Monday, November 22, 2010

Berman out as Jefferson County superintendent!

Around 9 p.m. on November 22, 2010, the Courier-Journal announced that the school board in Kentucky’s largest school district, the Jefferson County Public School District, voted not to renew its contract with school superintendent Sheldon Berman.

Berman’s leadership was seriously questioned this fall when his very unpopular school busing plan to achieve integration created chaos in the lives of five year old students throughout the district.

The recent announcement that a significant proportion of the schools in the second listing of Kentucky’s Persistently Low-Achieving Schools came from Jefferson County highlighted more questions about Berman’s leadership.

3 comments:

Liberty General said...

Good riddance.

Anonymous said...

Let's hope the person hired this time understands the challenge and is up to the challenge as evidenced by:

- setting visible goals to close learning gaps in all schools
- establishing an aggressive timeline to achieve significant measurable progress within all schools within the first 3 years
- installing a culture of accountability throughout the system
- making it clear to the legislature that he/she needs complete control of all district resources and decisions on application of those resources
- highlighting all changes needed in union contract terms & conditions to put the superintendent in control of resources and all academic approaches to close learning gaps

It's critical to get it right this time.

Bluegrass Belle said...

Well, this is a start! But more reforms are needed if Kentucky's largest school district will ever improve!