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Paul Whyte: Moving from asst. supterintendent to chief of school operations.
(Updated) New Haven Public Schools has hired Assistant Supt. Paul Whyte to serve as the district’s new chief of school operations (CSO).
Whyte’s transfer from the role of assistant superintendent for instructional leadership to the newly created chief of school operations was included in the information-only personnel report at Monday’s latest full Board of Education meeting, which was held at John C. Daniels School.
According to the report, which was presented on Monday by Supt. Madeline Negrón, the effective date for Whyte’s transfer is July 15.
Whyte told the Independent that a top priority in his new role is making sure the district’s school buildings are well maintained, “but that’s not the only part of operations.”
He said in the role he will meet with building staffers and look at issues directly, and then will push the district to act urgently to fix what it can afford. Beyond facilities, this work also includes overseeing the district’s food and transportation services.
School board members Edward Joyner and Andrea Downer praised Whyte’s past work during Monday’s meeting.
Whyte’s former assistant superintendent role will not be going away, even as Whyte moves into the new job. (NHPS has four assistant superintendent positions, including Whyte’s. The district’s three other assistant superintendents are Keisha Redd-Hannans, Viviana Camacho, and Kristina DeNegre.)
“We still need the assistant superintendent role, which oversees schools, evaluates principals, advocates with central offices for the needs of schools, advises in the implementation of policy, manages crises, resolves complaints, etc.,” NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent. “The assistant superintendents also take on special projects for the superintendent and provide support on key areas such as curriculum and instruction; hiring, training, and evaluating staff; managing budgets, and supporting special education, counseling, and health services. They provide leadership continuity if the superintendent is unavailable.”
During Monday’s Board of Education meeting, teachers union President Leslie Blatteau reserved the teachers union’s contractual right to speak on school board agenda items without the typical time constraint. She said that an updated NHPS budget has not yet been shared publicly on the district’s website. She also highlighted several transfers that were on the personnel report. “We have transfers being passed through tonight that are moving people from their positions, their beloved schools, schools that they did not want to leave, to positions that they had to go to through the involuntary transfer process,” Blatteau said, “but we still don’t have a publicly accessibly budget where folks like us can go online to NHPS.net and find that.”
As it relates to the new chief of school operations role, Blatteau said it’s hard for the public to keep up with the creation of new positions, like the director of facilities role and the chief of school operations. She also pointed to the vacant chief of staff position and argued that “we need to collapse those vacancies just as we collapsed dozens of other positions in our schools.”
In his comment to the Independent, Harmon said that, because Whyte is transferring roles, his salary will remain the same as he moves from assistant superintendent to chief of school operations. In April 2024, Whyte’s salary was $178,601. Harmon did not respond to a request for comment about whether or not Whyte’s salary has changed in the intervening year; Harmon also did not respond to a request for comment about how many internal applicants applied for the chief of school operations job.
In a comment provided for this previous Independent article, Harmon described the chief of school operations position as“a slight recast of an existing, funded and vacant position, which was called chief operating officer. The emphasis of the job is supporting schools’ operations, to help them maximize their own focus on instruction.”
The last employee to hold the job of chief operating officer was Thomas Lamb, who was put on paid leave in May 2024 and wound up resigning last October. Former top city official Mike Carter filled in as an operations and facilities consultant from last July through this March.
Whyte’s transfer comes after Whyte was a finalist for, but was ultimately not selected to become, Waterbury’s schools superintendent earlier this spring.