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Several resignations and firings across Silicon Valley schools have raised questions about how districts select their top educators — and whether voters should make that decision themselves.
Santa Clara County leaders will tackle this question come January, when they weigh letting voters choose the county superintendent instead of the Board of Education. This follows the board of education’s vote to fire Superintendent Mary Ann Dewan in October, a divisive move that dominated meetings about the county’s special needs students. Closed-door political jockeying also racked up hefty outside legal fees and competing impropriety claims between dueling board factions.
Only five out of California’s 58 counties appoint their countywide superintendents — and Santa Clara County is one of them. In 2018, the county’s civil grand jury called out an “unusually high” turnover rate of five different superintendents in 11 years, and suggested making the office an elected one.
Yet Dewan wasn’t the only dramatic exit this year. Concerns over financial mismanagement, program cuts and school closures fueled the resignations — and firings — of superintendents helming school districts in East San Jose, Mountain View and Los Gatos.
The Alum Rock Union School District found itself at the height of these controversies, when its board fired Superintendent Hilaria Bauer in March — months before announcing proposed plans to close seven out of 21 schools to absorb a $20 million budget shortfall.
Megan Gray, parent of a third grader in the Mountain View Whisman Elementary School District, said taxpayers expect open and transparent hiring processes with robust community engagement. She said elections are one way to do that. The district’s embattled superintendent, Ayinde Rudolph, resigned on Halloween amid a state audit of the district’s financial decisions. Parents for months had questioned certain contracts, including an “energy healer” paid to hold guided meditations with staff.
“Our next superintendent needs to be someone who’s never been audited for fraud and collusion,” Gray told San José Spotlight.
Gray said she and other parents were angry that their elected trustees chose an East Coast principal and consultant over a local and more experienced superintendent.
“If parents aren’t voting on superintendent hires, we should get to vote on their contract renewals,” she said.
Alicia de Fuentes, a Los Gatos High School parent who helps raise money for music programs, is more mixed about whether elected roles mean better or more responsive leadership. She said she’s grappled with this question since the hasty June 30 exit of Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District Superintendent Bill W. Sanderson, which happened after the district stripped important programs while approving Sanderson for a pay raise.
“If they’re elected, what are the benefits? Well, you can recall someone, but it’s a hair pulling experience — it can be a heavy lift,” de Fuentes told San José Spotlight. “But if they’re appointed, as a member of the public, you’re depending on the judgment of your elected trustees to represent your standards.”
Some sitting school board members don’t agree with the idea of giving up that responsibility. Rudy Rodriguez, a trustee on the Franklin-McKinley School District board, said electing all local school superintendents would be a logistical nightmare.
“It would be chaos,” he told San José Spotlight. “The best decision for school districts is to hire their own superintendents. School boards are usually most knowledgeable of the district’s needs and already have the voter confidence based on being elected.”
For school districts with high turnover or unusual systemic issues, Rodriguez said it’s best to keep with existing accountability processes where the Santa Clara County Office of Education and state auditors step in.
County Board of Education President Maimona Afzal Berta, who supported Dewan’s firing, cautions against politicizing the superintendent role. She said the move could “concentrate power in one administrative position and undermine accountability, transparency and responsible fiscal management of education funds.”
She argues having a board-appointed superintendent keeps representation balanced.
“This structure ensures equitable and direct representation on the board from the trustee area communities directly receiving education services,” Berta told San José Spotlight.
Claudia Rossi, a former board of education trustee who protested Dewan’s firing, said it’s time to change the office’s governance structure to elect the superintendent.
“This situation where you have trustees capriciously firing an effective superintendent — that decision would be taken away from the board of education if the role was an elected one,” Rossi told San José Spotlight.
She stopped short of calling for that change to apply to local districts across the county, due to the differences in authority between local school boards and the county board of education.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors’ January debate could provide the first real litmus test. Changing the countywide superintendent to an elected role would require voter approval.
“Right now it behooves us all to pay attention to what’s happening at the county level,” Rossi said.
This story was written by Brandon Pho for San Jose Spotlight. The original version of this article can be viewed here.
Contact Brandon Pho at brandon@sanjosespotlight.com or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Dewan turned into a disaster of her own making. She got the idea that the board wouldn’t review the performance of an elected superintendent. She took it further and then told the elected 7 member county board that she refused to be review by them, and said they could not fire her anyway.
Well, she got fired. She deserved it. She had an agenda to become elected because she thought that would remove oversight from her. It would lessen it but not remove it.
If you look at the recent FCMAT report examining her performance, they said she has way too many direct reports. She stretched herself too thin through organizational structure that she controls, not the board. She was a bad manager. If you look at other county offices, there is a Chief of Staff for the organization. Many of the functions that Dewan had reporting to her instead report to the Chief of Staff. The Chief of Staff has management skills that are import to a smooth running of an organization. Dewan did not effectively manage the concerns of her staff. There were complaints from a lot of different subgroups of staff that she was making bad decisions.
So, this is a distraction this idea that the Superintendent should be elected. What really caused some turmoil in Santa Clara County was the organizational structure and the lack of a chief administrative officer running things. Dewan was incompetent to realize this.
Agree with Long.
Most good Supt are educators first, politicians second. If you reverse that, you start to introduce a lot of unnecessary stress and noise into a Supts job. Board is a good insulation against small, but vocal groups that don’t represent the majority. Case in point was Measure AA. Felt like there were a lot of cranky parents but the measure got passed by a mind blowing 75% of voters. It’s a very good example of whiny parents not being representative.
Our sheriff is elected, but that didn’t make it any easier to get rid of Laurie Smith. The Merc endorsed one challenger after another but was repeatedly ignored by voters. It might have been easier for the Board of Supervisors to fire her.