A Tale of Two Superintendents
How Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez fired and hired our Temecula Superintendent of Schools
Summary: The TVUSD School Board majority fired the district’s superintendent, hired an executive search firm to find a new one, and then hired a new superintendent. Their actions warrant a closer look.
Firing Dr. McClay
In the TVUSD Governing Board meeting on June 13, 2023, Trustees Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez fired Superintendent Dr. Jodi McClay, who had served as superintendent since June 2020. The vote was 3-1. Trustee Barclay voted against; Trustee Schwartz was absent.
Before the decision, 14 people spoke in support of Dr. McClay’s leadership. One of them presented a statement signed by an additional nine previous school board trustees and five current or previous superintendents or assistant superintendents, citing the district’s instructional excellence, inclusion of parents in curriculum selection, attention to security and safety, and financial stability. No one spoke against her.
Dr. McClay was fired without cause. Without cause simply means the board had no reason to fire her. A school board doesn’t need to have a reason: the superintendent reports to them. But if the board fires a superintendent without cause, they have to buy out the remaining contract. In Dr. McClay’s case the decision to fire her cost the district $362,000 (remaining contract salary plus accrued vacation).
President Komrosky issued a statement saying, “the majority of the board determined that it was time for new leadership, with new ideas.”
The search firm
At the next regular board meeting on June 27, 2023, the agenda included an item to approve a contract with Hazard, Young, Attea Associates (HYA), a large executive search firm in the education field. The contract would pay HYA $50,000 plus expenses (advertising, travel, background checks) to search for a new superintendent.
This contract appeared in the Consent Calendar, which is a section of the agenda containing a large number of items that “are considered to be routine” and are enacted in one vote without discussion. One of the trustees asked to have that item removed from the Consent Calendar for discussion and separate vote. In the discussion, Trustees Barclay and Schwartz objected to hiring the firm without the board first talking about it. They urged the other trustees to research other search firms and obtain bids before making a decision.
Mrs. Wiersma responded, “I did the personal research with a phone call.”
The board voted 3-2 to immediately approve the contract with HYA. Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez voted in favor; Barclay and Schwartz voted against.
The search process
The process for finding a new superintendent was laid out in detail in HYA’s proposal to the district. Steps included:
Surveying the community and reporting results
Preparing selection criteria
Interviewing candidates and conducting reference checks
Presenting applications to the board
Scheduling rounds of interviews to narrow the candidate pool
Providing investigative background checks for final candidates
Helping the board make their decision “utilizing consensus building techniques”
A survey was sent out to the community in late August. Results were given to trustees but not made public. No progress reports on the superintendent search were presented at board meetings or to the community.
On Thursday, November 9 (just before the Veteran’s Day holiday), Board President Komrosky called a special meeting for the following Monday at 9:30 a.m. The agenda included only a closed-session item about employing a superintendent.
The board’s regular meeting was already scheduled for the next day, Tuesday, November 14. The same item was on that agenda for closed session, and an item titled, “Oral Summary of Recommendation Regarding Salary and/or Fringe Benefits…Superintendent” was under Action Items. Typically, action items include information about the item—rationale, comments, financial impact, and so on—often with one or more attachments. The “Oral Summary” included no information at all.
It appeared from these agendas that the board would interview candidates on Monday and hire someone on Tuesday.
At the Monday morning meeting, several people spoke in public comments (starting at 4:31 in the video) about the poor choice of a Monday morning meeting when parents and teachers could not attend, and the lack of transparency in the search process. The board went into closed session, where they reportedly interviewed three superintendent candidates. They then returned to open session and stated they had appointed Dr. Gary Woods to the post of superintendent, subject to a background check.
Who is Dr. Gary Woods?
With no information other than a name, rumors began to fly about the unknown Dr. Woods. LinkedIn showed two likely possibilities:
Dr. Gary W. Woods, whose last position in public schools was as Beverly Hills Unified School District Superintendent between July 2011 and June 2015. Most recently he was employed as a Regional Account Manager by ABM Industries, and in June 2023 Hazard, Young, Attea, the search firm the TVUSD Board hired, announced that he was joining their firm.
Dr. Gary Woods, a governing board member for Grossmont Union High School in San Diego. Online information indicates his interest in Career and Technical Education (CTE) and technology for students. He is executive director of the Equip Biblical Institute and has experience as a college professor, but no K-12 teaching or administrative credentials or experience.
Hiring Dr. Woods
It turned out to be Dr. Gary W. Woods. At the Tuesday board meeting the board voted 3-2 to hire him. Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez voted in favor; Barclay and Schwartz voted against.
In discussion before the vote, Mr. Schwartz stated that he was not given resumes or application materials for any candidates, even the ones they interviewed on Monday, and that HYA had made no background checks. He stated that he had no input on Dr. Woods’ employment contract, and that HYA said the TVUSD would have to do a background check after hiring the superintendent. Schwartz called the process “a sham.”
Mrs. Barclay said, “I’ve never seen a resume of anyone who applied to this position” nor references of any kind. Regarding Dr. Woods, she said, “I know very little about him.” She said she had hoped the board would work together to find a good superintendent and be transparent in the process, but that had not happened and the process was not transparent to either the public or the board. She also said that Interim Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Velez, who applied for the position, should have been interviewed but was not.
President Komrosky said that Dr. Woods was raised on a farm and has a good work ethic. He spoke directly to Dr. Woods (who was not present), saying, “I knew right when you walked in the room that you would inspire people.”
President Komrosky read the contract terms aloud. Contingent on a background check, Dr. Woods would start on November 27, 2023, at an annual salary of $333,116 (Column E), which may be increased by a step each year in July at the board’s discretion. He also would receive:
12 days paid sick leave
24 days of vacation in addition to holidays
A $500 per month car allowance for 9 months
Reimbursement for other expenses regarding district business
Annual memberships approved by the board
All employment benefits granted to cabinet-level employees, including a laptop and cellphone
The contract runs through June 2027 (just over 3.5 years).
Concern: Lack of transparency
Our first concern with the firing of Superintendent McClay and the hiring of Dr. Woods is the complete lack of transparency the board majority has shown since June. Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez all campaigned on a promise of transparency, but their actions are the opposite.
Firing Dr. McClay was a surprise move with no reasons and no notice given to anyone. The board never reviewed her performance. The agenda item to fire her was not specific. While the board has the right to fire the superintendent without cause, our understanding is that they violated the terms of Dr. McClay’s contract by firing her without notice.
Hiring the search firm was not transparent, either. President Komrosky inappropriately buried the agenda item to hire HYA in the Consent Calendar and then allowed no discussion of search firms or the hiring process. The board majority rushed to approve the HYA contract immediately, ignoring requests from the other board members and the public to obtain proposals and competitive bids from other firms.
In November, agenda items for the interviews and hiring decision appeared suddenly, again without information. The action item for Tuesday’s meeting was a blank page.
At no time did the board majority indicate why they had fired Dr. McClay, what “new direction” or “new ideas” they wanted from a superintendent, what the community survey had revealed, what their standards were for hiring, or where they were in the process.
As one speaker said in public comments, “Your hiring process is as transparent as mud.”
Concern: Inadequate hiring process
The trustees received no information on any of the candidates—no resumes, no applications, no references, no background checks—before the interviews and no time to do their own research before the vote was taken. Either Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez had additional information not shared with Barclay and Schwartz (which is against the law), or they made a snap judgment based solely on an initial impression, not on facts and background.
And why the rush? Why was a special meeting on a Monday morning needed? The board could have interviewed candidates at their regular meeting the next day and then taken time to learn more about them before choosing one—or interviewing additional candidates—at a following meeting. The district has been running well under Dr. Velez. There was no need for haste.
It’s hard to imagine that HYA earned their $50,000+. The hiring process did not even follow HYA’s own guidelines:
Results of the community survey were never released to the public, nor were the Leadership Profile or selection criteria by which candidates would be judged.
The board did not conduct initial interviews or narrow the slate of candidates.
Trustees received no information about references HYA might have contacted or how they responded.
No site visits to applicants’ places of work occurred. Trustees had no opportunity to talk with applicants’ co-workers.
Trustees received no resumes or application materials to review, either before or during their interviews with the three candidates.
HYA conducted no background checks.
In addition, the fact that Dr. Woods was an employee of HYA since June was never mentioned to the board or the public.
THIS IS NOT how you hire anyone, let alone an executive to head an organization with 33 locations, some 2800 employees, and a budget of $409 million. This is NOT how you decide to lock that organization into a 3.5-year contract worth well over a million dollars.
Our Temecula community—parents, teachers, students, staff, taxpayers—expected the hiring process to be transparent and the trustees to do the job well. This complete lack of care is a slap in the face to us all.
Concern: Dr. Woods’ suitability for the job
The rush to hire Dr. Woods is particularly concerning because of his recent lack of related experience.
He has not been directly involved in public school education for the last eight years, since he left the Beverly Hills superintendent position. During that time public schools have experienced many changes and challenges, none of which he knows first-hand.
His positions as superintendent were with Beverly Hills Unified and, before that, with San Marino Unified. Both these school districts are a fraction the size of TVUSD and located in very wealthy areas. Beverly Hills isn’t even funded the same way as TVUSD. They are a “basic aid” district, which means their property taxes exceed the amount the state provides to other districts. Their schools get to use that extra tax money; they have more money per pupil than we do.
Yet during his tenure at BHUSD the district had “cash flow” problems that required their borrowing $8 million from a $10 million reserve fund and then an additional $5 million from the county. The district also filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Metro and began spending bond funds set aside for infrastructure improvements on legal costs to block or change the subway route.
We understand that the superintendent doesn’t approve lawsuits or payments to attorneys—the local Board of Education does that, as we have clearly seen in the past year. But it might have been worthwhile to find out more about what happened and what Dr. Woods’ role was in these expenditures before hiring him.
Since leaving BHUSD in 2015, Dr. Woods’ experience according to his LinkedIn profile has been completely unrelated to public education. Any normal pre-employment investigation would consider why his recent experience has been so different:
2015-2020: Head of School at American University Preparatory School, an extremely small private boarding school in Los Angeles, reported as "the brainchild of Chinese billionaire Wei Huang” in a 2014 L.A. Times article.
2020-2021: Principal at Villa Esperanza Services, an organization serving individuals with developmental disabilities
2020-2022 with Intelektus, described (in poor English) on LinkedIn as a professional training and coaching company
2022-2023: Regional Account Manager at ABM Industries
June 2023: Associate at HYA (not acknowledged in his LinkedIn resume but verified in a LinkedIn announcement from HYA)
Dr. Woods may be an outstanding choice as our new superintendent, but Komrosky’s, Wiersma’s, and Gonzalez’s rush to hire him completely ignored reasonable questions about his background and recent experience.
Why did the board majority hire Dr. Woods?
Why did Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez saddle us with an unknown superintendent for the next 3.5 years? Perhaps they rushed to hire someone they could control, before they lose their majority position on the board either through recall or by Mr. Gonzalez’ rumored move (apparently his house is for sale, and speculation says he is moving to Texas for business reasons—or to be near family, or because the job of trustee has caused too much stress for his young family).
But where do their actions leave us? If the three no longer hold the majority, the superintendent must follow a new majority’s directions. If the new majority are not happy with his performance, we’ll be stuck with him unless they buy out his contract. How is that fair to the district?
We need trustees who actually care about Temecula students and want to do a good job as trustees for our public schools.
Please join us in signing the recall petition
We need trustees who are fiscally responsible, who listen to other viewpoints, who take reasonable care before making decisions, and who keep the focus on education, not politics or their own power. Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez have proved that they are not the trustees we want.
Please sign the recall petition NOW. There are only a few days left until the petition must be turned into the County Registrar of Voters on December 8.
Sign at the Duck Pond Saturday and Sunday, December 2 and 3, any time from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Text 951-595-7437 and a volunteer will meet you to sign at your convenience.