Board of Directors

MESSAGE DELIVERED AT THE “STATE OF THE SCHOOL”
Head Of School Carney Sandoe Search Update

January 27, 2022 

My name is Tammy Cotton Hartnett and I’m delighted to be with you here in person and with those of you joining us online. I want to thank everyone for their support in dealing with our Covid measures in order to keep our school safely open. Especially a word of thanks to our teachers and staff who put their own concerns second, in order to place our students and their parents first as they guidie your aspirational educational journeys.

I’m currently serving our community as President of the Board of Directors and thought I would give you the good news that our “State of the School” is emerging from Covid, stronger and more vibrant, with exciting plans for moving us forward. This year’s Board cohort is working on a theme for “Building Our Institution.”

BOARD GOALS FOR 2021-2022

“Building Our Institution” plan involves four major goals:
1) building a fiduciary board that is focused on governance;
2) building a succession plan for both our CEO and members of the Board, which I will further elaborate in a moment;
3) building a 2-Year Strategic Plan that focuses on our Mission, Vision, and Messaging, Ensuring Resources for people, money, and connections, and Financial Oversight and Projections with Recommendations;

[This strategic plan will be led by Katy Black, Vice President and Chief of Staff for AccentCare, a company with over 23,000 employees, generating over 661 million dollars.

There, Katy handles change management and mergers & acquisitions. Katy is now serving on the board of directors and is a former DIS parent of three grown children. Katy will be leading this planning meeting starting on Sunday evening, with deliverables to our community in May.]

4) and lastly, our fourth goal for building our institution is to secure commitments from our community partners and parents that demonstrate our mission as the only school in North Texas to deliver both the French and International Bacs for our students. And in keeping with our public private partnerships in order to build our institution we had hoped to be able to announce an exciting partnership that would provide the building of our athletic facilities on the Waterview campus, but we are still working through the legal aspects of this long-term partnership. And out of an abundance of caution, we ask for your patience and hope to bring this exciting news to you by next month.

HEAD OF SCHOOL SEARCH
I want to spend a few moments and let you know where we are on our succession plan for our next CEO/ Head of School. From our last board communication, we confirmed our commitment to better communication and transparency, and we will continue to inform you of our actions, every step of the way. And please know, should you have any questions or concerns, you can email or call me directly.

As you know, we’ve secured our current Interim Head of School, Dr. Gonzalez, for another full year which allows us to conduct a thorough search and transition. The board hired in December the premier international search firm Carney Sandoe.

Two weeks ago we invited the Carney Sandoe team to Dallas to meet our leadership team, to see our facilities and to understand our close knit community, and hear about our strengths and challenges. We conducted two days of honest, thought provoking interviews with Carney Sandoe and they have produced a six page report that will formalize the position description and be posted world-wide, as well as on our website for your review as early as next week.

This will be the first time in our history that DIS will lead this type of search for our next CEO and one that will include, but not be limited to just the MLF network. This opportunity broadens our pool of highly qualified candidates in order to find the right fit at this time.

Serving as the three Co-Chairs along with Carney Sandoe, will be myself, a former parent and current President of the Board, Genevieve Desmond, a current parent and President of our beloved PTO and also a board member, and Marie-Pierre Carlotti, our current board member and Director for MLF North America. She has also served as the Head of School for a prominent international school in San Francisco and has conducted many international searches.

This position description currently being drafted by Carney Sandoe will have hundreds of applicants that will be fully vetted and interviewed first by our search firm, and then presented to the search committee for analyzing the top twenty five applicants that fit our needs. Those applicants will then be debated and evaluated and culled to around fifteen candidates that will be interviewed by a selected team of six board members. When we arrive at a deliberated set of our top three candidates, we will then bring those candidates to both our campuses for final interviews by the entire twenty-one member Board of Directors. We expect this time frame to have those three finalists by May, with a new CEO hired for a start date the following year. This will allow our succession plan goals to implement a full year of transition. Dr. Gonzalez and I will lead this incoming CEO through a year of onboarding beginning in July 2022 with a full, month-long in-person start-of-the-school transition beginning July 1, 2023. I’m enlisting YOU today to be part of our search committee by submitting any one you might believe would be a good candidate for our next CEO. These submissions should go directly to our leadership team at Carney Sandoe who will do the professional vetting of all of your submissions, to be included in the larger pool as appropriate. My comments this evening will be emailed to you tomorrow with the contact information. And with that good news update of being ahead of schedule on succession planning and fulfilling two of our goals for “Building Our Institution,” may I continue the “State of our School” and introduce someone who needs no introduction, but someone who has selflessly poured himself, mind and spirit, into what servant leadership looks like in action, our very own, Dr. Josep Gonazalez.

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DIS Head of School Candidate Submissions should be emailed directly to our three members at

Carney Sandoe & Associates: Chris Boyle chris.boyle@carneysandoe.com
Karen Neitzel karen.neitzel@carneysandoe.com
Art Charles art.charles@carneysandoe.com

      Tammy Cotton Hartnett, Board President