Guest Opinion | Jonathan Gardner: Don’t Go Outside For New PUSD HR Chief

Members of the Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre communities,

My name is Jonathan Gardner, the current President of the United Teachers of Pasadena.

This Thursday, the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education are being asked to ignore the unified consensus of teachers, principals, classified staff and choose an outsider for Chief of Human Resources while there is a trusted and competent candidate in Sarah Rudchenko, the current interim Chief of HR.

It is a HUGE blow to us as teachers and educators on the front line as we are yet again being told there will be yet another chief from out of District, who has not served in our schools, has not learned to love our community. It sends a strong and powerful message that we can’t trust the people (like Dr. Rudchenko) who have distinguished themselves as they have been provided increasing responsibility within our District and demonstrated loyalty to our PUSD students and community.

Months ago, in an interview panel with other school site staff, representation from Principals and Central Office staff, we spent a day together listening to and evaluating potential candidates for the role of Chief of Human Resources for Pasadena Unified School District.

School Services had excellent questions and the panel did an amazing job of writing down and capturing our impressions of the candidates.

At the end, we discussed our consensus. The #1 pick without a doubt was Sarah Rudchenko. There was no controversy, no doubt from any members of the interview panel.

Then we were told that information would be incorporated into the next round of interviews by the Executive Leadership Team.

I am now seeing in the PUSD Board agenda, that the candidate being recommended to start soon is NOT the choice of the frontline professional staff, but rather the reluctant 2nd choice that we were forced to provide, despite the Interview Panel objecting together that Sarah was by FAR the #1 choice.

The final say on this critical matter, as with SO many issues that have harmed our PUSD community over the years, seems as though it will be made by bureaucrats who have not served in a classroom in over a decade.

Those at the frontline are the ones yelled at, threatened, who just “deal” with inadequate systems including delayed pay and reimbursement, buildup of maintenance and operations issues, IT hiccups.

To ignore the frontline perspective is appalling. It makes all of our interview processes suspect and erodes so much of the trust PUSD has otherwise worked incredibly hard to build.

And it throws into question all of the communication that the District has been relaying around the Strategic Plan and the claim that parents, community and teacher input is valued.