Some fear a perceived lack of confidentiality within the school district board will scare away good candidates.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
Fallout from the leak of a controversial memo by outgoing school district Superintendent Tim Cuneo has some Malibu education activists concerned the negative publicity could hurt the district’s ability to hire a high-quality superintendent.
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) is conducting a search to replace Cuneo, who will retire in June.
After SMMUSD parents Tricia Crane, Claudia Landis and Lee Jones resigned in protest from the district’s Special Education Program Task Force in January, Cuneo sent a confidential memo to school board members warning the three “may attempt to sabotage” the district’s negotiations with the Santa Monica City Council to receive its share of Proposition Y and YY funds. Cuneo suggested in the memo that Crane would go to Santa Monica City Councilmember Bobby Shriver “in an attempt to influence the City Council’s relationship with the District.”
It is believed that the memo was leaked to the media in Santa Monica about two weeks ago by a board member. That led to public condemnations from the parents and Shriver, and an apology from Cuneo at the board’s March 3 regular meeting.
In a letter to the editor in The Malibu Times last week, Malibu resident Laureen Sills criticized not only the “mean-spirited content” of Cuneo’s memo, but the decision by a board member to leak it to the public. Sills questioned the message this sent to prospective successors to Cuneo.
“How is SMMUSD supposed to find a new superintendent when someone on the [Board of Education] is our very own Julian Assange? How can a superintendent get the job done when the basic expectation of trust with the [board] is questionable?” Sills wrote.
Peggy Lynch, whose firm Leadership Associates is conducting the search for the next SMMUSD superintendent, said that prospective candidates would know about the controversy.
“Anybody who’s really looking at the district is doing their research. They’ll be checking news articles and that kind of thing,” Lynch said. “There may be some concern, but at this point we haven’t heard that specifically.”
SMMUSD Board member Oscar de la Torre denounced the memo, telling the Santa Monica Daily Press, “This behavior and culture of looking at parents as adversaries is endemic and must change.”
De la Torre called on Board President Jose Escarce or Vice President Ben Allen to publicly address the memo and other questionable behavior by Cuneo.
“If they don’t, then I’m prepared to lead that charge,” de la Torre said.
Allen criticized the decision to leak the memo.
“I’m not going to defend what [Cuneo] wrote, but I’m certainly not pleased that one of my colleagues decided to breach his trust and one of the board’s trust,” Allen said.
Allen told The Malibu Times he hoped the controversy surrounding the memo would not discourage capable candidates.
“I think that the smart superintendent candidates will look at the fundamentals, to see that this district has an extraordinarily strong relationship with the community, extraordinarily strong programs, staff, parenting,” he said. “And I think those factors will be so much more important in determining whether they want to come or not.”
The superintendent search is expected to conclude in May or June, with the district’s turbulent recent history lending urgency to making the right hire. The next superintendent will be the district’s fourth since John Deasy left in 2006. Both the SMMUSD board and Malibu community members have expressed a desire for greater continuity.
Some Malibu education activists also feel there has not been enough outreach to the city from the district in recent years. The petition to convert Point Dume Elementary Marine Science Elementary School into a charter school, which often pitted Malibu parents against Cuneo and the SMMUSD board, contributed to the perception that communication between the district office and Malibu had broken down. Many of the parents involved in the charter effort believed Cuneo’s outspoken opposition also exacerbated divisions within Malibu. They felt the differences could have been ameliorated with better dialogue.