GETTING RID OF A HEADHUNTER:

When the KISD school board needed a new school superintendent in 1995, they interviewed all the superintendent head hunters that were available at the time.  (I had wanted us to take charge of the process ourselves, but that was not what the majority wanted. I believe that it is not difficult to find a superintendent, and that the expense incurred is very unnecessary.)

One of the applicants was the same fellow who had brought KISD Superintendent Hugh Hayes.  When that occurred in the late 1980's, I was "just a parent," and I went to hear this fellow speak about what kind of a superintendent he was bringing us.

After the meeting, I approached him and handed him a card with my name and phone number on it, and said to him that I had some reservations about this superintendent.  I had read Saturday Night Lights, and it looked to me like we were getting ready to pick up Odessa Ector ISD's cast off. (Hayes at that District had spent more money on flying around a football team than covering the expenses of the English Departments.) 

The headhunter never called.

Fast forward seven or eight years, and we're questioning the headhunter applicants, and I finally get a turn, and I remind him of his previous efforts for KISD and that I had talked to him after his presentation and given him an opportunity to talk to me about his superintendent selection, but he never called.

He admitted that he recalled that event and that he indeed had never bothered to call me.

I paused a moment, looked him in the eye and said, "Came back to bite you, didn't it?"

My fellow board members were mortified, but that needed to be said to the guy. 

The fact that these people think that they are too good to respond to the citizens who are paying for them is real and unconscionable.

He didn't get the job--not that it made any difference because they're all alike, but it made me feel better!