June 30, 2005

By Lauren Heaton

The Yellow Springs Board of Education is considering using a consulting firm, which has ties to a board member, to assist in the expected search for a new superintendent.

At its meeting on June 23, the board responded favorably to a presentation by Mary Rita Weissman from the Weissman Group, the human resource consultant the board used to hire the district’s current superintendent, Tony Armocida, and could use to choose his successor.

School board member Richard Lapedes recommended that the board use the services of the Weissman Group, which works with companies and organizations worldwide and in the Miami Valley, including Lion Apparel, an occupational apparel company that Lapedes owns.

Weissman’s husband and business partner, Norman Weissman, has served on the Lion Apparel board for many years, Lapedes said after the meeting.

He said that he trusts the consultant company to guide the community in its search for the next school superintendent.

Though the school board is not certain when it will begin searching for a new superintendent, school board president Rich Bullock said after the meeting that the board should start the process in the next six months to allow for a broad range of input and a thorough search.

The board did not agree to work with the Weissman Group, though Bullock asked Lapedes and board member Angela Wright to write a charge of service for the Weissman Group for the board to consider.

Armocida told the board last week that he anticipated staying with the district for another two to three years, reiterating statements he has made over the last several months about his plans to retire soon. His contract expires in July 2007.

School board members have said that they support hiring current Yellow Springs High School Principal John Gudgel as the next superintendent. Gudgel has said that he has not decided his future plans and is still considering applying for the position.

If the school board works with the Weissman Group, it would not have to pay for its services.

The company’s compensation would be handled by Lapedes and his wife, Maureen Lynch, who would donate half of the company’s normal fee to a nonprofit or group of nonprofits of the Weissmans’ choice. They would not pay the consulting firm.

Lapedes and Lynch made the same arrangements when the school board last searched for a superintendent eight years ago. That search resulted in the hiring of Armocida.

Lapedes said he devised this compensation formula for the Weissman Group, with whom, he said, he has been associated for 25 years. He said he wanted to develop a compensation model for the company’s nonprofit work.

The formula, which Lapedes called “community building,” has functioned this way for 25 years, he said, and it has allowed the company to serve a number of area organizations, including Planned Parenthood, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and the Yellow Springs Board of Education.

“Mary Rita makes a living by doing consulting for the for-profit world, but her expertise applies to the nonprofit sector too,” Lapedes said. “This was a way to get her to do her job in parts of the economy that don’t normally get the benefit of her expertise.”

Lapedes said he did not recall the amount he and Lynch donated to nonprofit organizations after the Weissman Group assisted in the superintendent search eight years ago. When the Weissmans served Planned Parenthood two years ago, the Yellow Springs couple donated $15,000 to area charities, he said.

Eric Johnson, who was a school board member and served as chairman of the district’s search committee in 1997, said the district did not pay the Weissman Group for their services. He also said that he doesn’t remember the school board discussing remuneration for the consultants.

The search process was conducted in a professional manner, Johnson said, and the committee reached a consensus to hire Armocida.

During that time, Lapedes was not on the school board, but he was a member of the search committee and recommended the Weissman Group as a consultant, Johnson said.

If the school board were to use the Weissman Group again to search for Armocida’s successor, Bullock said that he sees no reason why Lapedes should not still be involved in the process and be allowed to vote on the candidate the board eventually chooses.

“I’ve seen nothing that would suggest a conflict of interest of any sort,” Bullock said. “Just because someone has done business with a firm doesn’t mean he stands to gain anything from it. But the school board stands to gain from the testimonial to how effective she [Mary Rita Weissman] is.”

John Rawski, a lawyer with the Ohio Ethics Commission, said that Ohio ethics law prohibits public officials from securing contracts for relatives or business partners. The question in this situation is whether the board member has an interest in the consultant company, Rawski said.

Lapedes said that school board members want to handle the search process in an “advanced and ethical way.”

He said that Mary Rita Weissman’s interest in the arrangement is that she “gets to earn money for the nonprofits she likes. And my gain is giving money to charities too,” he said.

“We want a world-class consultant, we want them to give us an unlimited amount of time, and we want it for free,” Lapedes said. “I’m suggesting they’re the best people to do the best thing for free.”

During the school board’s meeting last week, Weissman outlined the principles her company uses to build better personnel teams based not on technical qualifications but on behavioral qualifications. The Weissman Group model recommends that the school board receive input from a broad range of community members to create a profile of the perfect candidate based on the needs of the community, the school board and the school staff.

The board would then design a set of evaluation tools, including written questions, reference checks, interviews and, perhaps, simulation of challenging scenarios, by which to evaluate candidates against the profile. The various interest groups involved in the search would score the candidates on a set of criteria and work toward consensus on the best candidate for the job.

Internal as well as external candidates should go through the same application process, Lapedes said during the meeting.

Board members agreed that a similar process used eight years ago successfully allowed most or all of the search participants to feel good about the decision to hire Armocida.

Weissman cautioned the board that their former application process was effective but perhaps so arduous that it could discourage good candidates with easier options from applying to Yellow Springs. The new model should be rigorous, but simplified, she said.

Board member Mary Campbell-Zopf said that the district could use the Weissmans’ process for all its hiring practices. It could be an effective way of allowing the community to have input on the standards teachers in the school system should have, she said.

“This capitalizes on the best hiring practices I’ve seen or read about,” she said.