What is happening with our superintendents recently?
- Howard County Superintendent Renee Foose resigned with 1.6 million dollars’ package in 2017.
- Baltimore County Superintendent Dallas Dance first resigned without any early notice and now was jailed for greed, bribery and lie in 2018.
- P.G. County Superintendent Kevin Maxwell retired with 800,000 package in 2018. Under his leadership, PG county systematically inflated student grades to meet graduation requirements.
- Montgomery County could not find a superintendent for a long time since 2015.
These four school systems are very large. The superintendent struggle probably tells us something unique to our school system. The Council of Great City Schools, which researches tenure, salaries and characteristics of school superintendents, found in a 2014 report that 3.2 years was the average tenure among superintendents in cities with populations of more than 250,000. Ref: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2017/04/18/baltimore-county-schools-superintendent-dallas.html
In order to prevent the superintendent position as a cash cow in the future, we need give the school board the authority to fire the superintendent. In my opinion, the firing needs a super majority, not a simple majority. We need push our state legislatures to update our law.