LYNWOOD — The Lynwood Unified School District’s newly hired Superintendent Ed Velasquez has until July 31 to fill eight different principal vacancies within the district, with an additional two vice principal positions that need to be filled.
The situation looks and sounds worse than it really is, said school board member Rachel Chavez in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon.
A school board member for nearly 20 years, Chavez said this is the first time she has known of so many administrative vacancies at one time.
In the district’s efforts to close a $7 million to $11 million deficit for the 2010-11 fiscal year, the district has had to cut district employees, staff members and teachers — resulting in an increase in the number of students per classroom. The teacher/student ratio now is at 35 to 1 at the secondary school level.
As of yet, there are no principals assigned to Lynwood Middle School, Firebaugh High School, Lynwood High School or Vista High School. At the elementary school level there are no principals assigned to Lincoln, Rosa Parks and Will Rogers.
Washington Elementary School has an acting principal, but its assistant principal position is still vacant. Lindbergh Elementary School also has a vacant assistant principal position. And an acting principal has been assigned to Hosler Middle School for the incoming school year.
The vacancies, however, don’t stop at the school site level.
Velasquez, who said he will be appointing two separate committees to conduct the interviewing process with the district’s Human Resources Department, also has to fill vacancies at the district headquarters, including the director of Fiscal Services, director of Special Education, coordinator for Student Services, coordinator for the Technology Department, a coordinator for the K-12 Professional Development Department and a coordinator for the Academic Proficiency Department.
Cut from the district’s headquarters were six high-paying positions, including two assistant superintendent positions that in one year were costing the district nearly $300,000.
“We really cleaned house under interim Superintendent Patrick Leier,” Chavez said. “One thing is for sure, people can’t say this district is still top heavy. … I think there is still a lot more we can do to save money, but it will take some time.”
It has only been a couple of weeks since Velasquez took over, but from what Chavez has seen, the new superintendent knows what needs to be done and she’s hoping he doesn’t stray from that.
“We can’t backtrack and we can no longer afford to be giving the district’s money away,” she said. “I know right now everything is up in the air, but hopefully, our new superintendent knows that all eyes are on him to turn this ship around.”
School board President Jose Solache said the number of vacancies shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows that the board has been working on streamlining the district to be more academically proficient.
“There have been a lot of issues in the district that we’ve been dealing with, especially academic issues and under-performing schools at the secondary school level, meaning our middle schools and high schools,” he said. “We are at a point where all of our energy has to be put into our secondary schools to improve them. That’s where these vacancies have come from. In some cases, they are necessary changes that needed to happen.”
The vacancies at the school sites are part of the district’s plans, aimed at improving the school sites, Solache added.
There have been more than 200 applicants for the positions.
“There’s going to be a lot of interviewing going on in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “Hopefully, we can find individuals who want to bring their expertise to this district.”
Velasquez said he couldn’t comment on whether the number of vacancies was a norm for school districts, since the only other school districts he could compare to was the Montebello Unified School District, which he left for Lynwood after nearly 20 years.
“Longevity is a very important issue in Montebello,” he said, adding that something like this never happened in that district, even after doing reductions there. “It is a challenge. Filling the vacancies are a new priority right now with [human resources] and with the chief academic officer.”
There will be a collaborative approach to hiring, Velasquez said, that will include a three-tier process that will include three committees that will be screening applicants for the positions. The first committee will represent the community and will include parents and representatives of the bargaining units, he said. The second committee will be a technical team, which will include people “of like positions who have done the job already.” The third committee will include the superintendent and his cabinet, Velasquez said.
Board members will not be involved in the interviewing process, he said.
“I give a recommendation to the board,” he said. “They are not involved. … I want this to be a transparent process. I want everyone involved with it. The first two committees will get together at the end of the interview process and then they will give me their top three candidates, not ranked, with the understanding that any one of the three could do the job.”
Among the top candidates, Velasquez said, he will be looking for experience, and something he calls “content, process and relationships.”
All of the vacancies are wide open for anyone to apply, but individuals must have an administrative credential. The other dilemma you run into, is something that is called paper screening, he said.
“You have to set up some type of criteria, for example have five years minimal experience, be a current administrator, you need that to dwindle down the group,” he said. “But again, that’s up to [human resources] to do all of that.”
Velasquez said that Paul Gothold, the district’s new chief academic officer will be overseeing the process and will probably handle the paper screening aspect.
Velasquez said he wants Gothold to oversee the paper screening process because he wants the best and the brightest candidates to be sent to the first two interviewing committees.
“I don’t want this to be any one person or one group doing the dictating in this process,” he said. “I want this to be a collaborative approach.”
As far as the number of vacancies at the district office level, Velasquez said he is going to work with Gothold to review, restructure and reorganize it.
“I need to work with him to look at the structure to look at it for efficiency and effectiveness to make sure that our needs are being met,” he said. “There were a lot of positions that were eliminated, and sometimes I don’t understand the rationale and I’m not going to go backwards. But if I have to bring something back, I will bring it back.”
He said he can’t give any examples at this point, because he first has to run it by the school board members. “I’m looking at classified [employees], not certificated at this point.”
“For example, do I need to bring back more custodians, did they lay off too many, did they lay off to many security, did they lay off too many clerical,” he said. “That’s what I’m looking at because I think one of the philosophies they took was lets lay off more than we really need to help the budget, but if we really need them back, then we need to see how we can bring them back.”
Whatever the case, all of Velasquez’s actions will have to be approved by the district’s county-appointed fiscal adviser, Eric Hall.
Solache said he is not worried about the process nor that the board will not be involved in the interviewing process.
“I’m just very happy with the transparency of the process and that all the stakeholders will be involved,” he said. “All I would like to see in candidates is that they have expertise and experience, and more than anything, that they have a good track record of helping students succeed. Having positive reviews from parents will also be a plus.”
Considering school starts on Aug. 30 this year, the number of vacancies seems high right now, but “I think these vacancies will bring good changes that [are] very much needed,” Solache said.
Velasquez will preside over his first school board meeting on July 27. He said he hopes to have all of the vacancies filled by then, if not by the deadline of July 31 he set for himself.
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