Last spring, the Upper School Principal Search Committee first came together to begin reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for the position of Upper School principal. Nearly six months later, they made their recommendation to Head of School Jessica Bagby, but she decided not to hire any of the three finalists.
“Finding the next leader of this Upper School was not going to be super easy here,” Bagby said at an Upper School assembly on Thursday January 5th. “New York is a challenging place for people to come and afford to live if you are an educator. And, for whatever reason, this school has a little bit of a reputation for being tough on administrators.”
Jessica Bagby began the search process by defining what she felt the school needed in a leader. Then the search committee, which includes faculty members Nancy Banks, Jameel Freeman, Debbie Goldman, Clare Mottola, John Reyes, Jen Tammi and Noni Thomas Lopez and student government co-presidents, Azeez Adeyemi and Beth Awano, gathered data on what the community valued in a principal by online surveys and meetings with many constituents.
“The objective of the committee is to have all the different voices of the Upper School Fieldston community represented so that all their concerns and values are on the table,” Reyes said. He noted that most people on the committee had prior experience in principal searches and that there were very few “newbies.”
Once there was a general consensus about what the community hoped for in their leader, the committee met with the Carney Sandoe hiring agency. The agency held drop-in sessions during Fieldston lunches, open to all community members, to get even more feedback on what the Fieldston Upper School sought in a principal.
“Since I was able to attend all of the meetings, I learned what values I appreciated in a principal: the ability to work with the student body, the drive to get stuff done, and the genuine desire to bring positive change to the community,” Sam Caplan (IV) said.
Then, the committee read resumes provided by the agency, interviewed candidates via Skype, and invited semi-finalists to visit the school to have drop-in sessions with students and faculty as well as to meet with the search committee and head of school. Next, the committee reviewed feedback on the candidates from students and faculty, choosing three finalists to return for a longer visit. From the finalist pool, Jessica Bagby had the final say in choosing which candidate to hire. Taking all of the feedback into account, Bagby made the surprising decision not to hire any of the candidates. Instead, she asked Bob Cairo to continue as interim principal for the next two years, at which point the principal search will resume.
“I think that we got some really decent human beings in our search,” Bagby said at the January 5th assembly. “But what troubles me about what happened to those decent human beings on our search is that they became emblematic of their racial identity. There were people who said, ‘This school will never have the courage to hire a white man in the current climate,’ or ‘this school will never have the courage to hire a black man in the current climate,’ or ‘this school will never have the courage to hire a woman in the current climate.’ Well, when they say ‘this school,’ I guess they mean me. I have hired all sorts of people in my time. What I did not have the heart to do was to set somebody up for only being a white man despite who he was in his fullness. I wasn’t going to set a black man up for the other side of that situation. It did not feel like we were in a place to be led and to embrace any of those people. The polarization was too much. And I’m always thinking about how to care for the community and how to care for all people, and how the folks that we bring in will lead and care for the community. I felt like I was in a Catch-22, and I felt as if I was going to take a beating no matter what I did. I even looked at Mr. Cairo and said, ‘You’re a white man. Is it okay for you to be the principal here?’ because the polarization around people’s racial identities in this search was absolutely ridiculous.”
“The finalists met all the criteria to a certain degree,” Reyes said. “Ideally we would have loved someone who had everything that we were looking for in great quantity –– lots of experience, a teacher’s teacher, working with a larger school, and interested in moving. But there will be times in any search where people may not feel comfortable entering a job search. There may be people out there that meet the criteria but are well-liked at their school and happy where they are. It would be hard to get them to throw their hat into the ring. We are a great school that deserves great leadership.”
“It became clear that the community was reducing the candidates down to their identifiers rather than evaluating them based on their credentials and if they would be a good fit for our school,” Awano said. “This made choosing a candidate who would be wholeheartedly and fairly welcomed into the community impossible. Mr. Cairo is also incredibly fit for the position. He has proven to be a strong principal and ally to students and teachers alike. If going through the search was what we needed to do in order to arrive at this resolution, I would have to say it has been more than worthwhile.”
“Mr. Cairo will be our principal for the next two years,” Tom Christensen, one of the search committee’s co-chairs, said. “Hiring someone for an important position like Upper School principal requires a fair amount of lead-time. Gathering information from the community and speaking to search companies like Carney Sandoe often starts well in advance of the interview process. It is my understanding that our committee is done with its work and that there will be a new committee formed when the school starts a new search.”
In two years, a new search committee will form and begin the long, tedious and thorough search process again. But for now, the committee and the head of school are proud to have Cairo as the principal.
“We all feel very strongly that Mr. Cairo has been and will continue to be a great principal,” Christensen said. “He knows the school, students, faculty, parents and staff well and has been a fantastic leader for the past two years. There are a number of initiatives that we have started to work on in the last few years such as schedule changes, student wellness and fostering more diversity and inclusiveness in our community. I think it will be easier to move forward in these important areas with Mr. Cairo as principal since he has been working in these areas already and understands clearly what we need to do as we move forward.”
Cairo hopes to make his next two years as interim principal seamless, allowing for the community to move forward, encouraging inclusive and honest communication and focusing on solving problems to the benefit of the Fieldston community. He is focused on student wellness, schedule changes, increasing the multicultural aspects of the curriculum, and educating the community on gender identity and race.
“I want to address the stress points in the lives of our students and the gaps in their social emotional education,” Cairo said. “Three years ago we created a few task forces with the goal of examining and improving the quality of life in the Upper School. Last year we hired Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a nationally known psychologist, to review our K-12 health and wellness program. We have retained her for two more years. With her assistance, we are beginning to develop a 9-12 social-emotional learning and health and well being (SEL-HWB) curriculum that will be part of a comprehensive K-12 program and that we hope to phase in starting in 2017-2018,” Cairo said. “We are also addressing several areas of the school life that have an impact on student wellness. One of the themes of our faculty meetings has been ‘connecting with students.’ This ties in closely with intersectionality and the need to affirm the multiple identities of our students.”
Cairo plans on going over homework and assessment policies, monitoring the workload and making sure the test calendar is utilized in every class. He wants to make sure that teachers of the same course have consistency in expectations and that “crunch weeks,” especially the weeks before winter and spring break, are minimized. In addition, Cairo is working with Grace Yun, assistant principal, and a consultant from Independent School Management to develop scheduling models that allow for more program flexibility, support progressive and interdisciplinary learning, and foster student wellness. They hope to implement the new schedule in the 2018-2019 school year.
Some of Cairo’s greatest concerns focus on identity.
“One goal is to continue to educate the community about gender identity and intersectional equality,” Cairo said. “To that end, we invited Bear Bergman to Fieldston as an Educator in Residence to work with different groups within the Upper School on identity and intersectionality. In addition, we are in the process of formulating a school-wide policy on gender accommodations that will include bathrooms, change areas, and sleeping arrangements on trips. The other important goal is to continue to educate the community on race, bias and stereotyping, to enhance the multicultural components of our curriculum, and to eliminate stereotyping and micro-aggressions in our interactions with one another. Randy Slaughter and I are creating a mechanism for an ongoing discussion of race that addresses issues of the curriculum and school culture. We are in the process of creating a common agenda for various constituencies and groups within the school. We are committed to responding to the S.D.I.E. demands with demonstrated actions in hiring teachers, admitting students, educating about race, responding to racial offenses, and changing the curriculum.”
Cairo is grateful for the determination of the administrative team and faculty to achieve these goals and move forward. “We believe this is a year of transformation that presents us with unique opportunities for growth as a school community.”
