School board names Calloway as new chief
March 9, 2007
A woman who runs a 5,700-student district was chosen Thursday to run the 119,000-student Detroit Public Schools.
Amid cheers and jeers, the Detroit Board of Education approved Connie Calloway as the new superintendent by a vote of 7-3 with one abstention.
The board also voted to oust Superintendent William Coleman immediately and appoint Lamont Satchel, the district's chief labor negotiator, as interim superintendent.
Calloway, 56, has been superintendent of the Normandy School District on the outskirts of St. Louis since July 2004.
The board also voted to limit board travel and to investigate artwork bought for school buildings with taxpayer money.
Some in the audience began to jeer as board member Tyrone Winfrey read the motion to hire Calloway, prompting him to tell them, "You can recall me. Do whatever you want to do."
Others in the audience greeted the motion with cheers and shouts. Many carried signs supporting Calloway and insided that the search had been fair.
Calloway, reached at her Missouri home, said she would not have a comment until she is officially notified by the board.
Board member Jonathan Kinloch, who voted against Calloway and favored a new search, gave an impassioned speech telling board members they needed to do what they were elected to do: Listen to what the community wants.
"This candidate is not qualifed to come into this district to handle the challenges," Kinloch said as hecklers interrupted him.
At that point, Winfrey told Kinloch, "This is the last time you're going to insult me," after Kinloch implied the search committee, of which Winfrey was a member, hadn't done its job.
Board President Jimmy Womack, referring to the television cameras around the room, at one point told the hecklers, "I know you want to be stars tonight."
The meeting was noisy but never out of control. It took the board less than 20 minutes to make a decision.
Coleman, whose contract is to expire June 30, has led the school district since July 2005. The board initially voted in December not to interview him for renewing his contract but soon reversed itself. Then last week the board's search committee voted to recommend Calloway for the job.
The selection catapults Calloway from a small district to a financially struggling system that proposes closing 52 school buildings.
Parent Chris Light, who has attended search committee meetings and closely followed the process, said she was disappointed. "The board of education failed our city tonight. They allowed their emotions to control their intellect."
Rev. Loyce Lester, who was on the community advisory council for the search committee, called the vote for Calloway "Absolutely ludicrous."
"We'll show them come August," he said, referring to the next board election.
Shaton Berry, president of the PTSA at Western International High School, said she was "disappointed and baffled" by the board members public insults towards each other. She would have preferred to keep Coleman as superintendent.
"What you're going to have now is a person" who spends time blaming Coleman for problems "and nobody will be educating our kids," Berry said.
John Kelford, a curriculum coordinator at Finney High School, said he had wanted a new search until he talked to Calloway on the phone.
"We have to unite behind her. We have no choice. The kids are counting on us," Kelford said.
Her selection grew more controversial this week after members of a group called Citizens for Better Detroit Public Schools wrote letters to Calloway and the other out-of-town finalist, Doris Hope-Jackson of Illinois, saying the group was pushing the school board to do a new superintendent search.
The letters were signed by the Rev. Horace L. Sheffield III, executive director of a group that operates a school under contract with DPS, as well as by the Rev. Samuel Bullock, president of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity.
No such letter was sent to Coleman.
But Coleman lost the trust of some board members last fall after he admitted that he had referred a DPS information technology contractor to a friend later hired as a consultant even though he was under investigation in Dallas for allegedly taking gifts from a technology contractor there.
Calloway has been superintendent of the Normandy School District on the outskirts of St. Louis since July 2004. Before Normandy, she was director of the Dayton Academy, a charter school in Ohio, for a year, and before that she was superintendent of Trotwood-Madison City (Ohio) Schools from 2000-03.
Last year board members and other district officials racked up more than $1.3 million for travel, hotels, workshops and catered meals while the district faced the nation's worst school financial crisis, closed schools and lost students, a Free Press investigation found. The board will limit travel to $5,000 per member per year and to two trips out of state each year.
A separate Free Press investigation found that Detroit Public Schools had spent at least $1.6 million to purchase artwork with bond money taxpayers had approved to build new schools and renovate old ones. The board said it would consider selling the work.
The board voted Thursday night to formally investigate the art purchases, all made since 2002 from the Sherry Washington Gallery. It will limit its travel to no more than $5,000 per member per year, and to no more than two trips out of state each year.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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