Iowa school districts should stop playing the search firm game

The superintendent search firm game has always seemed shady.

In 2015, Cedar Rapids was looking to replace Superintendent Dave Benson and hired Chicagoland-based Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates. It’s the nation’s largest search firm. According to its website, HYA has guided searches in 1,600 school districts.

The thing about HYA is they recommend the search process remain confidential. So, as they see it, the effort to pick a chief executive at a public school should shut out the public. That way, candidates don’t have to fear being outed to their current district.

“It's lousy advice, to put it mildly,” I wrote in March 2015. “There's no good reason why parents, staff and taxpayers shouldn't know who the finalists are and have a chance to scrutinize them before a top candidate is anointed. To argue the comfort of a few skittish applicants outweighs the need for transparency and accountability in hiring the leader of Iowa's second largest school district is ridiculous.”

School districts can opt for more openness, but HYA strongly advises against it.

HYA employs former superintendents who recommend from a rotating group of administrators. Benson was a finalist when Cedar Rapids hired David Markward. After Markward, the district hired Benson.

HYA also guided the search that led to the hiring of current Superintendent Tawana Grover.

These searches cost taxpayers thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars.

A lot of districts hire HYA, so Cedar Rapids is hardly alone.

But superintendent search firms are under fresh scrutiny, thanks to the case of Ian Roberts, the former Des Moines Public Schools leader chased down and detained by ICE. It turned out Roberts lied about his immigration status and padded his resume with accomplishments that don’t exist.

Roberts was recommended by a search firm, JG Consulting, which is now being sued by the district for not properly vetting Roberts. The firm stands by its work.

The Roberts story is jaw dropping and unusual. But the criticism of search firms is not.

Jeff Bryant, chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute, compiled an exhaustive record of search firm shenanigans in 2019. It starts with the 2015 saga of Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett

She backed a $20 million no-bid contract for professional development by a company called SUPES Academy, where she had worked. Byrd-Bennett also was a senior associate at PROACT Search, a superintendent search firm run by the same people as SUPES. The case drew national attention when Byrd-Bennet was convicted of accepting kickbacks from a firm that ran SUPES and PROACT and was sent to prison.

“But anyone who thought this story was an anomaly would be mistaken,” Bryant wrote. “Similar conflicts of interest among private superintendent search firms, their associated consulting companies, and their handpicked school leaders have plagued multiple school districts across the country.”

Bryant wrote that search firms“ frequently fail to find conflicts of interest and other problems in the candidate background checks they conduct.”

In Illinois, Bryant chronicled work done by Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates under its parent company, the ECRA Group. Close examination, Bryant reported “reveals how the firm uses a revolving-door business model in which its search service rotates administrators into and out of leadership positions while the company uses those leadership connections to successfully upsell districts into expensive long-term consulting contracts funded by taxpayers.”

I encourage you to read Bryant’s whole story.

Back here in Iowa, the AP reported on Thursday that shortly after Ian Roberts was hired in Des Moines, he called for an “emergency vote” on $116,000 worth of contracts for “culturally responsive coaching.” One would have gone to Kansas City-based Lively Paradox where Roberts, the AP reported, was an executive leadership coach. As he moved from district to district the schools contracted for its services.

Des Moines schools finance staff told Roberts it would be a conflict of interest, so the vote was canceled. The AP report does not connect Lively Paradox with JG Consulting, the search firm.

Enough shady stuff is out there to prompt Iowa school districts to stop playing the superintendent search game. At the very least, the Roberts case shows there are sizable holes in the vetting process.

And school districts should stop farming out searches to firms that insist on confidentiality. It’s a disservice to students, staff and taxpayers. And when something goes wrong, it’s the school board that gets much of the blame.

These firms capitalize on the fact that part-time board members don’t feel like they have the expertise to conduct a search. But if districts across Iowa and beyond pooled their knowledge, they may find the expertise is out there to help guide a search.

Of course, not all search firms follow the confidentiality script. Districts should, at least, seek out those companies.

This is an issue where the Legislature could do something good for education by setting standards and ethics rules for a search process. It could be bipartisan.

Regardless, districts should leave the game and embrace more transparency. Don’t outsource a process leading to one of the most important decisions a board makes. Sunshine, they say, is a great disinfectant. It’s also the right thing to do.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com