Lake Wales Charter Schools narrows search for superintendent to 5
Correction: Emilean Clemons name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story. In addition, she did not teach at Lake Wales High School. Polk County Public Schools Regional Superintendent John Hill wrote her a recommendation letter and PCPS Superintendent Frederick Heid is listed as a reference.
LAKE WALES — It has been one year since Lake Wales Charter Schools Superintendent Jesse Jackson announced his resignation and the state’s only city charter school system began a nationwide search for a new leader.
The system is now within weeks of hiring a new superintendent.
A field of 25 candidates has been narrowed to five people, who were interviewed via Zoom on Thursday. On Monday, the Superintendent Search Committee will meet to whittle the list even more to the finalists, who will participate in in-person interviews, one-on-one talks with school board members, and community meet-and-greets Feb. 9-11.
“We’ve got a very good balance and very strong candidates,” said Bill Vogel, a consultant with the Florida School Boards Association, which is facilitating the search, and a former superintendent of Sarasota County Public Schools. “We have a current superintendent, we have a dean from the college, who is very familiar with the area and involved in the community, a successful high school principal, a district director who leads 50 charter schools, and an internal candidate who has been a successful administrator. The board will have a difficult time making a choice.”
Previously: Lake Wales Charter School District going through changes
And: Jesse Jackson leaving after dustup with board
In 2004, Lake Wales officials moved to convert the city’s seven schools to charters — the teachers at five schools voted to convert and the city subsequently added two charter middle schools.
In 2013, the state made Lake Wales a “local education agency,” which meant Lake Wales was its own school district — albeit one without elected officials who could be held accountable by voters. Like Polk County Public Schools, its board hires a superintendent to run its operations.
Here are the five remaining candidates for superintendent:
Emilean Clemons
Emilean Clemons is a homegrown candidate, who was raised in Lake Wales, attended its schools, graduated from Lake Wales High School in 1974, then returned to teach at schools in her hometown. .
She is the principal of Bartow High School, overseeing the unique setup that includes three distinct schools in one: Bartow High School, Summerlin Academy and The International Baccalaureate School at Bartow High.
“It is of utmost importance to me that I lead with integrity and demonstrate positive character traits in whatever I do,” Clemons wrote to the selection committee. “As a Christian, I strive to live in a manner — personally and professionally — that portrays Biblical standards. In my visibility throughout the school and community, my conversations with stakeholders, or my communication with maintenance staff, I do my best to show support with a positive attitude, yet directly addressing any issues or problems that arise.”
At BHS, she implemented several career academies through which students can graduate with professional certification and walk into a well-paying job in the workforce.
“One of the reasons for Bartow High School’s improvement is Emilean's investment in career and technical education programs,” Steve Cochran, Polk County Public Schools’ senior director of multiple pathways education, wrote in a recommendation letter. “Emilean utilized the National Career Academy Coalition standards to build an academy system that is among the best in the state. Bartow High School has four model academies which are toured annually by visitors from across the nation, hoping to emulate her programs.”
Clemons began her education career at Polk Avenue Elementary and McLaughlin Middle schools before moving up to administration at Bartow High School.
“Lake Wales is very dear to my heart, as I was born and raised in Lake Wales attended all Lake Wales schools, was a graduate of the final class that graduated from the original high school,” Clemons said in a video presentation to the selection committee. "I'm excited to see the revitalization that is going on with that school and I just think it's a tremendous opportunity for our students.”
Clemons said she has forged valuable relationships with Polk County Public Schools' leaders — Regional Superintendent John Hill wrote her a recommendation letter and Superintendent Frederick Heid is listed as a reference — something she feels she could utilize to the advantage of the charter school district.
“I feel that those relationships could be a bridge between providing additional resources and supports for the Lake Wales Charter School System, while maintaining the autonomy that the Lake Wales charter School System has enjoyed for their school leaders, their district leaders, as well as their school principals.”
One way Clemons said she has led is by allowing special education students to participate in the elective classes that enrich their lives, like music, chorus, and fine art.
The one mistake she said she has learned from involved a parent-teacher conference in which a parent began verbally abusing a teacher — something Clemons said she was completely unprepared for and still brings tears to her eyes when she thinks about it.
“I underestimated the volatility of the situation,” Clemons said. “I had no idea that I was walking into a situation where there was potential for disaster...it was like I froze and I was just, I just didn't know what to do. I finally was able to end the conference. Of course, my teacher, she was crushed. After the parent left, I just held her and we both cried together — she also was experiencing a difficult time with an illness with her dad at the time and I was just absolutely mortified that I had participated in a situation where one person treated another person so badly.”
She said she now expresses expectations of all participants in meetings so people know not to cross the line from constructive complaining into verbal abuse.
“I believe that this gives the opportunity for everyone present to voice their concerns, yet it enables me, as the facilitator, to ensure the meeting is conducted in a professional manner and it saves everyone the grief of being verbally attacked or feeling that they haven't been heard,” Clemons said.
Clemons holds a doctorate in education from Southeastern University.
In case you missed it: Polk County School Board approves teachers union contract
P.J. D’Aoust
P.J. D’Aoust has spent his career with Palm Beach County Public Schools, the 10th largest school district in the country. He has worked his way up from teacher to the current director of charter schools, overseeing 50 charter schools with 22,000 students, and fiscal oversight of $250 million.
“I recently visited Lake Wales and it felt like the town where I grew up and raised my children,” D’Aoust said in his letter to LWCS and in a video response to several questions. “Plain and simple it felt right and I view this opportunity as a destination not a stepping stone.”
He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of South Florida and has two graduate degrees: a master’s in elementary education from Florida Atlantic University and a specialist degree in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.
He has also served as director of the department overseeing the full-time equivalent students, responsible for all financial and academic reporting for more than 195,000 pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students and 10,000 adult students, and the generation of $1.5 billion in operational funding services for more than 250 district and charter schools.
He led the district’s COVID-19 response, developing district student tracking tools, virtual kindergarten roundup, virtual summer programs and student engagement. And he has lobbied the legislature on behalf of the district and “engineered a mental health process.”
As a middle school principal at the district's largest middle school — with more than 1,600 students and 120 staff members and an $8 million budget — he increased academic achievement scores in seven of eight categories in reading, science, math, and writing. Under his leadership, the school also earned adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind program – the only traditional secondary school in Palm Beach County in 2010 to achieve this.
He is also the president of the Palm Beach County School District Staff Association, a professional organization that represents more than 1,500 staff members that support student achievement and district operations.
He describes himself as “child centered and family oriented,” with a commitment to the local community, and someone wo has established relationships with local and state government, community and business leaders, with a proven ability to change culture and systems in a large urban district.
He said one of the projects he is most proud of was a complete overhaul of the district’s student information computer system.
“As director of FTE student information, he sponsored and executed the largest public-facing IT project in our district's history, moving us off our legacy mainframe student system to a modern platform,” said Jay Boggess, Palm Beach County public schools’ chief of staff. “Just moving the data was a task, but, in the process, he was able to challenge district leadership to redefine business practices and enhance the student experience. The project was massive, but with strict project management, the student information system was a great success. The SIS was implemented in 250 sites and has become a household word in Palm Beach, allowing administrators, principles, teachers, students, and parents unfettered access into student academic records in real time.”
Boggess added that D’Aoust is "trusted amongst his peers and has mentored many aspiring principals and administrators.”
One question all the candidates were asked was what mistakes they had made and what did they learn from it.
D’Aoust explained that as a principal, he did not engage all stakeholders in a zoning issue that parents had brought up, particularly a concern about pick-up.
“We had about 1,000 students and as the neighborhood grew, then we became landlocked and we had some issues,” D’Aoust said. "I went to the village, who over the course of the weekend, decided to implement their own solution, and that Monday we went from 35-minute pickup to a 90-minute pickup...not the anticipated result.”
He said he learned to include all points of view and to solicit responses, keep leadership informed so that they can be aware, and “most of all realize that when projects fail, they take away from our core mission of educating students.”
D’Aoust said he has family in the area and would love to be in Lake Wales.
“The bottom line is that this job is one that would use all of my acquired talents to really affect student achievement in a way I never could have dreamed of,” D’Aoust said. “This is coming from a guy who loves his current job, doesn't need a new job, but genuinely wants this position.”
Andy Oguntola
Andy Oguntola is a local candidate, with strong ties to the Lake Wales community and Polk County. The first-generation college graduate is not a man to sit still.
He is dean of workforce education and economic development, adjunct professor, and the director of the J.D. Alexander Center at Polk State College. In addition, he is chair of Lake Wales Chamber of Commerce, chair of the Lake Wales Police Advisory Committee and chair of the Economic Development Council. He is also vice chair of the Lake Wales Main Street Association, vice chair of the Lake Wales Arts Council, a member of the board of directors for the Lake Wales Family Literacy, and member of the board of directors for the United Way of Central Florida. He is a past member of the board of trustees for the Lake Wales Charter School District.
He holds a doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, along with a bachelor's and master’s in business administration from Webber International University in Babson Park.
He said he knows the benefits of the charter school district, but he is also aware of the challenges that face the area in coming years.
“The city of Lake Wales is expected to bring 8,000 new homes to our region within a 3-to-6-year period,” Oguntola wrote to the selection committee. “Together we can focus on unique recruitment strategies to increase the educational attainment of our community. The financial pressures that the LWCS face are substantial, given the realities of revenue, state funding, and other fiscal challenges. It will be important for the next Superintendent to advocate during this years' upcoming legislation, as well as find and obtain grant opportunities to prevent financial burdens being placed on our system.”
He said he will advocate with Polk’s legislative delegation to put LWCSS on their funding radar.
“The Lake Wales community means everything to me,” Orguntola wrote. “The ability to wake up each morning and serve this community that has given me an amazing family, with three children who are immersed in the high-quality education that this system provides, gives me the fuel needed to serve in whichever capacity I can. If chosen as Superintendent, there would never be a doubt or wonder regarding my commitment to our community.”
There was an issue with the previous superintendent, Jesse Jackson, who drove to Tallahassee every weekend to be with his wife and children after she left Lake Wales to return to what she felt was her home. He made that commute for many of the 13 years he served as superintendent, when he earned about $155,000 a year.
Lake Wales Mayor Eugene Fultz, County Commissioner Martha Santiago and Polk State College President Angela Garcia Falconetti all wrote letters of recommendation for Oguntola.
“As you know, Dr. Oguntola is steadfastly dedicated to the Lake Wales community and to ensuring access to quality education,” Falconetti wrote, adding that she has witnessed “firsthand his diligent work ethic and unifying approach to providing education and economic development opportunities for the residents of Polk County...Dr. Oguntola has continued to dedicate his time to the Lake Wales community, signifying his unwavering commitment to the city he has called home for approximately 20 years.”
Oguntola confessed in his video presentation that his greatest professional mistake actually involved his family and not including them on professional decisions he wanted to make.
“This was a true lesson learned early in my career, has helped me grow into the leader I am today,” Oguntola said. “Addressing this mistake early in my career has taught me so many life lessons about becoming a father, husband, and a leader in my community. What I've learned during my younger years is that my family comes first and always deserves a choice towards a commitment...During this process my family and I sat around the table and, after much prayer, discussed the possibility of applying for Superintendent. I realized that if I'm selected the Superintendent of Lake Wales Charter Schools, you are hiring the whole person, which includes my wife, my three kids, and I'm glad to say you don't have to worry about that...as we are all committed to this.”
Wayne Rodolfich
In 2005, Wayne Rodolfich ascended to the superintendent’s job of the Pascagoula-Gautier, Mississippi, School District. A month later, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the area and Rodolfich, along with many people in his district, lost everything they owned.
“When Hurricane Katrina destroyed our communities 29 days into my superintendency, leaving (in) its wake $26 million in damages to our schools, my team and I rolled up our sleeves, wrote grants, negotiated with insurance companies, and turned that devastation into an opportunity to bring our schools into the 21st century, completing $125 million in construction and renovation projects,” Rodolfich wrote in his letter to the district.
He has the build and mindset of a boxer, fighting for his students and teachers, including a battle that went all the way to the Mississippi Supreme Court.
"When the State Legislature attempted to divide our tax base, I fought that unconstitutional law all the way to the State Supreme Court, and won, returning millions to our students since that victory,” Rodolfish wrote. “A hallmark of my career has been that if you tell me we can’t, I will find a way to show you we can.”
He gave as examples:
Paying off a debt in seven years the district had carried since 1957.
Lowering taxes five times, saving taxpayers more than $50 million.
Increasing accountability scores year after year, despite the changing demographics of students in a district in which all students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
And transforming the abandoned former Carver High School into the nationally recognized Aaron Jones Family Interactive Center, where more than 50,000 people have visited free, family-oriented, themed Super Saturdays.
The Pascagoula-Gautier School District is comprised of two municipalities, 19 schools, 6,700 students, and more than 1,400 employees, with an annual operational budget of $100 million.
As superintendent, he headed up the district’s response to COVID-19, including ensuring academic, physical and mental well-being of students and employees during the pandemic.
Under his leadership, the district partnered with Ingalls Shipbuilding to create the “HireUp” program to train unemployed and underemployed adults for the shipbuilding industry.
Rodolfich holds a doctorate in education leadership from the University of Southern Mississippi, and two master's of education degrees from Delta State University.
In her recommendation letter to the district, Advance Placement History teacher Elizabeth Green recalled the first time she met Rodolfich when she was a third-year teacher starting over in a new school six hours away from her family and all she had known.
“As a petite woman, I was dragging boxes down the hall when a man introduced himself to me as my assistant principal,” Green wrote. “He took me to my new classroom and got the keys for me. When we opened the door, it was obvious that the past teacher had cleaned house and had left me nothing. This assistant principal, who introduced himself as Wayne Rodolfich, had a desk and a chair in my room within the hour. He met me with textbooks and even helped me put up pictures on my bulletin board...Little did I know, that this leader would become such an integral part of my educational career.”
Green also recounted Rodolfich’s reaction after one of the most devastating hurricanes to ever hit the United States left their two towns without power and damaged most of their school buildings.
“Dr. Rodolfich, like so many, lost everything but the clothes on his back and his vehicle,” she said. “He wasn’t worried about him. He was worried about his teachers. He spent countless hours working to get school back up and running and to get teachers paid. Amazingly, during that most difficult of years, both high schools earned National Blue-Ribbon status, and he himself earned the national Terrel Bell Leadership award for the turnaround he affected at GHS.”
Rodolfich said it was his work during those stressful post-Katrina days when he made one of the biggest mistakes of his career — not taking into account the mental health of his employees and how stressful adding on an hour to the school day would be for them as they tried to make up the 27 days they missed.
“After realizing my error, we made sure that we put, you know, health professionals accessible to our employees and that we've created counseling sessions for that,” Rodolofich said in his video statement. “When the pandemic struck, well the first things we did was make sure we set up an employee assistance program. But we also had a very good social-emotional health program for our students because, as you know, many of our students — not only in Mississippi but across the country — have been impacted by this and we have a very aggressive social-emotional health program for our students right now where we're trying to engage on every single campus and I have a medical and mental health professional that works with us exclusively on developing these plans and we're putting out weekly information.”
When asked why he wants to serve the students of Lake Wales Charter Schools, his answer was the names of his four school-aged children.
"My family and I have spent the last 15 years visiting Polk County at least once a year,” Rodolfich said. “As far as my family is concerned, nowhere else in the country offers such a variety of opportunities for children and families — beautiful land; the charm of towns like Lake Wales; the amenities of nearby larger cities; and diverse educational offerings... my family is eager to become a part of this vibrant community: we want to live, serve, attend school, worship, dance, and play soccer IN Lake Wales.”
Rodolfich said the district won’t find his name on a list of submitted applications for any other Florida school system or for another school system in the nation.
“Quite frankly, Lake Wales Charter Schools is the only position I am interested in,” he wrote.
Anuj Saran
As the assistant principal and head of the International Baccalaureate program of Lake Wales High School, Anuj Saran is the only candidate who currently works for the Lake Wales Charter School System. He has been involved in the district beginning a year after teachers at five schools voted to form their own charter system.
But he hadn’t meant to be a teacher; he had majored in economics at Delhi University and obtained a master's degree in business administration from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. His wife was hired by a Lake Wales school, and he had intended to get a job in finance in Tampa or Orlando. But after volunteering at Polk Avenue Elementary School, he was offered a kindergarten teaching job there — which he didn’t know involved far more than playing with and reading to students. He affectionately became known in Lake Wales as The Accidental Educator.
“He approached his class without expectations of what a student of that age could or could not do — that proved to be quite a lesson for all,” LWHS Principal Donna Dunson wrote in her recommendation letter. “He became an extraordinary elementary educator. He had a wonderful balance of the warm/strict approach. It was fun to watch his work with his students unfold in the best possible manner.”
Extraordinary was a word Dunson used in her letter multiple times, in the strongest way possible. His work earned him Teacher of the Year in 2008. Dunson said she has written a lot of recommendation letters throughout her career, but this one was unique.
“This letter is in a different category than most because of this man's character, integrity, intellectual acuity, and overall excellence,” Dunson said, adding that when she needed something done right, she knew she could turn to Saran. If he didn’t know how to do it, he would learn and deliver the best possible outcome, she said.
Dunson hand-selected Saran to help her found Bok Academy South, the district’s first middle school. He helped write the charter, assemble a budget and create curriculum.
Saran said they intentionally blended “the best of private and public-school education in a community with limited middle school opportunities. Bok Academy has been an ‘A’ school every year since we opened. I believe our foundational work played a key role in the making of Bok Academy as we know it today, and I was deeply involved with not just building the culture, but also the school climate including discipline, curriculum, and facilities. We took a student-centered approach, focused on developing active learners with empathy, and a commitment to building a life of purpose.”
Saran also had another talent unknown to him or anyone else – financial donors to the school district trust him to treat their money with integrity.
On a winter morning in 2010, Saran gave a man unknown to him a tour of Bok Academy Middle School for more than an hour, answering his questions.
“As we walked back to my office, he said he had one last question – ‘If I gave you a check for $10,000 right now, what would you do with it?’ I was somewhat in disbelief, but said I would buy iPads for students,” Saran recalled. “A few months later, he gave another $50,000 for more iPads...That initial gift of $10,000 turned into a $1.2 million gift, followed by many more gifts year after year – over $4 million at this point for the high school alone.”
That donor is philanthropist Henry McCance and he also wrote a recommendation letter for Saran.
“Throughout my 13-year journey as a donor to the Lake Wales Charter School Foundation, Anuj has been my primary contact,” McCance wrote in a recommendation to the district. “He has been an excellent steward of these funds, been extraordinary as an implementer, and ensured that these initiatives have been successful and have maximum impact.”
And then Dunson and Saran took on Lake Wales High School.
“Data at the time, showed a fractured culture, high discipline issues, a 70% graduation rate, limited advanced course offerings, only 46% of the graduating class went on to college, and the minority graduation rate was in the low 50 percent range,” Saran wrote to the selection committee. "Over the next few years, I took a data driven approach to look at each aspect of the high school and I led or co-led the key initiatives.”
Those included:
Implementing a one-to-one technology program and the E-Rate process.
Co-leading the school to increase the graduation rate from 70% to 94% and narrow the achievement gap for all student subgroups including students with special needs.
Helping increase the percentage of graduates with post-secondary plans from 46% to 85%.
Founding the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program at LWHS.
“I may have started out as an Accidental Educator, but I am fortunate enough to have found a pathway to meaningful work that enabled me to lead a life of purpose right here in Polk County,” Saran said. “I was offered the Chief Financial Officer position at LWCS, and a principalship outside of LWCS at a private international school in Atlanta – I declined both because I was driven by the work I was involved with at the time and felt there was more to do in my current role.”
As for his greatest mistake and what he learned, Saran said in his early years as an administrator, he was not firm enough with a teacher who was bullying colleagues and students.
“At that time, I struggled with confrontation and avoided what, for me, would be an uncomfortable discussion over the next few weeks,” Saran said, adding that the problem only grew worse. “The same teacher made much stronger statements towards students and other staff members...as the school administrator, my number one priority is to create a safe learning environment for students and a supportive work culture for our staff members...I never actually made it clear that his actions and his words were hurtful and unacceptable in that school environment. Eventually we terminated his contract mid-year, but till this day I'm troubled by the fact that, had I dealt with the situation you know right at the beginning, at least two students would not have had to bear the brunt of a sarcastic and sometimes even racist put downs.”
He said he was recently made aware that a student felt unsupported and possibly targeted by a teacher. He met with the student, parents and teacher.
"They cleared quite a few misunderstandings and it ended up being a pretty good conversation and it ended well,” Saran said. “But taking that first step of starting what, again for me, would be an uncomfortable conversation was fundamental to dissolving the issue and restoring the student’s faith in their teacher and also making sure that our teacher was supported.”
The Lake Wales Charter School Board will make its final selection of a new superintendent on Feb. 22. See candidates’ cover letters, resumes, answers to questions and videos at the Lake Wales Charter Schools homepage.
Ledger reporter Kimberly C. Moore can be reached at kmoore@theledger.com or 863-802-7514. Follow her on Twitter at @KMooreTheLedger.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Meet the top five candidates for Lake Wales Charter Schools superintendent
