Members of Fannin County High School’s School Governance Team (SGT) feel left out of the principal selection process and expressed that sentiment during a meeting Wednesday, August 19.
“I take my role as the representative for the faculty, one of two, very seriously, and because of that I’ve taken a lot of time to talk to faculty members one on one to find out what they want,” Jill Dyer said. “One thing that kept coming up over and over was, ‘We need stability.’ This has been a very instable environment for educators for months … We have lived with uncertainty. We have lived with fear. We still live with that every day. We don’t know what’s going to happen next week. We don’t know how COVID-19 is going to affect us individually or our school.
“There’s so much instability. I guess my problem is when you have the opportunity to give the faculty what they need, why won’t you do that?”
Dyer addressed members of the panel selected to interview candidates asking if they had received emails from faculty members expressing what they would like to see in a principal. She asked, “If you received emails, letters and phone calls from faculty members telling you very specifically what was important to them, did you take that into consideration? Was there a candidate that fit that description? Was there a candidate who met those needs that were being expressed to you?”
School Superintendent Dr. Michael Gwatney later explained that he had received emails from multiple people expressing their hopes for a principal and also recommendations for and against certain candidates.
Assistant Superintendent of Achievement & Governance Sarah Rigdon told SGT members that the principal selection process is dictated by the school system’s charter.
“The charter itself actually goes through the process of how we’re supposed to do this, which we have followed,” Rigdon said. “Let’s start back on July 23, Mr. Cioffi presented his resignation … and so the 29, which was three weeks ago today, I met with you, and I went through the process of developing a list of characteristics that you would like to see in a principal candidate. I asked if you had anybody that you would like to have interviewed, because that is under the authority of the School Governance Team that you can suggest a name, and they be given an interview, and you did provide that name, which then was taken back to the interview team at the Board of Education.”
Rigdon further explained that she followed up through an email to the SGT making sure that she had characterized what they were hunting for in a principal candidate by summarizing what the students, faculty, community members and parents wanted to see. She later updated school faculty and staff on where they were in the process and how many applications they had received while resending that summarized information to them.
“We did exactly what we said we were going to do,” she said. “Those applications were reviewed. They were ranked. There were contacts that were made, and there were interviews that were set up. Six interviews were scheduled. In the six, which were the top six interviews, two of them backed out. … Those interviews did take place and the people that interviewed, of course, developed the questions keeping in mind the things that you were interested in. One of the things that this team said quite loudly was that you wanted someone with high school experience, you even said, ‘Please don’t send us an elementary principal or an elementary person with elementary background. We need someone with high school background.’”
Rigdon told the board that they were not able to get a slate of three candidates for the SGT to choose from.
“You can’t send someone from the Board of Education to an SGT for consideration unless you know any of those people could be candidates,” she said. “We were not able to get three candidates. When we said that it was a slate that meant that you were going to get a choice and for us a choice is three. In the history of the school governance teams in Fannin County schools, only one time did the board send two candidates to an SGT. No one has ever sent one name, because of course that’s not a choice.”
Dyer and other SGT members disagreed and explained that they felt one candidate would have qualified as a choice for the board.
SGT member Cynthia Panter, who originally helped the school system apply for charter status, expressed that she felt the SGT had been left out of the process stating, “While I’m aware that hiring in the Fall is very difficult, we have been quite successful in the past. To say that there were only 17 applicants and then that number dropped to 15 is not a shocking number at this time of year, but to ignore that we had an applicant, Dr. Scott Ramsey, who has been very successful at Fannin County High School for the past eight years is to blatantly convey that the county office did not want Dr. Ramsey as principal and was not concerned with the wishes of the SGT.”
Ridgon and Gwatney explained that the office of the Board of Education is still looking for more qualified candidates who meet the specifications set forth by the SGT and will bring a slate of three to the group to choose from when they have three qualified candidates to present for them. At that time, the SGT will choose a candidate, and Gwatney will then present that candidate before the Board of Education.
Gwatney also pointed out that there is only one member of the SGT currently representing the high school’s parent community rather than the required two now that Dr. Dillon Miller is no longer a member due to inelligibilty.
He explained that the SGT’s decision on a principal would more accurately represent the entire school community with a full SGT in place.
While the search for a new principal continues, Debbie Decubellis will serve as interim principal at Fannin County High School.