WL superintendent defends hiring practices, as doubts repeated by school board members

Things get testy, as a majority of West Lafayette school board comes to Supt. Greiner’s defense in face of repeated concerns about hiring processes for key district roles

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WL SUPERINTENDENT DEFENDS HIRING PRACTICES, AS DOUBTS REPEATED BY SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS

Ongoing strain among factions on the West Lafayette school board brought another round of sparring Monday evening over teacher recruiting, drawing an impassioned defense from Superintendent Shawn Greiner over his hiring practices, his leadership and perceptions that he doesn’t have the full trust of the board.

Things were set in motion Monday after board member Laurence Wang asked to pull a personnel report – a list of hiring recommendations and recent resignations at West Side schools – from the school board’s consent agenda, typically a routine portion of the monthly meeting.

Wang questioned whether it was time to revise the district’s hiring policy, giving more parameters about preferred numbers of candidates to consider for key roles, an updated list of procedures in various searches and other hiring guidance or manuals, “to ensure we have consistency and fairness in recruiting, and also we can eliminate personal bias.”

(Photo: Dave Bangert)

“As far as I know,” Wang said, “at least in some search hiring, we finish with a very limited candidate pool, and we rush the decision very quickly. … Such practice may lead to the perceptions of lack of transparency and accountability. These kind of perceptions may damage the integrity of our hiring process.”

The questions echoed ones Wang and board member Yue Yin expressed in February, when they cast votes against hiring Chad Rodgers as West Lafayette Jr./Sr. High School principal because they considered the search and interview process too rushed to attract a larger pool of applicants. That stance, and the 5-2 vote, brought a blistering response from dozens of high school teachers in the room that night and from other board members – even as Wang and Yin insisted it was nothing personal, it was just a matter of the process.

On Monday, board member Tom Schott asked why Wang had picked that moment to again question hiring in the district and whether he had a specific issue with one of the teachers or staff hires recommended in Greiner’s report.

Wang said he didn’t have a problem with anyone on the list Monday.

“I just don’t understand why we’re always going back to process when we’re trying to approve people’s hirings,” Schott said.

“If we don’t have a good process, probably we won’t be able to get the best candidates,” Wang said. “I think procedure is very important. … When you talk about recruiting, these are kind of our whole team working together.”

“But we don’t work together – let’s get that out of there,” Schott said. “I said for months, people don’t want to come here because of this board. And this is just another classic example.”

At that point, four of the seven board members came to the defense of Greiner.