Newport Independent superintendent steps down

Recently Newport Independent Schools made some waves with a leadership assessment report that concluded:

"The dysfunctional relationship among the local school board, superintendent, high school staff, school council and union is impeding the district's ability to meet the needs of the students."

This week, the superintendent stepped down.

Newport Independent Schools was one of four districts profiled in the Bluegrass Institute's "Rewarding Failure" commentary that outlined how superintendents are not being held accountable for results. The commentary features copies of the actual performance reviews of superintendents.

Check it out here!

More on the highly paid, low performing leadership at Newport Independent Schools

District lacks capability/capacity to turn high school around

Talk about a school district in chaos! Check this comment!

“The dysfunctional relationship among the local school board, superintendent, high school staff, school council and union is impeding the district's ability to meet the needs of the students.”

Quote from: Newport Independent District Leadership Assessment Report dated 04/24/2011 to 04/29/2011


Newport High School was recently declared one of Kentucky’s ‘Persistently Low-Achieving Schools.’ That means both the school and the district required leadership audits.

The resulting “Newport Independent District Leadership Assessment Report” dated 04/24/2011 to 04/29/2011, is now available on line.

Aside from the quote above, there is much cause for concern about how this district has been managed by Superintendent Michael Brandt, whose 2010-11 salary of $174,344.34 ranks him the seventh highest paid superintendent among Kentucky’s 174 school districts.

Out of 88 ‘Indicators for School Improvement’ examined by the audit team, the report cites a large number of areas, over 80 of them, where the district either has made only limited development/implementation of education reforms or essentially has yet to start the process at all.

Worst of all, the report says:

“District leadership does not have the capability and capacity to manage the intervention of Newport High School.”

It’s got to be time for a management change when the leadership can’t cope with its responsibilities with its high school.

Read more »

Finally: Some tough action in a Northern Kentucky Persistently Low-Achieving School

As we mentioned back in late March, after the US Department of Education determined that someone at the Kentucky Department of Education had taken too many KERA math classes and didn’t calculate the number equal to five percent of our schools correctly, two more schools had to be added to the state’s official list of Persistently Low-Achieving Schools.

Newport High School from the Newport Independent School District was one of those additions.

Now, findings from the resulting audit of Newport High’s staff have come in, and the news is rather stark.

Recommendation: Both principal Scott Draud and Newport High’s School Based Decision Making Council (SBDM) have to go. They both lack the ability to turn this chronically low-performing high school around.

Low performance in this school is no surprise. Newport has under-performed the rest of the state and especially other Northern Kentucky region school systems ever since KERA began.

What is a surprise is how this obvious situation was allowed to go on, unchecked, by the Newport District’s superintendent, Michael Brandt, and his local school board.

Brandt did have authority to replace the principal.

According to our analysis of the KDE’s Excel spreadsheet, “SUPERINTENDENT SALARIES (2001-02 THROUGH 2010-11 SCHOOL YEARS,” Brandt’s 2010-11 salary of $174,344.34 ranks him the seventh highest paid superintendent in Kentucky. That is over $56,000 higher than the state average salary for superintendents. Newport’s fall student membership for the same school year ranked it below the middle of the pack, with over 100 districts having larger membership (often loosely called enrollment) and only 66 having fewer students.

Learn more about how Newport’s school board ranked Brandt in our recent study, “Rewarding Failure,” on line here.