The Fresno Unified School Board will hold a special workshop meeting next Thursday to develop “goals and guardrails” for the district’s next superintendent.

The workshop will be at noon in the Nutrition Center at 4480 N. Brawley Ave. where the board has been meeting since the start of the school year while the downtown Education Center, which includes their board room, is under renovation.

“Goals and guardrails” are terms that come from the Student Outcomes Focused Governance program through the Council of the Great City Schools that Fresno Unified School Board has adopted. They refer to the goals the board wants for the district as well as protections for “non-negotiable values” that are important to the community.

Setting those goals and guardrails needs to happen before the district can hire a firm to conduct a national search for the next leader of the state’s third-largest school district.

Coaches from the Council of the Great City Schools, a nonprofit for large urban school districts that Fresno Unified has belonged to for a number of years, are scheduled to facilitate the workshop.

Interim Superintendent Started in April

After the board decided initially last spring to consider only internal candidates but abruptly flipped to proceed with a national search after community opposition erupted, the trustees named Deputy Superintendent Misty Her — who was rumored to be the frontrunner among the internal candidates — as interim superintendent. She replaced longtime Superintendent Bob Nelson, who is now on the faculty at Fresno State Kremen School of Education.

Her has been on the job long enough that the board is considering a revision to her contract. At next week’s regular board meeting on Wednesday, the trustees will consider giving her the same one-time 2.5% annual salary increase in 2024-25 and 2025-26 that other management employees receive. Her current annual salary is $355,318. Costs will be stated in an oral report that will be presented at the meeting, according to the agenda.

The process of finding a new superintendent was slowed after a training session over the Memorial Day weekend had to be postponed to the Labor Day weekend. The board’s original timeline for the superintendent search had to be amended to schedule the deadline for shaping the request for search firm proposals document this month instead of next.

Time Needed to Hire Search Firm and Get Applicants

According to the amended timeline that the board approved on Wednesday, the search for the search firm will take nearly as long as the time to consider applicants.

The board is not scheduled to vote on a search firm contract until Feb. 26, according to the revised timeline.  The position of superintendent will be posted on March 21, and the board is scheduled to conduct its first round of superintendent applicant interviews on April 5 — more than a year after the board majority flipped in favor of a national search instead of hiring locally.

The board is scheduled now to approve a new superintendent contract by May 1.

Delays in Renovation Project

Presumably the trustees will be meeting in their downtown board room by then. The renovation project of the Education Center at M and Tulare street, which includes ground floor office spaces and the second-floor board room, was originally scheduled to be wrapped up this fall but has continued into December.

Wednesday’s board agenda includes two change orders that will raise the renovation cost by $254,848, to a new total of $4,855,848. The additional work includes concrete demolition and removal, hazardous material abatement, carpet and hardwood flooring, modification of HVAC equipment and controls, and “custom brass polishing and infills.”

The downtown Education Center is a former federal building that once held the main downtown U.S. Post Office and includes Works Progress Administration artwork and furnishings from when the building was constructed in 1939.

The board room will include video walls, more public seating, and a new dais for the trustees. The change orders also add 24 days to the completion date.

Since the start of the school year, the board meetings have not been broadcast live, not even on a Facebook livestream. Recordings of meetings are available within a few days on the district’s website.