As we proceed to the final stages of the superintendent search in Duval County, Florida, we come down to those tense moments when the two finalists have done in-person interviews and board members have to make a decision. They had already folded in the fall and opted to restart in January, but they don’t have that option now. A choice must be made.

Thursday, May 23 the call will be made. School Board members have to lay their cards on the table and decide. The meeting begins at 9 AM.

There are two candidates left. Of the two, one has recently resigned from Lee County, FL because they are changing to an elected superintendent and he preferred to be an appointed superintendent. The other is Chief of Schools for Loudon County, VA who acted as temporary superintendent for a year.

The latter, Daniel Smith, said that he was asked to apply to be the permanent superintendent, but he declined as he was focused on his work at hand and didn’t want to be distracted by the extra workload of prepping for a hiring process.

Of the two, I found Christopher Bernier to make the better impression. In his semi-finalist submission, it seemed he talked in general, vague terms, using jargon in place of actually saying something, but that was not true of his interview. Many of the questions were based upon current problems in the district, but did not telegraph that connection.

Bernier used opportunities to speak directly to the issues. He had read news reports, researched facts, and was ready. One issue particularly stood out in his responses to both the focus group and the board: the master facilities plan that proposed closing many schools and re-organizing neighborhood zones into feeder patterns.

Bernier said that the community uproar was caused by the fact that the superintendent’s plan from consultants came as a surprise. It was dropped upon everyone, including the board, without warning. He called that an error and said that, before developing a plan, the district has to go to the community, describe the issue, and solicit input that would be used to develop a plan. As ideas come in, incorporate them into the process. In the end, not everyone will get what they want, but they need to believe that their input was valued in the process.

On ethical issues, he emphasized the need to maintain integrity because once that is sacrificed, the person is done. He framed it as “how do you behave when no one is watching.”

He talked about “listening to learn.” People join an organization for “impact and purpose.” His biggest issues he worked on in Lee County were communication, compensation, human resources, and transportation. He talked about how they discovered the high cost of providing transportation for choice schools.

Communication is key. “I discovered that when I got sick of talking about something, people were just beginning to hear me. I had to keep repeating myself.”

Also, data is important to improve processes. He had standing meetings with all his key leaders every two weeks.

Building relationships with people is also key. “Trust is a bank deposit. You have to make many deposits before you make a withdrawal.” He said he immediately reached out to key people when he first arrived in Lee County, including local and state politicians. Having these in place was a huge help in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and he was dealing with $350 million in property damage, restarting operations while using grace and compassion in working with impacted employees.

He would meet with teachers and other staff groups to focus on their needs. He finds that teacher issues (beside compensation) involve discipline and school culture. However, he also said that the district’s job is to teach teachers the right thing to do and that the district must monitor, walk through classrooms, and have chats with teachers, but he tried to make clear that such chats would not be gotcha in nature, but supportive and collaborative.

He talked about finding operation efficiencies in the budget and working with employee groups, but admitted that Lee had not contracted out basic services like Duval had and that meant reviewing the contract language before anything else could be done.

Daniel Smith offered similar approaches, but he didn’t seem as knowledgeable about Duval, a slight surprise because his semifinalist submission seemed to indicate otherwise. For example, he talked about using communications systems to inform parents about absences. Duval already does that. He called it nudging and it’s efficacy is based on research, but again, Duval already does that. In a red flag for me, he said that parents want to hear from teachers when their child is absent. (One more thing to do!)

He talked about the advisory groups he formed when he was the acting superintendent: teachers, principals, and students. His biggest issue was rebuilding trust when the board dismissed the superintendent for retaliating against an employee.

Leadership involves humility; good leaders should admit mistakes. (Bernier said something similar.) Good leaders surround themselves with a good team.

When it comes to controversial issues, he said it was important for the district to get people to understand the why for the decisions being made.

He didn’t have much to say about the rebuilding plan. It was something he would have to familiarize himself with if he gets the job. Many of his answers seemed to say the same thing.

He said it was important for district leadership, especially the superintendent, to be in schools and classrooms to know what is really going on.

He also talked about the need for a superintendent to have working relationships with legislators. In one of the funniest lines of the day and he had no idea that it was, he talked about a pending law in Virginia that would have caused great difficulty for schools to implement the mandate. He was successful in getting a change to provide flexibility for districts because he got the legislature to change a word in the bill–from shall to may.

The above is from my notes taken at the community focus group interviews. The 1 PM interview of Smith overlapped with the board interview of Bernier. I elected to stay with the focus group for consistency as I had attended their morning interview of Bernier.

When the focus group was done, I moved to the board interviews. The questions were the same with different phrasing for the most part and the answers were the same. It was a surprise, then, to see Smith stumped at a couple times when all he had to do was repeat his answer to the focus group.

But Smith seemed more nervous with the board. Bernier was more like I’m an equal among equals; Smith seemed more like a subordinate being grilled by his bosses. To make sure I was not being unfair, I watched the recording of the Bernier interview with the Board Tuesday afternoon.

Many of those chosen for the community focus group were insiders: both Carolyn Davises, Lawrence Dennis, Trey Csar, Rachel Tutwiler among others. What was interesting was that some people introduced themselves as representing District 1, 3, 5, or 7; no one did that for District 2, 4, or 6.

Another person who came for the interviews was former superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals (2007-2012). He attended both Bernier interviews, but skipped the Smith interviews. Does that mean we can infer who the insiders (once known as the Duval Mafia) are pulling for?

My last impression is audience size. Half the seats were filled in the morning, many of them local media. I overheard some of them discussing how they would cover both 1 PM interviews, but the focus group room was mostly empty at that time. I figured they were in the other room, but when I got there, it was almost empty. Did they bail? (Not all of them. I could tell from her lanyard that the WJXT reporter had stayed.)

Raise, fold, or call. My conclusion is that either man brings essentially the same skill set–not much difference between them; however, Bernier holds an edge as far as knowing the Florida landscape and putting more effort into his performance, including a Saturday tour of school campuses across the city. He couldn’t go into the buildings, but he could pull into the parking lot to get an impression of the state of the facilities and the layout and how that impacts school operations.

Thursday, May 23, 9 AM, Cline Auditorium, 1701 Prudential Drive. That is when the School Board will meet and make their choice.