Superintendent search consultant asks questions, takes notes, in real time

November 9, 2021 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

Less than a week after the school district’s proposed $59.5 million construction bond suffered a resounding defeat at the ballot box, consultant John Gratto finds himself the central note-taker this week in an exercise designed to shape the search for the next superintendent to take the helm next summer. 

Superintendent search consultant John Gratto (right) attends the Oct. 13, HUUSD School Board meeting to discuss the search process to hire a new superintendent for the school district in 2022. Waterbury Board member Scott Culver is on the left. Screenshot

In a series of video conference sessions held yesterday and wrapping up tonight from 7-8:30 p.m. Gratto is leading discussions among groups of teachers, staff, students and community members walking through five key questions designed to solicit ideas that will be used in the superintendent search process. 

The Harwood Unified Union School District School Board has hired Gratto and the national recruitment firm MacPherson & Jacobson based in Omaha, Nebraska, to conduct a nationwide search for the individual who will replace Superintendent Brigid Nease who is in her 12th year as the school district’s top administrator. 

Gratto’s Zoom sessions and a corresponding online survey with the same questions will be used for specific purposes. He outlined the process at the start of Monday’s session attended by about 10 members of the public including a former school board member, several teachers, parents and local residents. 

The five questions are listed on the school district’s website, HUUSD.org, under the section heading Superintendent Search. 

The first two questions relate to “why would someone want to work here,” Gratto explained. They ask what makes the Harwood district a good place to live and why it’s a good place to work and go to school. 

Next it asks what the next superintendent needs to know going into this job specifically. 

The fourth question asks what skills, qualities and characteristics people would like to see in a new superintendent. That input will be used this month to craft the list of qualifications that the school board will endorse as the search officially launches when the position is advertised.

The last question asks people what questions they would have for candidates for the job. The input from that query will be used when the process gets to the point of interviewing candidates. 

The answers gathered across the various settings will be used both by candidates looking to apply and people on the school district end doing the search.

“I will put the answers I gather in these forums on the [school district] webpage so that prospective candidates can see the answers to these questions and therefore decide if they are a good fit for this school district,” Gratto explained, noting that the compilation will include input from the live sessions and the online surveys.

Answering the survey as a group 

As a way to begin the exercise on Monday, Gratto started off by sharing his career experience: five years as a K-12 school principal; 23 years as a superintendent. In 2012 he retired as a superintendent and began teaching educational leadership at Virginia Tech where his students were principals looking to train to become superintendents. He said he has been in his current position with McPherson Jacobson since 2014. 

Based on the eight previous searches he has conducted including several for superintendents in Vermont including for the Burlington School District and the Champlain Valley School District, Gratto said he anticipates receiving about two dozen applications for the Harwood job. That group likely will be narrowed to fewer than 10 individuals with initial interviews done via video, Gratto said. Those would likely be shared with the community as a “form of transparency that should enable people to get a good feel for final candidates.”

The initial interviewees would be further whittled down to just a few finalists, he explained. All of this is expected to play out over the next three months with the job being advertised by late November until early January; interviews in January, and a job offer made in early February. 

Taking notes, but not names

Gratto shared his screen during the Zoom session, typing replies to each question from participants, eventually compiling a list of responses to each item. He added answers to each category, stopping to ask the participants if he captured their ideas accurately. 

Earlier Zoom sessions on Monday included a meeting that Gratto said was attended by 38 teachers. One teacher attending the evening session said he wasn’t able to make the teacher session and worried that others missed it as well. Gratto assured him that participation was strong. “I’ve never had so many teachers show up,” he said, referring to previous superintendent searches he has done.

One participant asked if Gratto thought teachers felt comfortable offering their feedback. 

“I do think people were quite candid,” Gratto said, adding, “I specifically asked the board members not to attend any meeting so that people could share opinions without any fear a board member might like or not like what they said.” 

Gratto said he was aiming to collect input without putting names to specific comments in the final compilation. 

The initial questions about quality of life and the district elicited expected responses about small-town connections, recreational opportunities, tight-knit communities, small businesses, a strong sense of place that attest to the character of the Mad River Valley, Waterbury and Vermont in general. 

It didn’t take long into the question about what a new superintendent should know for the bond failure to come up and for participants to start discussing rancor in the community around school district issues, particularly the degree to which decision-makers seek and consider community input. 

At several points, participants asked Gratto if these were appropriate topics to add to the list. Gratto said his role was not to filter the feedback but to present it accurately. He suggested that the latest developments regarding the bond vote failure will be an important topic for the next superintendent to face and understand. 

“If I was the superintendent and my bond vote just got beaten by 73 percent, I sure would pay attention to what the community’s saying because they obviously misjudged the will of the community,” he offered.

More discussion centered on whether a new superintendent would come to the job with a particular vision or if they would let their vision be shaped by what they learn on the job. Again, the role of listening to stakeholders came up for more examination. One participant wondered aloud after reviewing the lists of responses to the questions whether anyone considering the superintendent position would apply “when we’re sharing all of this negative stuff.” 

It was there that Gratto offered a take rooted in his experience: Many people who work as superintendents like challenges. “There’s plenty of vexation in being a superintendent - or a principal for that matter - but the satisfaction of the work comes from leading consensus on an issue, from making your school better, from creating better opportunities for students,” he said. “It’s satisfying work to continually improve. I think you are going to find people up for the challenge.”

Despite what seems like a unique time for the Harwood school district, Gratto said the district’s challenges are typical. “You’re not going to find a perfect school district anywhere in the nation. I wouldn’t say that your issues are any different from anybody else’s issues. There’s still a need to build consensus; there's a need to listen to people and make prudent decisions. That’s pretty typical of any school district so I don’t think people are going to be scared off by any of these comments.”

Gratto pointed out, for example, that despite hearing from the Monday night Zoom group frustration about whether district leaders value community input, the current search process was altered to gather input from stakeholders first. 

“This board specifically asked to flip the process around to know the stakeholder comments before they crafted the [superintendent job] qualifications,” he noted. “I’m expecting that they are acting with genuine goodwill.” 

Once the online survey closes on Wednesday, Nov. 10, Gratto said he will get to work to organize the feedback to share with the school board and the public as well.