Don’t Blow It Again
Dear Trustees,
Sonoma Valley Unified School Board has an abysmal record in hiring superintendents. The last three served only two years each, and two of those three required heavy payouts, then you gifted a bonus to the most recent superintendent after she had announced her departure. All this in a District facing a huge budget deficit caused by the Board spending down its reserves as student population declined drastically.
With the June departure of the last Superintendent, Dr Jeanette Rodreguez-Chien, the situation was so critical that the County Superintendent of Schools intervened, proposing a retired superintendent hired by the Sonoma County Office of Education direct our District’s hiring process. Unfortunately, that person, Brandon Kreuger, had to resign for personal reasons. Now the County has washed its hands of our search process, leaving it in the hands of two professional consultants, both former superintendents in Sonoma County. But you hired them on November 18, with Trustee Ching absent, without them doing the necessary homework. One of them, before you hired him, unbelievably stated, “I sense, or maybe I read, that you have had some turmoil.” Turmoil indeed…