A lot happened at last night’s RIH BOE meeting. I’ll try to summarize but may need multiple posts to address everything that came up.
First and foremost, with a split vote of 5-4, the RIH BOE voted to submit a draft Superintendent Contract to the County Superintendent. Ansh, Emmolo, Kiel, Mariani, and Souders voted for the contract. Bogdansky, DeLaite, Koulikourdis and Lorenz voted against the contract.
The contract appears to be for the third choice candidate from the Board's search process back in April.
Bogdansky, DeLaite, Koulikourdis and Lorenz repeated their arguments made in the previous meeting: that we do not have a well qualified candidate from the initial search, that we should hire an Interim and repeat the search. Ansh’s majority dug into their argument that they had an amazing candidate pool to choose from.
The minority noted that they had ZERO involvement in the contract negotiation process, and the contract was solely negotiated by Board President Kim Ansh. It was noted that instead of calling a meeting, Ansh made phone calls to board members. This is called a ‘serial meeting’. THIS IS NOT THE PROPER WAY TO CONDUCT BOARD BUSINESS. THIS IS A VIOLATION OF THE OPEN PUBLIC MEETING ACT. The entire board should have met (in a properly advertised meeting) and decided on the candidate and hammered out the contract details.
Based on last night’s 5-4 vote to submit the contract, it appears that the majority intends to push in a new Superintendent, the third choice candidate from the pool, with a 5-4 split vote, possibly at the Board’s next meeting in August.
Marianna Emmolo called the Board’s search a ‘perfect’ process. It quite clearly was not.
It was noted by community members, based on email documentation received, that Dr. Quackenbush has been trying to create a new position of Assistant Superintendent in our district, for herself. In her short time here, Dr. Quackenbush has restructured our Supervisors, taking many of them out of the classroom during an RIH teacher shortage, and created numerous new administrative curriculum positions (many of which seem to be doing the job she was hired to do), making our district much more top heavy than it has ever been or should be. Both Interim Superintendent Dr. Baker and Incoming (rescinded) Superintendent Dr. Tarchichi told her NO to creating this new position for herself. Furthermore, Dr. Tarchichi told her he planned to undo her Supervisor restructuring and get rid of some of the top heavy admin layers she added. Did this contribute to Tarchichi’s contract being rescinded? We’ll never know. We’ll now see how the new incoming Superintendent, the third candidate, handles this situation.
It was also noted by community members, based on email documentation received, that Dr. Quackenbush had been very careless in sharing confidential personnel information outside of our district. The Board needs to address this immediately to protect staff in our district.
Former board member Vivian King called out the board’s fiscal mismanagement of taxpayer dollars on legal fees. The 2023-2024 budget for Legal Expenses was $180,000. Over the course of the 2023-2024 school year, the board quietly transferred $479,000 additional monies from other line items to cover their excessive legal spending, which totaled $659,000 this past year. This should concern ALL taxpayers. Where is the fiscal responsibility? Kim Ansh and her majority need to be replaced by people who will actually exercise some fiscal restraint.
There were motions on the agenda for spending over $1 million dollars on video cameras and public address system upgrades. The cost information was not provided to board members until over the weekend. The Board has a Policy that says all information for an agenda must be submitted to board members 5 days in advance of the meeting for review. Why isn’t Kim Ansh enforcing the board policy she insisted be in place? The motions were successfully tabled to give board members time to review the pricey upgrades. Helen Koulikourdis stressed that while she supports school safety 100%, the board also needs to be fiscally mindful, and sending out cost information for a million dollar spend over the weekend does not allow board members to do their due diligence.
Finally on the topic of the clear cut trees at Indian Hills, Interim Business Administrator Dora Zeno stated that the district cut down over 35 trees at Indian Hills, without a permit, because the trees were injured, dead or dying. (A member of the community noted that the Oakland Shade Tree Commission had a different opinion on this). The work was directed by Charlie Wolf, the person in charge of facilities for the district. How did the person in charge of facilities for our district not know that permits are required to do tree work in the FLOW towns? Ms. Zeno stated that the district will propose a Remediation Plan to replant trees. How much will the taxpayers have to pay for the remediation and fines? There was no answer to this question.