Carmel School Board Creates Hiring Committee

By Holly Crocco

The Carmel Central School District is in the process of reforming its hiring process, following a situation last month in which the school board opted not to approve a list of hires, citing a poor vetting process.

During the Carmel School Board’s July 1 meeting, resident Ryan Shilling expressed concerns about transparency and consistency regarding the district’s hiring process. He stated that, a few weeks prior, two candidates who had completed what seemed to be the district’s full hiring process, had contracts rescinded after the board failed to approve their hiring. This came after the candidates interviewed with committees, taught demonstration lessons, met with the administration, interviewed with the superintendent, received offers, and signed contracts.

“At the time I had hoped that was an isolated situation,” said Shilling. “Today, I am no longer convinced that it was. Since then, there appears to be inconsistency in how the hiring process is being applied.”

While candidates – and principals making hiring decisions – deserve clarity and consistency, he said the action stirs up a broader concern.

“No one should be hired because of who they know, that’s clear,” said Shilling. “But no one should be denied an opportunity because of who they know, either. Every candidate should be evaluated based on their qualifications, their experience, and their ability to serve students… Introducing a new step in the process at the end of the cycle raises question about timeline and how they can rely on a process that’s still changing.”

Newly-sworn in Trustee Dan Minieri told Shilling this matter is something he plans on delving into.

“The questions you asked were things that I would express similar concerns about because we want to bring highly qualified individuals into this district, and I believe that no matter what a last name is, it should be about qualifications,” he said. “I do not, at this time, know enough about that process, but I will find those answers out.”

Trustee Nicholas Magliano said he was pleased with the work that took place during the new temporary Hiring Committee’s first meeting earlier in the week.

“Just in that short time, what was established – I can confidently say that if we were to never meet again, we have still made quite an improvement already in this process,” he said. “This gives us a foundation to work off of and this should hopefully deal with some of the issues that Mr. Shilling talked about that we have historically had… and standardize and unify the hiring process.”

Later in the meeting, Magliano accused board leadership of not looking into the matter quickly enough. Still, he said he’s happy with the action being taken. “I’m a little shocked that it took this long to start, but nonetheless, here we are making progress,” he said.

Trustee Frank Grasso said the board is working to address “defects” in the existing hiring process.

“We are making real strides to make corrections to the policies that need to be smoothed out,” he said. “It will take some time to produce a coherent and consistent policy, and we’re working on it now.”

Superintendent Michael Plotkin said the district is already well on its way to establishing better hiring protocol. “We need to build a process in order to build confidence that no resume or person is favored,” he said.

So far, the committee has developed and codified a process that anonymizes the screening of applicants. He said a rubric was created to use as a metric for candidates, who will then go on to screening interviews, demo lessons, and committee interviews. It clearly lays out who is responsible for what, and includes a paper trail and reference checks, he said.

The new process delves into onboarding and notification, a review process, and how to widen the net to attract more people. “We don’t want this to become an inhibiting factor, we need it to become an enabling factor,” said Plotkin.

Trustee Jordi Douglas took exception to people conveying that the former procedure was inadequate at attracting quality candidates.

“The words that are being used, the narrative that is being put out there says that this system is totally broken… That all of this has led us to hire flawed candidates,” he said. “That’s not the case. We have incredible teachers.”

Douglas, who was the lone dissenting vote when the board decided to halt the hiring process last month, said the new process is about being able to better articulate why certain hiring decisions are made. He added that the board could have voted to finish the current hiring round and move forward with a new process, instead of disrupting the lives of those who thought they had jobs.

Trustee Michael Torpey apologized to the candidates that were affected by the board’s decision to wait until a hiring committee can look at the current process.

“It’s not what we wanted to do,” he said. “I believe we were moving at the speed of the administration’s request. We were told that we needed to keep the hiring process moving.”

The committee was quickly assembled and met with Plotkin to go over what he put together.

“We did not really get too much involved,” said Torpey. “We had some suggestions, some that were taken, some that were hashed out and were not… I think it was in the best interest of the district and the candidates going forward that we got the ball rolling.

“We have fantastic teachers, staff in this district,” continued Torpey. “But there have been a lot of questionable hires in this district, historically. And this is exactly the type of thing voters put us in these seats to fight against.”

Board President Melissa Orser said the district needs to be able to identify how candidates are chosen – from receipt of resumes, to interviews, to offers.

“I’m looking for more than just articulation, I’m looking for a process,” she said. “It hasn’t been done… Unfortunately, there was some collateral damage, and that’s awful. We all feel terrible about that. We’ve discussed that. Nobody wanted that to happen. But worse is this board being complicit in a process that we know wasn’t (verifiable).”

The committee will meet again in August to receive feedback on the process so far, as well as whether rubrics need to be changed, and other considerations.