A petition to draft Bill Cala as the next Rochester schools superintendent is on Change.org. It’s not clear who is behind the effort.
The petition is directed at the Rochester school board, and the goal is to gather 500 signatures.
Cala is former superintendent of the Fairport school district and is also a former interim superintendent of the city school district.
The petition says that Cala is a creative natural leader, a dynamic social entrepreneur, and an ambassador for educator.
“We should select a person who uniquely embodies qualities of leadership and compassion, as well as someone who will be a gladiator, agitator, and spokesperson for children and their education,” it says. “Cala is that person.”
Cala also has the enthusiastic support of Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski, who calls Cala a strong and courageous leader.
School board President Van White says that he receives notifications from Change.org about the petition. The website enables individuals to create a petition that can be easily accessed by large numbers of people.
White says that he’s aware of Cala’s qualities and achievements.
“But we have a process in place,” he says. “We can’t pick a person based on popularity.”
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2015.
A prime responsibility of any board is the hiring and ongoing evaluation of the leadership of an organization. For a superintendent, especially of a mid-size urban district like ours, there are a relatively small pool of potential candidates who might be qualified.
If I’m understanding the petition correctly, it is advocating skipping a search and hiring Cala directly. Given his experience in Fairport and interim role at RCSD, I believe Bill Cala would be a reasonable candidate to consider, but skipping a search in a rush to hire someone seems to be pennywise and pound-foolish.
We all know this is a high stakes hire and the school board needs to get it right. If Cala turns out to be the best candidate, great, but lets not sell ourselves short.
Matthew McDermott
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/roch…
“It’s not clear who is behind the effort.”
Tim Macaluso has got to be kidding. If you click on the doggone link to the Petition (https://www.change.org/p/malik-evans-mary-… ), it tells you at the bottom of the Petition who started it, i.e., “Joel Helfrich, Co-Founder, Rochester River School. Joel Helfrich started this petition with a single signature, and now has 338 supporters.” Additionally, it is noted in the article that “Cala also has the enthusiastic support of Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski, who calls Cala a strong and courageous leader.” The latter quote is definitely reason for pause. Anyone who is paying attention, and is honest, knows that Adam Urbanski has NEVER, EVER supported anybody who is willing to confront the old, old, entrenched, racist, systemic, status-quo (unless of course they subscribe to super-slow, Kumbaya, infectiously-gradualistic “change,” which is not likely, and in fact, is highly unlikely to produce any semblance of concrete, measurable improvement in our lifetimes). https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/k…
Without a doubt, several other individuals who are likely “behind the effort,” include Dr. David Hursh, Dan Drmacich, Paul Hetland, Dave Wurz, and more than likely, Board members Liz Hallmark, and Mary Adams. Again, anyone who pays close attention to local politics is well aware of the predominantly, overwhelmingly, white, hegemonic, University Of Rochester-RTA-Coalition for “justice” in Education front, which has ALWAYS supported Bill Cala. In fact, in the past, Cala has been part of the front (not sure if he still is), but I wouldn’t doubt it.
For the first time in a long while (as far as I have seen), Van White is actually making sense, relative to his statement that the Board has “a process in place. We can’t pick a person based on popularity.” I should hope not. In any case, in my humble, but staunch view, one question that the Board should put to all candidates that they interview is: ‘Will you support, and implement (with all deliberate speed — not in the bye-and-bye) anti-racist education, and professional development for ALL Rochester City School District Employees?’ Any candidate who answers “yes,” and really means it — will immediately lose Adam Urbanski’s support. I gua-ran-damn-tee it.
White says “We can’t pick a person based on popularity.”
Why not? A well liked person is able to more easily garner support and actually get things done. Think back about our most popular recent presidents- Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy. Enough already with the politically correct selection process.