday released a financial auditor’s review that had been kept out of the public’s eye for more than a year, the result of a court settlement with the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.

The February 2014 assessment, prompted by a series of high-profile thefts and embezzlement, found a system that had been susceptible to fraud and inappropriate disbursements, among other shortcomings.

“Because the circumstances that allowed the frauds to occur have not substantially changed, we believe the University is still at risk for future fraudulent activity,” the report notes.

The analysis from Louisville-based auditing firm Strothman and Co. offers a detailed, qualitative look at financial oversight issues and includes a series of recommendations, nearly all of which the school later adopted.
 

After public records requests were rebuffed, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting in December filed a civil suit in Jefferson Circuit Court seeking the release of Strothman’s 17-page analysis.
The news organization sought a declaration that the university willfully withheld records related to the consultant’s examination of the school’s financial management. U of L claimed the documents were a preliminary draft and not a final report.

As part of a settlement of the lawsuit, the university agreed to release the initial report provided to the school by the auditing firm. The case was dismissed Monday by Judge Olu Stevens...You can see the report here.

U of L spokesman Mark Hebert released the following statement:

“Settling the lawsuit at this juncture is the prudent course of action for the University. The litigation was becoming costly, protracted and a burden on university personnel. While we believe the attorney general’s opinion (14-ORD-181) supports our position that the document in question is a draft and not subject to public disclosure, we respect the media’s right to differ. While we believe settling this issue is in the best interests of all involved, it should not be construed as precedent for the University’s obligations under the Kentucky Open Records Act.”

“We are committed to improving our financial controls and accountability. We are following an aggressive timetable for implementing the recommendations from Strothman. Many of their recommendations are already in place and we plan to have all others implemented by the end of the year,” the statement read.

The Strothman assessment became the basis for a more broad university “consulting report” released in July that highlighted changes the university was undertaking or planning to take. That document provided an overview but did not cite details on particular findings.

Among its many recommendations, Strothman said U of L should hire a chief financial officer, add a layer of review in the Finance Office, standardize security across its computer system, and improve controls over the payroll system.

The school has paid Strothman more than $160,000 for its work and has previously authorized an additional $100,000 for the firm to help implement the recommendations.

As part of its examination, Strothman tried to determine how many bank accounts existed in the name of University of Louisville, University of Louisville Physicians or any derivative. The firm requested information from all banks in a 50-mile radius. The university provided a list of 11 authorized accounts at PNC Bank, as well as one account in the name of the University of Louisville Athletic Association.

The firm ultimately found more than 20 additional bank accounts linked in some manner to U of L. They include accounts for the German Club, the U of L Sports Administration Club, U of L Parking, and more.

Strothman also learned of several accounts linked to University Medical Associates, the previous incarnation of University of Louisville Physicians. However, Fifth Third Bank told Strothman that they were unaware of any accounts in the name of the university.

The auditing firm later found additional accounts linked to previous entities tied to University of Louisville Physicians, according to the report.

Strothman determined the banking account matter needed follow-up.

For all the bank accounts, “management should ensure that follow-up procedures be performed to determine that these accounts are not being used for fraudulent or inappropriate purposes,” the report noted.

The consultants wrote: “As an example, someone who wished to steal receipts from University of Louisville Athletics could set up a bank account in the name of ULA, LLC and make deposits into that account if they were able to physically divert the check.”

The firm repeatedly called for increased oversight and accountability.

In making a case for creating a CFO position, the auditing company noted that U of L doesn’t always “compel corrective action” when deficiencies are identified.” And improvements “recommended by the University’s internal auditors and others often do not get implemented on a timely basis.

University controls and policies are often applied inconsistently or not at all. It was unclear to us who had primary responsibility for this area.”

U of L later hired Harlan Sands, who earlier this year stepped into the combined role of chief financial officer and chief operations officer.

A handful of other findings stand out. Strothman found that a manager requesting a disbursement in at least one department is the same person to approve the disbursement.

The consultants also sought more oversight in the hiring of temporary and student employees. There’s potential a manager “would be in a position to add a fictitious employee to the payroll system.”

The February 2014 Strothman analysis was presented to U of L trustees in the board’s April 2014 meeting. Trustees were given 30 to 40 minutes to review the draft report, but couldn’t keep copies, according to board member Steve Wilson. At the time, school spokesman Mark Hebert said the company was still working on the document.

The university released its own broad “consulting report” in July. Officials had agreed with nearly all of the firm’s recommendations, though details on the firm’s findings were sparse. School leaders noted that many of the changes were already underway. Read that report here.

Getting It Right and Getting It Wrong on the “Real Costs” of Higher Education

This from the Academe Blog (April 6):

In the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, Paul F. Campos has offered his opinion on “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much.” [The whole piece is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0]

Campos argues that attributing the rise in tuition costs to reductions in state funding is a fairy tale that administrators have been telling to cover up the tremendous increases in administrative positions, administrative compensation, and administrative support staff that have been the major drivers of increased costs.

He has gotten it half-wrong and half-right–if one is feeling very generous toward him..

Campos asserts: “In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.”

He provides no sources for these numbers, but using 1960 as a baseline is very problematic for several reasons: (1) none of the baby boomers had yet entered college; (2) to accommodate the baby boomers in the 1960s and 1970s, every institution is the country dramatically increased the size of its facilities and its faculty, many new institutions were established, and the public community college system was dramatically expanded; (3) to keep college affordable, very inclusive federal grant programs, such as the Basic Educational Opportunity Grants (BEOG), were established. All of these things dramatically increased the expenditures on higher education. If the G.I. Bill opened college to many veterans, the expectation in the 1960s had become that anyone who wanted to attend college would be able to afford to do so. In a very real sense, using 1960 as a baseline for tracking increases in spending on higher education is comparable to using 1935 as a baseline for tracking increases in defense spending.

Moreover, Campos’ assertion that defense spending is 1.8 times higher now than in 1960 is very dubious. In July 2013, Time magazine ran a series on the real cost of Defense, and the second article in that series explored how the calculations that the Department of Defense commonly uses to understate the increases in Defense spending are markedly different from the calculations used to track every other area of government spending and every other type of economic activity. The full article is available at: http://nation.time.com/2013/07/16/correcting-the-pentagons-distorted-budget-history/ It includes this chart, with the black line showing the increase since 1945 measured in current dollars:

In addition, it must be noted that since the terrorist attacks on 9-11-2001, the budget of the Department of Defense has not included either the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the costs associated with Homeland Security. In any case, the Defense Budget in the 1960s accounted for 50%-60% of all federal spending; so if that is the baseline, Defense spending started at a much, much higher level than federal spending on higher education, and so comparing the degree to which the two amounts have increased as a percentage is almost inevitably going to be very, very misleading.

Campos’ article also includes these paragraphs: “Some of this increased spending in education has been driven by a sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college. While the college-age population has not increased since the tail end of the baby boom, the percentage of the population enrolled in college has risen significantly, especially in the last 20 years. Enrollment in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs has increased by almost 50 percent since 1995. As a consequence, while state legislative appropriations for higher education have risen much faster than inflation, total state appropriations per student are somewhat lower than they were at their peak in 1990. (Appropriations per student are much higher now than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when tuition was a small fraction of what it is today.)

“As the baby boomers reached college age, state appropriations to higher education skyrocketed, increasing more than fourfold in today’s dollars, from $11.1 billion in 1960 to $48.2 billion in 1975. By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.”

Campos’ choice of 1980 is a very interesting one here because, in most states, 1980 was actually the high-water mark in terms of the percentage of the costs at public colleges and universities that were covered by state subsidies. The Carter-Reagan recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Bush recession of the early 1990s, the Bush recession of the early 2000s, and the Great Recession of 2008, each accelerated what were otherwise steady declines in state spending on higher education as a percentage of the total cost. It is very widely documented and simply unarguable that the increase in costs being borne by students has been the inverse in the decline in support being provided by the states.

Moreover, state support for higher education has been declining even as the demand for higher education, by percentage of the population—and, in particular, by percentage of the traditional college-age population—has been increasing. In the early 1980s, the reductions in state support may not have been in real revenues but, instead, in the sizes of the increases that the institutions had requested, but since the early 1990s and certainly since the 2008 recession, the cuts have been in real dollars. To cite just a very salient example, Bobby Jindal has been cutting state support for higher education year in and year out since he was elected. Because of very ill-conceived state tax cuts, higher education may have to absorb $300-$400 million of the projected $1.4 billion budget shortfall that the state is currently facing. If some miraculous fix is not found, those cuts will have a devastating impact of public colleges and universities in the state. That situation simply has nothing to do with how the institutions are spending available revenues.

Indeed, Campos shifts from citing percentage increases to citing changes in raw dollar totals when doing so suits his argument—and that sort of selective and inconsistent number-crunching undermines the credibility of his analysis: “State appropriations reached a record inflation-adjusted high of $86.6 billion in 2009. They declined as a consequence of the Great Recession, but have since risen to $81 billion. And these totals do not include the enormous expansion of the federal Pell Grant program, which has grown, in today’s dollars, to $34.3 billion per year from $10.3 billion in 2000.”

But that brings us to what Campos does get right. He rightly emphasizes that any increases in spending on higher education have not gone to faculty compensation or even to an increase in full-time faculty, despite the steady increases in enrollment: “Interestingly, increased spending has not been going into the pockets of the typical professor. Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970.”

He then notes the dramatic increase in allocations for administrative positions, administrative compensation, and administrative support staff:

“By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

“Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.

“The rapid increase in college enrollment can be defended by intellectually respectable arguments. Even the explosion in administrative personnel is, at least in theory, defensible. On the other hand, there are no valid arguments to support the recent trend toward seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university administrators, unless one considers evidence-free assertions about “the market” to be intellectually rigorous.”

Even though he lays out many of the relevant elements, what Campos doesn’t really get at is that, regardless of who is footing the bill, the “real cost” of higher education–that is, expenditures per student–has not risen much since 1970. But what have changed dramatically are the percentages of the institutional revenues that are being allocated to administration and to instruction. The rise in the exploitation of both part-time and full-time contingent faculty is directly related to the transfer of allocations from tenure-track faculty lines to administrative budget lines.

At most public universities, less than a quarter of all spending is now devoted to faculty salaries and benefits and less than half of all spending is devoted to everything that might be even remotely construed as instructional support.

Several years ago, in another post, I commented wryly on our administrations being preoccupied with planning for our institutions’ post-educational futures. I realize now, even more than I did then, that I may have been laughing into the abyss.

Future of KDE technology system in question

This from Kentucky Teacher:

When it works correctly, the Continuous Instructional Improvement Technology System is a powerful tool to help Kentucky public school teachers become highly effective and improve learning in their classrooms.

But parts of the system, particularly the section that teachers use for the Professional Growth and Effectiveness System (PGES), weren’t working right earlier this school year, said Maritta Horne, CIITS manager for the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Knowledge, Information and Data Services.

“It wasn’t performing correctly or like we thought it should,” Horne said.

So KDE officials and Pearson Education reworked the section of the software called the Educator Development Suite (EDS), where teachers enter much of their documentation for PGES.

“It couldn’t just be the flip of a switch,” she said, “it was taking the EDS tool back into development and fixing it over the months, little by little.”

The result: consistency, stability and functionality.

“Now I feel really good about where the program is,” Horne said.

Now KDE officials want to know, should the state continue to provide CIITS as tool for teachers, schools and districts? Or should districts create and fund their own systems?

Commissioner Terry Holliday has been asking his advisory groups, steering committees and superintendents if they believe all or part of the CIITS system should be discontinued after the current school year.

So far the response has been mixed, David Cook, KDE’s director of innovation.

“There may be parts of it they would rather have as options,” he said, “and parts that if the state dropped wouldn’t hurt their feelings.”

Most users don’t realize that CIITS is really made up of several different components, Horne said.

“Even though it’s all called CIITS there are different pieces of CIITS that they are using, there are pieces that have functioned properly and have not been an issue,” she said. “And the pieces that were an issue, we’ve done our due diligence to get those addressed.”

The Instructional Management System (IMS) allows teachers to create lesson plans, find lesson plans, align lessons to the Kentucky Core Academic Standards and administer assessments.

Teachers can incorporate more than 100,000 third-party resources from KET, PBS, Discovery Education, Thinkfinity and others into their lesson plans, she said. They can create lesson plans in the system or simply upload a tried-and-true lesson plan and align it to the standards.

About 60 percent of districts have added their curriculum with lesson plans in the system and many districts have posted their units for all teachers to use. Data shows that 66 percent of teachers have created and published lesson plans in the system leading to 500,000 lesson plans in CIITS.

“We’ve seen a lot of work in particular districts such as Campbell County, Pulaski County, Fayette County and Jefferson County is doing quite a bit as well,” Horne said.

Recently, Literacy Design Collaborative modules and core tools have been added, she said. Another improvement is a student workspace which will allow students to upload their work for their classes.  KDE is conducting a pilot using student workspace with Art and Music classes across the state.

CIITS

For more information about CIITS usage including reports and maps showing teacher, principal district usage of each component click here.

Another popular tool in the system is the ability to create and give assessments, both formative assessments and districtwide common assessments. Across the state an average of 69 percent of teachers have used the tool to create more than 300,000 assessments.

“It can be as a simple as five pre-lesson questions to see where students are on a particular standard,” Horne said.

Another powerful tool is the school and district data section.

“It’s every single piece of data you can think about for a student,” Horne said, adding that the data can only be accessed by teachers and school administrators.

The system also has year-by-year data, so that teachers can go back and see their students’ progress.

“It’s phenomenal, what it does,” she said. “It’s amazing.”

Schools and districts can run reports to help them determine where students are lacking understanding and where instruction might need improvement.

But while teachers, schools and districts have had success with the IMS component, they have faced frustration with the EDS component, Horne said.

“The biggest headache across the state has been the Educator Development Suite,” she said. “But with the instructional management piece, it’s a very stable product. We have had very few issues at all.”

The problems with EDS came to light as teachers tried to use it to submit their sources of evidence for PGES. The program wasn’t consistent, Horne said. In one section it would auto save, in another it wouldn’t. In one section a session would time out, in another it wouldn’t.

For more than four months KDE officials met daily with Pearson officials, Horne said. Once the issues were corrected, KDE officials decided not to accept any more updates to the system for the next year, she said.

“We don’t want to mess it up,” Horne said. “What we’re hearing from the field is ‘we just want it to work.”

In addition, the Kentucky Board of Education voted to change a state regulation to allow teachers to use a method other than ES to submit that information, she said.

The new effectiveness system was part of the reason CIITS was created in 2011. The impetus for the system started with Senate Bill 1 (2009) and Kentucky’s 2010 Race to the Top application. The state was seeking to align assessments with the new standards, use data to support educators, implement a new teacher effectiveness system and provide support for the lowest performing schools.

“CIITS was the central connection point all four of those key areas,” KDE Chief of Staff Tommy Floyd told superintendents during the April 30 Superintendents’ Webcast.

Since it was created, CIITS had surpassed all of its usage goals, he added.

Data shows that every month 45,000 teachers and 3,500 administrators log into the system, Horne said. But when they do, they aren’t using all of the system.

A professional development component called Edivate, previously called PD 360, is not frequently used. Over the last two year, only 9 percent of users accessed that tool, which includes training videos showing best practices, she said.

KDE spends $4 million a year on the Edivate component alone.

“The part that’s costing us the most money is the one people aren’t using,” Cook said.

The total cost of CIITS, including Edivate, IMS, EDS and ASSIST, which is another program districts and schools use to submit improvement plans, was $7.9 million for fiscal year 2013-14. That money comes from a mix of federal and state funds.

“If the state is not providing these resources, the costs would primarily fall to the districts,” Floyd told superintendents. Districts would not receive state funding to implement new systems.

If CIITS were to be discontinued, districts would still have to submit all of the data that CIITS collects for PGES and would still have to teach and assess the Kentucky academic standards without IMS system’s help, Floyd said.

While superintendents were given the survey about whether to continue CIITS, Floyd encouraged them to get input from principals, teachers and technology coordinators.

A decision about the whether to continue the CIITS system is expected by May 30.

Fayette schools hire Lexington search firm to find superintendent

This from the Herald-Leader:

The Fayette County Public Schools board voted Saturday to partner with McNamara Search Associates of Lexington to vet 30 superintendent candidates.

Last Sunday, school board members voted to terminate their contract with the Illinois-based company PROACT Search after concerns were raised about PROACT's CEO. About 30 candidates had applied to PROACT before the board decided to terminate that contract.

Lynda McNamara, president of McNamara Search Associates in Lexington, in a speaker phone interview with board members, said she would research the backgrounds of those candidates.
"I dig until I'm 100 percent satisfied that I would personally hire this person," she told board members.

The school board hopes by July to find a replacement for Tom Shelton, who resigned in December. Marlene Helm is serving in the interim.

Board members are concerned that if they don't hire a new superintendent before fall 2015, the search could be delayed another school year because superintendents don't usually leave their current jobs in the middle of a school year.

The board has not yet negotiated an exact amount for the McNamara contract. Board chairman John Price said the amount would be less than $20,000. After three hours of deliberation Saturday, board members authorized attorney Robert L. Chenoweth to negotiate the terms of an agreement.
The school board is under a $22,000 contract to PROACT Search until May 18. Last week, district officials said about $9,000 of the contract had been paid.

In a letter to the board, McNamara said she had conducted national and international searches and locally had been involved in the search for the president of the Lexington Chamber of Commerce and the Chief Operating Officer of the United Way of the Bluegrass, the President and CEO of the Kentucky Association of Realtors and the President and CEO of the Lexington Medical Society.

The other four search firms under consideration included Iowa-based Ray and Associates, Connecticut-based Avon Educational Search Consultants, Mississippi-based Logan Development Group and Chicago-based School Exec Connect.

Price said board members thought that McNamara would be able to "provide the most timely service" and that she was connected to the community.

Although the board gave unanimous approval to the McNamara partnership, board member Doug Barnett expressed concerns that McNamara did not have more experience with school superintendent searches.

Price said the board already has the superintendent candidates in hand and just needs help with background searches.

"We specialize in the process of search," McNamara told the Herald-Leader. She said she regularly conducts searches in fields where she has not done work before.

Price said based on the board members' interview with McNamara, he thought she would do a thorough job of vetting candidates. McNamara said she would work with the district's superintendent screening committee of school officials and community members that will give a recommendation to the board.

School board member Daryl Love told McNamara that it was important that she understood the different views of people from all over the district.

"I have a reputation for being transparent and credible, very open minded, and very much aware of our diverse community," McNamara said.

Price has said board members had concerns about allegations against PROACT's CEO Gary Solomon that came to light in an article in the Chicago Sun-Times. The article said that about 15 years ago, Solomon was accused of making racial slurs and sending inappropriate emails to a female student in an Illinois school district where he taught.

Dennis Culloton, a spokesman for PROACT, told the Herald-Leader on Monday that "no law enforcement authority of any kind ever substantiated any misconduct.

"Mr. Solomon apologizes and deeply regrets his statements of many years ago and stands by the outstanding work that PROACT has provided to this Board of Education and others," Culloton said.

The Sun-Times also previously reported that Solomon's principal-training company is under federal criminal scrutiny for a deal with Chicago Public Schools. PROACT Search had recently applied to help find Kentucky's next education commissioner, but the Kentucky Board of Education did not select the firm last week.

The Fayette school board expects to get information on the candidates that applied through PROACT no later than May 18.

Price said after determining if they have a quality candidate pool, board members would decide whether they want to advertise for more applicants.

Board members expressed some hesitation about launching a new search for applicants given the timeline. Love said he thought that McNamara was aware of the timeline, but would not sacrifice the integrity of the search process.

Meanwhile, school board members postponed discussing the redistricting committee's proposal to redraw attendance zones in Fayette County, although the topic had been on Saturday's meeting agenda.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/05/09/3843422/search-firms-lining-up-to-help.html#storylink=cpy

KBE Commissioner's Search, Full Steam Ahead

I guess we now know why the KBE quickly changed its deliberations regarding a search firm to open session. There was only one remaining candidate.

What began to look like Kentucky's most open process ever, quickly changed, and seems to have turned into a secret selection process. What Greenwood & Associates describe as a code of ethics, might also be called a gag order against sharing information on the finalists with the public.

One man's confidentiality is another man's secrecy.

The last time KBE conducted a secret search was in 2007, when KBE was a trying to replace Gene Wilhoit, and a single finalist was named to the post. Veteran educators will recall what a mess that created.

Let's hope that KBE plans to announce three (or so) finalists and just forgot to mention it, or that perhaps that tid bit didn't make it into the news story. But this situation bears watching.

This from KSBA:

A Florida company familiar with high profile executive job searches in the Commonwealth will work with the Kentucky Board of Education on its task of replacing Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. With that selection Thursday afternoon in Louisville, the formal process to find Holliday’s successor is underway full speed.

Dr. Betty Asher (left) and Dr. Jan Greenwood

Greenwood/Asher & Associates of Miramar Beach, Fla., will be paid $80,000 under a contract that will be signed shortly.  It was the only search firm interviewed for the job.

A KBE subcommittee considered proposals by four firms before recommending Greenwood/Asher, which assisted the state board in 2009 when Holliday was hired. It also assisted with the last two presidential searches at the University of Kentucky and in the selection of New York’s K-12 commissioner.

“They made a very strong proposal and have a strong history with Kentucky,” said KBE Chairman Roger Marcum of Bardstown.

The board vote was unanimous. KBE member Mary Gwen Wheeler of Louisville added she was “very impressed with their depth of experience.”

“We have a lot personally involved in this search and are glad to be back in Kentucky,” said co-founder Dr. Jan Greenwood. Greenwood made the company’s pitch with co-founder Dr. Betty Turner Asher, a native of Breathitt County.

The candidate market

Greenwood told the KBE that while it would use its database of tens of thousands of education leaders in the process, the market for commissioner of education typically is much smaller.

“Most of the commissioner searches have gone looking at superintendents or deputy or associate commissioners, but we have the ability to look beyond that to the federal government,” she said. “But if you look at the national market, the majority of these positions have been filled by superintendents, deputy or associate commissioners.”

Greenwood said she couldn’t speculate on how many candidates to expect, although she and Asher both said Kentucky's stature on the national education scene would add to the attractiveness of the post.

“We will reach out to numbers of people across the country for third-party endorsements for who they believe to be education leaders,” she said. “Most searches end up with 20 ‘A+’ candidates.

“No one wants to rush. This time of the year, you get into a little quirky market. You have some people who, after the previous school year, decide they want to relocate, were terminated, or are looking for a change. Many of the people we reach out to have really not considered looking for another position,” Greenwood said, pledging that diversity in the candidate recruitment process would be an element of the search.

In general, Asher and Greenwood recommended a process as follows:

      · After an initial screening by the search firm, the KBE would do an initial interview with 10 to 12 candidates.

      · After the pool was narrowed further by KBE, the company would perform a “360-degree background check” involving supervisors, colleagues and stakeholders, reporting those results back to the state board. A more intense criminal background check could be done on the finalists.

      · Finally, a two-day second round of interviews would take place between the KBE and however many finalists the state board members select. Based on the consultants’ discussion with the state board, those meetings would take place near a Kentucky city with an airport with multiple flight options for candidate access.

Emphasis on confidentiality

Both Asher and Greenwood emphasized to KBE members the critical element of confidentiality throughout the search process.

“There are consequences when names get out into public too quickly. That is a very important part of the Code of Ethics (a company-recommended list of dos and don’ts for the state board) to respect the confidentiality of candidates,” Asher said. “It is highly probable that if we have a high profile superintendent, he or she may not want his or her board to know that they are looking at another opportunity. So we may have to talk to other people who may have a different working relationship (with the candidate).”

Greenwood added, “Confidentiality is really important because this is other people’s lives. People have lost their jobs because they were looking at another job. It’s hard to go back home when you are identified as looking at a job, don’t get it and then have to go back home and face questions.”

Moving forward

The state board spent Thursday morning with former Kentucky Education Commissioner Gene Wilhoit, who facilitated the beginnings of a set of characteristics for the next commissioner. That list should be completed within the week. In the meantime, KBE members gave Asher and Greenwood these highlights:

      · Personal leadership style, balancing KDE’s compliance and support roles

      · Ability to communicate, build good working relationship with local stakeholders

      · Background work to develop student achievement, closing achievement gaps

      · Addressing criticisms/attacks on public education

The consultants will contact a variety of K-12 stakeholders for input, while the Department of Education will create on online survey to allow the public to provide feedback on the most important skills in the next commissioner.

“We want that communicated well, that this survey is open and people have time to comment,” said KBE member William Twyman of Glasgow.

Marcum said he hopes the board can make a hire before Holliday’s Aug. 31 retirement, although there was agreement among the state board members that the most important outcome is to “pick the right person.”