After two brief recesses and two hours of discussion, the School Board of Alachua County voted to table the discussion of superintendent candidates until another special meeting, set for 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 4. 

After a split vote to terminate Superintendent Shane Andrew last week, the board set this special meeting to bring forward candidates from within Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) to fill the position on an interim basis while the district conducts a national search for a new superintendent. 

A slew of public commenters at the start of the meeting mostly urged the board to designate Deputy Superintendent Cathy Atria as the school district’s acting superintendent instead of looking for an interim superintendent. 

Florida law does not recognize “interim” superintendent as a position, though the term is commonly used to refer to a superintendent on a short-term contract, according to the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA). 

Andrew himself was appointed to the position on an interim basis, but the board finalized a more permanent contract for him in a split vote in February. The contract reserves the board’s right to terminate Andrew without cause at any time, but if it does so, Andrew is entitled to 20 weeks of severance payment of his base annual salary of $180,500. 

Board Member Sarah Rockwell pointed out in Monday’s meeting that the superintendent also has the right to terminate his own contract with 90 days of notice. McGraw and Board Member Kay Abbitt both said Andrew did not want to continue serving in his position, and Rockwell said if that was the case, he could have resigned. 

Rockwell also echoed an idea brought up by several public commenters, that whoever steps in as acting or interim superintendent should not be eligible to be hired as permanent superintendent, to not dissuade other candidates from applying because there is an internal hire. 

“I’m not saying we don’t have excellent internal applicants, but we are setting superintendents up for failure if we give the appearance of hiring friends, of backroom deals, of having made the decision before conducting the transparent search with the community involved,” Rockwell said. “We cannot do that again. We’ve done it twice. It has not worked out well.” 

Board Member Tina Certain made a motion to table the decision until newly-elected Thomas Vu takes over Board Chair Diyonne McGraw’s seat on Nov. 19, and Rockwell seconded it, but Abbitt, Board Member Leanetta McNealy and McGraw voted the motion down, 3-2. 

Neither Rockwell nor Certain brought names of people they would recommend for the interim superintendent role, hoping instead to move forward with Atria as acting superintendent. 

McGraw said she did not want Atria to feel forced into the role, and Atria told the board she wished to consult with an attorney further before committing to step in. She said her job description includes acting on the superintendent’s behalf when he is not present, and board policy has her acting on the superintendent’s behalf if he is incapacitated, but she wants further legal clarity before being put in a long-term version of “acting superintendent.” 

McNealy did not bring any names to the meeting either, saying every person she asked about the position told her they did not want it. McGraw said of the 13 people she asked, including Atria, most turned her down, too. 

However, McGraw did bring three names to the meeting: Scott Schneider, the Chief of Schools for Duval County Public Schools, Dontarrious Rowls, who was briefly head of ACPS’s transportation, and Wanza Wakeley, a retired ACPS administrator. 

Abbitt also brought one name to nominate: Kim Neal, ACPS’s current director of full time enrollment (FTE), state reporting and the Office of Student Assignment. 

Board members also noted that the FSBA maintains a list of retired superintendents who are open to short-term contracts to act as interims while districts conduct searches for new superintendents. 

McNealy and McGraw said they spoke with Andrea Messina, CEO of FSBA, and Messina said the only way anyone on the list would consider working with ACPS was if they had a contract that did not allow them to lose the position to a board vote. She also told McNealy that no one would come at all if the hiring was based on a 3-2 vote. 

Abbitt asked similar questions about job stability for Atria, if she were to become a long-term acting superintendent. She asked Board Attorney David Delaney what guarantee Atria would have that the board would not go through more interims during a search for a permanent replacement. 

“The best guarantee is consensus from the board, confidence that whoever is taking the position, that they have the support of all of the board members, or more than a bare majority of the board members,” Delaney said. 

Most board members said during Monday’s meeting that they personally like Andrew, and that he has been a good teacher and administrator throughout his career but did not have the skillset to be superintendent. 

“I feel that he was learning on the job, and this position is just too critical to have someone learn as they go,” Certain said. “It’s a large organization, a lot of moving parts, a lot of issues that we needed to address, and we weren’t. We didn’t get to those things.” 

Though each member differed on why, when and how Andrew should leave the position, all who took issue with his work insisted that they respected him and appreciated his past work. 

“I have concerns about his ability to manage large-scale projects, to get adequate community input for his ideas and plans and to manage our budget,” Rockwell said. “Those are job performance issues. I have never questioned his integrity or his commitment to the children or to this district.” 

Abbitt, who made the motion last week to terminate Andrew, said she has disagreed with how Andrew has handled several decisions, including the method of implementing year-round school at Rawlings Elementary School and breaking up the magnet program at Williams Elementary School. 

She said she thinks Andrew has spent enough time in the district and formed enough relationships that it may have been difficult for him to treat district staff as employees. She said she could not let the status quo stay that way, and that while Andrew did accomplish things, it was not at the rate they should have been accomplished. 

“I have the utmost respect for Mr. Andrew,” Abbitt said. “And I think he is well-loved by the community; he is a good man. He’s very popular. I like him personally. And so, making that move to terminate him last week was uncomfortable for me, but in this position, we’re supposed to be working for the kids.”