LITTLE ROCK — After months of work, the Pulaski County Special School Board scrapped its search for a new superintendent Monday night and decided to start over.
The 6-1 vote to reopen the interview and application process was, in essence, a rejection of acting Superintendent Rob McGill for the permanent post.
The board had previously whittled a list of 20 applicants for the job to two finalists - McGill and Vashti Washington, an associate superintendent from South Carolina. When Washington unexpectedly withdrew her name from consideration Friday, that left McGill as the only candidate still standing.
While McGill holds some support on the School Board, some members vehemently oppose his selection. After a one-hour debate in executive session, McGill’s detractors won out.
Board Vice President Charlie Wood was the only member who voted against reopening the search.
School Board President Tim Clark said after the vote that there was more support on the board for hiring Mc-Gill than just Wood.
But there wasn’t majority support, he said.
Wood said after the vote that reopening the process without a separate vote against hiring McGill allows the acting superintendent to reapply and “stay in the hunt” for the job.
Clark said the superintendent search firm McPherson and Jacobson would re-post the vacancy and provide at least four candidates for the board to consider.
Clark said the real stumbling block in concluding the superintendent search was Washington’s surprise withdrawal.
The board had planned to re-interview her and McGill Monday night and then make a decision.
“The way the board sits right now, really, the votes weren’t there for Mr. McGill,” Clark said. “Dr. Washington pulling her application kind of threw us all for a loop.”
McGill’s contract calls for him to remain acting superintendent through June 30. Clark said he hopes the new search is completed before then.
McGill said after the vote that he wasn’t sure if he’d reapply for the job.
“It surprises me that they voted [unanimously] to narrow it down to two, and one bows out, and now they are reopening,” he said. “I’m disappointed at this point, but the board made their decision and that’s what we have to live with.”
Wood said in an interview before the meeting that board members Gwen Williams, Mildred Tatum and Bill Vasquez are aligned against McGill. Williams and Tatum are black, and Vasquez is Hispanic.
Wood also said that he, Clark and board member Danny Gililland would back McGill in a vote. All of them, including McGill, are white.
Wood said the swing vote on whether to retain McGill as superintendent was new board member Sandra Sawyer, who is black. Sawyer is the board representative for west Pulaski County south of Arkansas 10.
Vasquez acknowledged in an interview before the vote that the board’s opinion of Mc-Gill was divided along racial lines.
“I think the process was bastardized. I think that it was wrong,” Wood said in the interview. “We decided the top two and now because board members have personal prejudices, they are taking it out on Mr. McGill.”
McGill also is opposed because he backed the board’s decision to decertify Pulaski County’s unions, Wood said.
“There are a lot of underlying motives that are not being stated,” he said. “I think that because board members can’t control Mr. McGill, they are going to vote against him.”
More than 40 people turned out for a community forum with McGill before the board went into executive session. The meeting grew contentious at times as parents, teachers and the board debated McGill’s candidacy.
At one point, board member Gililland said complaints about the district and McGill had unfairly overshadowed the good that goes on in Pulaski County schools.
He urged district parents to start focusing on the good not the bad.
“Yeah, we’ve got some issues we need to deal with,” Gililland said. “The problems are small compared to the good stuff that’s going on in our schools every day.”
Williams, who holds the board’s secretary post, immediately disagreed.
She said the district has too many problems and needs “healing.”
“And that healing process starts with this board and the superintendent,” she said. “We’ve got to deal with the bad to get to the good.”
The majority of speakers urged the board to hire Mc-Gill.
Melanie Conway, a district patron who opts to send her children to the Little Rock School District because she thinks they get a better education there, said the board should hire McGill.
She said he’s demonstrated that he makes decisions on the basis of what’s best for the children of the district, not himself.
“The easiest thing for a career is to lie low and make as few people mad as possible. Mr. McGill hasn’t done that,”Conway said. “Lets move forward in this state and hire the man who tried to do the right thing even when it wasn’t in his own best interests.”
Rizelle Aaron, a parent and leader of the Jacksonville National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said McGill was not the right man for the job.
Aaron said hiring McGill wouldn’t be in the best interests of students who are members of minority groups.
“As an African-American minority, one of my primary concerns with children in the district, my kids and grandchildren, is that we have someone to lead the district who is racially knowledgeable or racially sensitive,” Aaron said.
Lisa George, a teacher at Maumelle Middle School, also asked the board to select McGill. She cited his “loyalty” in spending his entire 17-year career in Pulaski County.
“You don’t stay someplace for this many years unless you believe in it and you have your heart in it,” she said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/02/2010