MPR News
Cheryl Logan: No thanks, New Haven.
Rather than seek to work for a politically divided Board of Education, two semifinalists for school superintendent have pulled their job applications.
The two top administrators from Philadelphia and Colorado Springs, both recommended by the executive search firm Hazard Young Attea & Associates (HYA), have withdrawn from the running for superintendent, after being deterred by a chaotic search process, sources said.
Cheryl Logan, chief academic support officer in Philadelphia, and Teresa Lance, assistant superintendent in Colorado Springs, both quit the process after advancing to the second round. That leaves seven choices, including the three Connecticut applicants whom the search committee added in a closed session last week.
Hour-long interviews with the seven left are scheduled for this Wednesday and Thursday evenings. After selecting finalists, the school board plans to hold community meetings with them, then select a final candidate by Nov. 20.
The school system has been without a permanent superintendent for more than a year, after the board pushed out Garth Harries in October. Reggie Mayo came out of retirement to lead the district in an interim capacity.
Two Drop Out
Logan and a student.
The candidates who withdrew from the process, both black women, had been runners-up for superintendent in other urban school districts. Logan made the top two in St. Paul, Minnesota; Lance, in Portland, Maine.
As chief academic support officer in Philly’s schools, Logan manages curriculum and assessment, special education, multi-language services, early childhood programs, and career and college readiness programs for the nation’s eighth largest school district.
After earning her bachelor’s at the University of Maryland at College Park, Logan taught language classes (Spanish, French, and English as a second language) in the same district where she graduated. After getting a master’s in educational administration from Johns Hopkins University, she became an elementary school principal in Howard County, an urban area outside Baltimore.
In 2013, after Logan’s third year heading up a 2,200-student magnet high school (with 97 percent minority enrollment) in suburban Riverdale Park, Md.„ the Washington Post named her one of the 18 best principals in the region. The paper had previously profiled her for changing school rules to accommodate the area’s growing Muslim population, by allowing certain students to leave class to pray together.
The same year, Philly hired her away as an assistant superintendent, where she supervised 45 principals, accounting for roughly one-fifth of the district’s 134,000 students. After audits, she removed five educators caught cheating on standardized tests, and she busted a popular elementary school for not following the district’s enrollment procedures.
Since being promoted to a senior leadership position in October 2015, Logan’s been focusing on racial disparities in graduation rates and school discipline (by piloting a pre-arrest diversion program), while completing her doctorate in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania.
“My stance on equity is nothing can happen to decrease the achievement gap if there isn’t an opportunity,” Logan said at a candidate forum in St. Paul, according to the MinnPost. “I personally believe that intellect is spread equally in the universe, but opportunity is not.”
Teresa Lance, at left in photo.
Out west, Lance has served as school leadership officer in a district with 11,000 students in two dozen schools and an operating budget of $113 million. Since taking the job in March 2013, she helped create a four-week summer training for new teachers to reduce turnover rates and started an academy for ninth-graders to boost on-time graduation rates.
After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from State University of New York at Cortland, Lance taught health classes. With a certification from Johns Hopkins University, she served as a principal at two schools in Baltimore (where she earned commendations from the mayor and governor) and at a privately managed disciplinary school for at-risk kids in Houston. After that, she worked as an educational specialist at a cancer center in Houston, and she consulted as a turnaround coordinator at a high school in Decatur, Illinois.
While in Colorado Springs, she earned her doctorate online from the University of Phoenix, with a focus on reversing dropouts among black and brown youth, and taught classes as an adjunct instructor at the then-for-profit Argosy University in Denver.
At a community forum in Portland last year, Lance said that she planned to stay in her next job until retirement and said that she wanted to mentor other women to become school superintendents, according to a report in the local paper.
Neither Logan nor Lance responded to phone calls and emails on Monday afternoon.
Seven Continue
Semifinalists Orlando Ramos, Stacy Scott, Pamela Brown and Carol Birks.
Four of the search firm’s out-of-town picks are still in the running, alongside three local candidates that were recently added to the slate.
HYA’s other recommendations are:
- Orlando Ramos, a regional superintendent in charge of Milwaukee’s high schools who dropped out of final rounds in Detroit and St. Paul after a search firm failed to disclose a bankruptcy;
- Stacy Scott, a senior lecturer at Boston University’s School of Education who lost his last job as superintendent in Framingham, Mass., when his preliminary license expired and a committee declined to extend his contract;
- Pamela Brown, the chief of elementary schools in Fontana, Calif., who departed the top job as superintendent in Buffalo, N.Y., after a new school board’s election prompted her to accept a buyout; and
- Carol Birks, chief of staff for Hartford Public Schools, who was replaced as a Bridgeport high school principal by the education company that immediately hired her.
New Haven seminfinalists Ilene Tracey, Dolores Garcia-Blocker and Gary Highsmith.
The three local candidates who advanced to the semifinals are:
- Iline Tracey, the former principal at King/Robinson Magnet School who’s now one of New Haven’s three instructional directors;
- Dolores Garcia-Blocker, the former principal at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School who’s now chief of staff for New Haven Public Schools; and
- Gary Highsmith, the former principal at Beecher School and Hamden High who now manages human resources in Hamden.
On Thursday evening, the 17-member search committee (made up of seven board members, two student reps, three union heads, two parents, an alder and two Harp-selected health professionals) plan to discuss the protocol for selecting two or three finalists from the group.
Next week, on Tuesday, Nov. 14, those finalists will participate in two forums. District administrators, principals, leading teachers and student council members will be invited to a morning session, and the general public can attend an evening session. Times and locations have not yet been announced.
A week later, on Monday, Nov. 20, at 5:30 p.m., the search committee will present its recommendation to the Board of Education for a vote to authorize contract negotiations and a background check.
That final deadline was pushed back at board member Darnell Goldson’s suggestion, prompting an hour-long debate at a prior meeting. The change was intended to make time for more community input, but the community forums, scheduled for Oct. 21 and Oct. 26, never happened.
Pamela Brown is the candidate whose experience is best suited to be a New Haven Superintendent. NHPS will give her a multi-year contract, as she had in Buffalo, and as it did with Harries. Then, the board can decide is no longer likes her, and give her a buyout as she got in Buffalo and as New Haven did with Harries. She is a perfect fit.