In his own letter to the school board, Whelan highlighted a 2018 investigation by The Daily Herald that found the firm had “mishandled several high-profile searches in recent years,” after a superintendent in Des Plaines, Illinois, resigned following sexual assault allegations. Leo Whelan, another Highland Park resident who has conducted significant research on the hiring firm, raised issues with HYA’s past recommendations in other districts. The three agreed to pay any fees incurred for terminating HYA’s contract. The letter was co-signed by Tyler Beeson, who also ran for the school board in May, and Robert T. Siino’s letter to trustees said it is “nearly impossible that an outside search firm would select the kind of traditional educator demanded by our community.” However, Siino was concerned trustees would bow to pressure from the “highly politicized” Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) and Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), as well as superintendent search firms that exclusively guide school districts to hire candidates with the same background as Trigg, “ensuring increasingly woke curriculum.” The news was welcome to many parents who have said the district is increasingly focused on critical race theory, radical gender theory, and other leftist ideology at the expense of core academics. “I campaigned on replacing HPISD’s superintendent with a traditional educator as opposed to the progressive educators with PhDs in ‘Educational Leadership’ that populate 99 percent of the superintendent seats in the United States,” Siino told Texas Scorecard following the news of Trigg’s departure. Siino ran for a seat on the Highland Park school board in May. He said the HYA website is “littered with woke, social justice platitudes” and “makes no mention of academic achievement, college placement, parental rights, or teacher empowerment.”įront and center on the HYA website is a requirement that “candidates … must have recent, relevant, and demonstrated experience in successfully addressing opportunity gaps, leading with an equity lens, and advancing equity initiatives. “In hiring HYA, you have made clear your intention to select an ultra-Progressive Superintendent to continue HPISD down the path of technology led, highly politicized schools,” Siino said in a November 28 letter to the district’s board of trustees. Highland Park Independent School District, a high-performing district of about 7,000 students in Dallas’ wealthy Park Cities enclave, hired the firm after Superintendent Tom Trigg announced in October he would be resigning at the end of the school year. Highland Park parent Spencer Siino says Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates-which specializes in candidates focused on social justice rather than academics-is “the worst possible search firm” for the conservative community. Trigg did not give a reason for his retirement.A classical education advocate in North Texas is calling for his local school district to fire the “woke” search firm hired to select a new superintendent and instead form a search committee composed of community members with a history of advocating for traditional academic learning. READ MORE: Political mailer accuses Highland Park ISD of being influenced by liberal politics The retirements come after a tumultuous few years including fights over COVID health protocols and what is and is not allowed to be taught in classrooms.įormer Dallas ISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa and ex-Fort Worth ISD superintendent Kent Scribner both pointed to the politicization of school board meetings as part of their reason for stepping down. Several of the districts have found replacements for their superintendent position.
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