While former superintendent Bill Sanderson went on leave on Oct. 22 and will resign next June, some community members are asking questions regarding how he was hired in the first place in 2022 and why damaging information that may have contributed to his exit wasn’t given to the board then.
Sanderson — whose exit came after months of tensions with parents, community members and teachers about his leadership style — is being paid 10 months of his base salary of $308,448 along with health benefits until June 30, 2025, in exchange for waiving all rights to sue the district for any reason, according to board president Misty Davies.
Questions surrounding Sanderson’s employment and qualifications date back to when he was still at the district, when community members raised concerns surrounding his lack of a teaching credential, a state requirement that the board waived retroactively during a Sept. 24 board meeting.
In the two-and-a-half years between Sanderson’s first contract and the board’s September revisions, a clause explicitly stated that he must “maintain in full force and effect all credentials required to teach and to serve as an educational administrator in the State of California,” which he did not fulfill.
While Davies and others have dismissed these concerns as a non-issue — citing that many superintendents lack this credential or have allowed it to lapse — the question of his contract’s written requirements for the credential and the board’s awareness of those requirements remain.
Davies mentioned that the district’s lawyers had originally dismissed the lack of teaching credential as a non-issue during Sanderson’s hiring. According to trustee Katherine Tseng, who served as board president during Sanderson’s hiring, the change made in September was also informed by the district’s lawyers.
Similar concerns arose on Oct. 22, the day of Sanderson’s announced leave, when anonymous community members obtained and distributed public records from Georgia’s Professional Standards Commission related to his tenure as principal of Inman Middle School from 2002-03.
The two documents — an investigative case summary and consent order — accused Sanderson of discussing inappropriate topics and creating a toxic workplace environment, which led to a one-month suspension of Sanderson’s Georgia educator certifications, from Feb. 25 to March 25, 2005.
According to Tseng, these documents were never uncovered in the background checks done by Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA), the search firm hired by the board whose superintendent search helped bring Sanderson to LGSUHSD.
HYA has stated that it conducts preliminary background searches on all candidates but will look deeper only at the request of the board, which can ask for extensive due diligence checks that uncover all relevant information.
Tseng recalled that the board had questioned Sanderson on his employment history when the topic of his time in the South came up. She said the board received a satisfactory answer, which ultimately did not affect her view of Sanderson’s employability.
Similarly, former trustee Peter Hertan, vice president of the board during the last superintendent search, thinks the two documents should have been discovered during their search but maintained that the board’s decision would not have changed.
“When you interview people for executive jobs, there’s no substitute for a long-term period of success,” Hertan said, referring to Sanderson’s tenure of almost 16 years at San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), where he successfully served in multiple managerial and administrative roles.
As for Sanderson’s alleged behavior in Georgia, Hertan said that the board would have done more research into the allegations and concerns if they had been made aware of them. His current perspective is that the accusations in the consent order indicate bad judgment and a one-time mistake of someone who has since learned their lesson.
Previous concerns smooth out following change in leadership
While developments surrounding Sanderson’s employment arose, disagreements surrounding some of the district’s recent policy implementations during his tenure have moved toward resolutions in recent weeks.
Hours after Sanderson’s announced leave on Oct. 22, it was announced that flyers for the music program’s annual Cookie Dough Fundraiser could be posted around the school. The advertising had previously been banned due to district concerns that it would violate federal law under National School Lunch Program guidelines.
The music department’s plans to host a concerto competition on Dec. 6 and a CMEA music festival in March — both of which were previously canceled as a result of the conflicts with the district — are now moving forward. Before an agreement was reached on Oct. 28 allowing planning to continue, this would have been the first year in Saratoga High’s history where its ensembles did not attend the CMEA festival.
Another controversy surrounded a $1 million deficit in what the district should be spending on teacher salaries. To solve the issue, the board unanimously approved during their Nov. 12 meeting a waiver exempting the district from the state requirement to dedicate 50% of all revenue to classroom compensation.
Jennifer Young, a Los Gatos math teacher and president of the District Teachers Association (DTA), spoke in opposition to approving the waiver, criticizing the way the district had applied for it.
To waive the requirement, the district must show that its teacher salaries are higher than three comparable local districts — it chose Campbell Union High School District (CUHSD), East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD) and Los Gatos Union School District (LGUSD).
However, Young pointed out that the waiver compared the district’s salaries for the current school year, after the recent 8% raise across the board to other districts’ salaries from last school year.
Additionally, she noted that ESUHSD is not a basic-aid district like LGSUHSD, meaning it receives funding in a different way (average daily attendance), and LGUSD is an elementary and middle school district with an entirely different set of credential requirements.
According to assistant superintendent of business services Ruben Fernandez, the district worked closely with the county office of education — which will review the waiver and likely approve it later this year — to compile data and choose comparable districts to determine if their salaries are currently competitive.
District leadership and the school board have also begun to try to improve communication, which has been cited by Davies and others as the main contributor to the widening rift between district leadership, the community and employee groups such as teachers.
The board will reinstate a policy of having so-called office hours, providing opportunities to all community members, staff and students, to air grievances or raise concerns. According to Davies, specific dates for office hours will be announced to the community through email once schedules are sorted out.
The practice had previously been used around the time of the pandemic, but was stopped due to concerns that community members might accidentally trigger a serial meeting — unofficial meetings with individual board members on the same topic that form a majority consensus and violate the Brown Act.
Separately, acting superintendent Heath Rocha has spearheaded efforts to improve the bond between school sites and the district office through monthly visits between each school. Along with other colleagues on the district leadership team, Rocha will dedicate an entire day each month to visiting classrooms and hosting lunch with a specific department at either Los Gatos or Saratoga High.
Rocha began the process on Nov. 8 with a visit to Los Gatos High’s electives department, and will visit the SHS social studies department on Nov. 22.
Board begins process to search for new superintendent
In a unanimous 4-0 vote — with board clerk Alex Schultz unable to attend — the school board officially appointed Rocha, who also serves as assistant superintendent of student services, to his added role of acting superintendent during their Nov. 12 meeting.
Rocha will assume both roles within the district through June 30, 2025, receiving his regular base salary as assistant superintendent of $251,216. He will also receive an additional per diem rate — an allowance paid five days per week for lodging, meals and miscellaneous expenses — of $275 until the same date, which totals to around $50,000.
Starting next semester, Rocha plans to reduce his commitment to his assistant superintendent position by 25%, and may hire additional help to fill in that gap for around 10 hours per week.
With the transition to Rocha’s leadership complete, the board will soon begin a search for a superintendent to fill the position permanently.
This process, which often takes three to six months to complete, will start early next year, usually with the hiring of a search firm to conduct a national search for candidates through various online job postings.
If Rocha decides to apply as an internal candidate, he will likely be combined with the rest of the applicant pool to guarantee a transparent search for the most qualified person, according to Hertan.
During their last search, which resulted in Sanderson’s hiring, the district employed HYA for its reputation as one of the nation’s leading superintendent search firms.
The firm, in conjunction with district leadership and the board, will conduct surveys of the community and interview teachers, students and parents to determine a profile for the district’s ideal candidate.
Following a round of initial interviews of each candidate carried out by the search firm, a list of around six finalists for the job will be presented to the board, with the firm conducting more thorough vetting and background checks at the district’s request.
After two to three rounds of further interviewing, the board will narrow their selection down to a single candidate, with alternative choices ready in case issues arise.
Hertan recalls that Sanderson was one such alternative choice. The board had originally been unanimous in their support for a highly qualified candidate from the East Coast, but after negotiations stalled and disagreements came up, they pivoted to choose Sanderson, who also received unanimous approval.
Once a final candidate is locked in, board members will direct any further research they deem necessary — which, in the case of Sanderson, was a visit to SFUSD, where he worked at the time, and interviews with SFUSD staff and community members.
Finally, a contract will be drawn up and the candidate will be officially appointed at a board meeting. As a whole, hiring HYA and conducting the last superintendent search cost the board $26,311, according to the board’s warrants of payment.
According to Davies, discussions on the specifics of the coming superintendent search have yet to begin, and more formal announcements will take place in the next calendar year’s regular board meetings.
“We haven’t had a chance to put [the superintendent search] on an agenda to discuss how we’re going to do it,” Davies said in an interview with the Falcon on Nov. 1. “We all just want to take a breath for a minute before we have that discussion.”
While he said he is not as aware of the community’s attitudes since he left the board in 2022, Hertan still emphasizes one thing to the board and any future superintendent: the importance of listening, especially in a small, two-school district with unique academic and athletic needs.
“You’re the caretaker of a set of responsibilities and money, to achieve an outcome for the community,” Hertan said. “So you really have to listen to understand what the community is expecting you to do […] You have to have leadership skills to be able to translate [regulations and restrictions] into something successful.”
