TVUSD Trustees Fail Community on Superintendent Succession

At the opening of the March 3, 2020 Temecula Valley Unified School Board Meeting, Governing Board President Sandy Hinkson read that the board acted in closed session (by a 5-0 vote) to accept the resignation of Superintendent Timothy Ritter effective July 31, 2020 and appoint Deputy Superintendent Jodi McClay (by a 4-1 vote with member Barbara Brosch dissenting) to the same post August 1, 2020.

Did the Governing Board act within its means? Yes, in that the Superintendent is the only district position which they directly hire and supervise. Did they demonstrate fidelity in seeking and utilizing community and stakeholder feedback in doing so? Absolutely Not.

The role of TVUSD Superintendent is a critical leadership position. The Superintendent oversees twenty-eight school sites encompassing more than 27,000 students and a staff of over 3,000 employees. The Superintendent in TVUSD is a highly paid position netting over $300,000 in salary and benefits as the Superintendent advances on the cabinet salary steps. It is also a position which has not turned over frequently in the now more than thirty-year history of TVUSD with Ritter (who will have served ten years upon retirement) being the fourth ever TVUSD Superintendent. Arguably this was a critical decision for the five-member Governing Board, which is elected by district voters who reside in one of five designated trustee areas.

The Temecula Valley Educators Association (TVEA) started to survey members about professional and personal qualities desired in the next TVUSD leader back in Fall 2018. What emerged was that our teachers and specialists believed that someone with significant previous superintendent experience who was a visible and accessible leader would be the best fit. Our members also strongly believed that the search for such a person should include outside of TVUSD candidates as well as current TVUSD employees. We followed up seeking additional employee feedback in late 2019 which yielded similar results. After sharing this member input with the Governing Board and anticipating Mr. Ritter’s pending retirement, we sought a member petition seeking a board resolution to conduct a comprehensive search inclusive of outside candidates. This petition was signed by a decisive majority of 840 members and publicly delivered to the Governing Board at the February 18, 2020 meeting.

What happened next as shared in the opening paragraph is gravely concerning for the following reasons:

• Our teachers never got a direct reply to our formal TVEA Petition asking for a Resolution. The board apparently believes their two closed session actions on March 3 is that reply. This petition was much more than a single public comment, rather a collective statement from a decisive super-majority of our members.
• The Governing Board linked the immediate hiring of Ms. McClay to Mr Ritter’s retirement announcement. Arguably these should have been separate events, both which should have followed a response to TVEA’s formal petition. The Valley News reported on March 4, 2020 that Board President Hinkson shared via email that “Ritter had been sharing openly for some time that he planned to retire at the end of the 2019-2020 school year”. Why was Mr Ritter’s retirement not formally submitted earlier rather than being linked to part of a carefully choreographed district announcement?
• The Governing Board did not conduct a Community Survey, Community Forum or any other feedback vehicle to hear from other stakeholders and residents. They circumvented the voters who are designed to place them in their trustee role and lost a critical opportunity to engage with community. They had five months even from Mr Ritter’s official announcement and the end of his tenure for placement of a Superintendent.
• When examining the vote and the make-up of the board closer, this methodology becomes even more suspect in that only two of the four members who voted for the Superintendent Appointment March 3 were directly elected by the voters. Lee Darling (Trustee Area 1) walked into his seat immediately after the Governing Board voted to hastily implement the trustee system in May 2016. With only a few short months between this and the candidate declaration period, no other candidate declared, and no election was held for this seat. Julie Farnbach (Trustee Area 4) returned to the board in August 2019 as an appointee to complete the term of elected board member Adam Skumawitz, who resigned when the District told him his wife was ineligible to return to full-time work while he was a sitting board member.

In their actions on March 3, the board has created a scenario in which Mc Clay will enter as Superintendent with not necessarily a lack of stakeholder confidence in her personally, but certainly a lack of confidence in the omission of a process. Our teachers are key to the essential district mission of educating students, yet the Governing Board has ignored our voice and reinforced the prevailing TVUSD insular culture of “We Know Best”.