We continue our look at some complaints two former Manitowoc Public School District Board of Education members had about the current board.
Yesterday we addressed the issue of alleged closed-session law violations, and today we are going to look at the hiring process the board follows.
The two women, whom we will not be identifying, voiced their concerns with Seehafer News about the hiring of both Superintendent Jim Feil and Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, Jamie McCall.
They aren’t questioning why they were hired, more so why both were named to the positions full-time before they completed their interim contract or a nationwide search.
Feil noted that a nationwide search is not a requirement.
“What you are always doing is looking for the best available people,” he explained. “I take this constantly back to we have a major issue to resolve and we are going to do that. I need the very best and that’s what I have been looking for.”
The former board members also claim that McCall, whom Feil worked with during his time in Traverse City Michigan, wrote her own job description as she was in contact with Feil regarding the restructuring we spoke about yesterday.
They filed an open records request for those emails, which did include conversations about the restructure and the creation of a job description, but Feil noted, there was more in them.
“If you read closely in that communication, it said that Mike (our HR person) and I were developing that,” he explained. “You are always looking for what are others doing in this regard, including what are the job descriptions and the titles of people you are considering, in terms of what kind of work have they done.”
The women also questioned the posting of the job on the Wisconsin Education Career Access Network website if they already knew McCall was going to get the job.
Feil gave a simple reason, saying “I had no idea that I would be able to get her out of retirement.”
When asked why people already in the district weren’t given an opportunity, Board President Stacey Soeldner explained “We were looking for, all of us, someone who had many years of doing this. People internally, they may be good to move up at some point, but we need right now, people that are seasoned, have done this before.”
She also noted that it would have been a waste of time to wait for both Feil and McCall to finish their interim contract before extending them because the board knew they had the right people for the job.
Tomorrow, in the final part of our series, we are going to look over some licensure concerns.
