Board of Ed recommendation of the next Commissioner of K-12 Education

 A single agenda item today:

Selection of Commissioner for Recommendation to Secretary — Discussion and Vote

It's (now) a fully remote meeting, which will be going up here (watch that page; the video itself will be a new link off that page once it starts).

Please enjoy these daffodils on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway

Updating as we go

On the next Commissioner (and the elephant that is still in the room)

 Okay, people, this is officially too many succession plans for me to keep track of.
Anyway, I will remind you as always that this is from only me, no one else. 

One of the things that those who govern organizations, including educational ones, should have an awareness of is the bench; that is, who is being prepared for leadership. Educational organizations vary in size, of course, so not every organization has one (or much of one). There are also educational leaders that don't spend time and energy on preparing others for leadership. Nonetheless, who's on the bench, who isn't, who is prepared, who isn't--these are questions that boards should have an awareness of.

Thus when an educational leader steps down, a reasonable board at least asks the question of who in the organization is prepared to lead it. That isn't always going to be the right answer--there are, for example, times when a break with the previous leadership is very necessary--but it should at least be asked. 

A bench (this one overlooks Curtis Pond in Worcester)

It's not clear that the Board of Ed ever really did this. It essentially only came up as Russell Johnston was leaving. 

Interviews for the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education

 

Coming to you live from Mass Bay Community College in Wellesley

My rundown of the finalists can be found here. My initial perspective on them can be found here.

There is a livestream of this, which will be going up here. UPDATED: video is here.

Posting as we go. 

Jack Elsey, Lily Laux, Pedro Martinez to be interviewed

and Craven just said a whole bunch of things including the schedule which I missed because I was trying to find the livestream...sigh...it also isn't written down, as best as I can tell

The Board is soliciting feedback on the finalists here. 

Three finalists for Commissioner of Education

 ...as reported by State House News Service shared by WWLP: 

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education announced Tuesday that it will conduct public interviews Thursday with three finalists for the open Department of Elementary and Secondary Education commissioner job.

Board members will consider Jack Elsey, Lily Laux and Pedro Martinez.

Elsey previously worked as chief of innovation and incubation at Chicago Public Schools and as assistant superintendent at Detroit Public Schools. In 2022, he founded the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative, which Massachusetts officials described as "an organization committed to addressing the teacher shortage crisis and building a more robust educator pipeline for Michigan."

Laux works as executive director of Economic Mobility Systems. Before that, she spent seven years as deputy commissioner of school programs at the Texas Education Agency, a role that involved overseeing academics and efforts to shift from a "compliance focused" approach to an "outcomes-driven" one, DESE said.

Martinez leads Chicago Public Schools, the fourth-largest district in the nation. He previously worked as superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District.

You can find the Boston Globe report here, and Chalkbeat, which has a Chicago bureau, focuses most only Martinez here. 

please enjoy this sign left at an Orange line station in Boston after the march

I am going to strain to keep this post very straightforward, and I'll give some preliminary thoughts in another post.