Interim Schools Superintendent Susan Moxley, who has done an impressive job of cleaning up the administrative and financial messes she inherited from her overmatched and often-wrongheaded predecessor, requested a review of the district’s Human Resources Department shortly after she arrived.
Moxley knew the department was rife with problems, many of which were exacerbated during the tumultuous, four-year reign of former superintendent, Mark Rendell, who resigned in May to become the principal at Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School.
Those problems have been well-chronicled by this newspaper.
“I saw and heard some things during my first few weeks here, so I had an idea,” said Moxley, a career educator and administrator who was hired in May to run the district’s operations until a new superintendent is hired, which could happen as soon as next month.
“But I wasn’t overly familiar with where we were with our HR Department,” she added, “and I felt it was important to get input from the people who utilize those services.”
To get the answers she needed, Moxley brought in a team of experts from the Florida Association of District School Superintendents last summer to conduct a comprehensive review of the HR Department’s services and interaction with district employees.
During a three-day visit to the county in late June, FADSS consultants conducted a survey of 25 principals, interviewed district employees, spent time in the HR office, and gathered information from School Board members, HR personnel, school staffers and newly hired teachers.
The review’s findings, which FADSS sent to the district’s leadership in July, revealed a list of deficiencies that were troubling – even alarming, though not shocking – to people familiar with problems at the department.
“There wasn’t anything in the report that surprised me,” School Board Chairman Laura Zorc said. “It certainly validated what many of us already knew – that we needed to have an assistant superintendent for HR to properly oversee that department.
“Unfortunately, the previous superintendent saw that position as unnecessary and eliminated it,” she added. “Thanks to Dr. Moxley, that position has been restored.”
The district’s new assistant superintendent, Benjamin Osypian, started work in September, and Moxley said he already has begun digging into the issues cited in the 33-page FADSS report, which also included the consultants’ recommendations.
The report’s findings fell well-below the FADSS-recommended satisfaction rate of at least 90 percent: Only 60 percent of the principals queried said they were pleased with the level of service they receive from HR.
Likewise, just 60 percent reported that they began the school year with a full staff, and only 48 percent reported that they were satisfied with the support HR provides in their efforts to improve or get rid of poor or low performers.
The survey also revealed that a majority of principals said the HR Department did not routinely seek feedback and input from district staffers with the goal of improving its services, and that HR failed to provide to them on a regular basis data regarding the principals’ staffs, including staff attendance, leaves and performance.
Principals were critical of the timeliness and consistency of HR’s responses to their inquiries and the department’s failure to promptly return their phone calls and emails. The principals also called for HR to establish one set of procedures for all principals in the district.
In fact, the report states that “various staff members” shared the FADSS team’s concerns about a lack of written HR protocols and procedures – particularly for situations involving staff discipline, low performers and employee investigations – resulting in a lack of consistency in addressing such issues.
“It was reported that individuals who request [information about] how certain HR functions are handled often receive different answers from different staff members or receive conflicting responses when compared to how certain functions were handled in the past,” the report states.
Worse, the report exposed a glaring flaw in the district’s handling of employee misconduct: There’s no policy for determining what types of cases should be investigated at the school/department level, or by the HR Department or outside legal counsel.
The result has been a series of sometimes-lengthy, often-costly and usually fruitless investigations that unnecessarily were farmed out to outside attorneys.
“We’ve seen a lot of these investigations – too many of them, and they go too far,” Zorc said. “One of the first questions Dr. Moxley asked when she got here was: ‘Why are we having all these investigations?’
“She believes that we should try to deal with issues before they get to the point where there needs to be an investigation.”
For that to happen, however, district employees need to be able to trust the HR Department – something many of them have said they were unable to do during the Rendell years.
“The district’s employees need to be able to go there without fear of retaliation or fear that HR will go to their supervisors,” Zorc said.
Moxley echoed that sentiment, saying,” We want our employees to feel they have an avenue – that if they have a work-related issue, they can feel comfortable going to HR to address it.”
It’s now Osypian’s job to rid the HR Department of Rendell’s influence and create a safe and welcoming environment for employees, all while he works to produce a manual of HR policies and procedures.
“Those are high priorities and we’re addressing them,” Moxley said, adding, “My takeaway from the feedback we received in the FADSS report is that many of the HR Department’s issues could be traced to not having an assistant superintendent for almost two years.”
She didn’t mention Rendell – because she didn’t need to.
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