Top HISD official to leave for Dallas job
Chief of staff going back to where she worked from 2015-17
Adding to the upheaval facing the Houston Independent School District, Chief of Staff Cynthia Wilson is expected to leave the district in the coming weeks and return to Dallas ISD, where she worked from 2015 to 2017.
Dallas ISD officials said Friday that Wilson will become the district’s chief of human capital management on July 1. The announcement comes one month after former HISD superintendent Richard Carranza, who hired Wilson, left his position to become chancellor of New York City public schools.
As chief of staff, Wilson served as the lead coordinator between HISD’s superintendent and other high-level district administrators. She has been involved in HISD’s efforts to stave off state sanctions arising from the failure to improve academic performance at 10 long-struggling schools. HISD faces forced campus closures or a takeover of its locally elected school board when state accountability scores are released in August. Some HISD and civic leaders are seeking a reprieve from sanctions, in large part due to Hurricane Harvey.
Wilson worked as Dallas ISD’s chief of staff before accepting the same job with Carranza in early 2017. Prior to that, Wilson served as superintendent of Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five in South Carolina from 2010 to 2015 and spent 22 years in various positions in HISD.
HISD officials and Wilson did not make any public statements about her departure Friday.
Also on Friday, HISD administrators announced they were removing the interim tag from Police Chief Paul Cordova, who has served in that role since
March. He will assume the permanent position Monday. Cordova joined the HISD Police Department as an assistant chief in August 2017 after 32 years with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and three years with the Rice University Police Department.
District officials lauded Cordova for instituting several new initiatives, including the creation of a districtwide emergency safety plan. Most recently, Cordova oversaw the police response to last week’s heated school board meeting, where two people were arrested and several scuffled with officers as they tried to clear the room. Several community members criticized the police response as overly aggressive. John Harden contributed to this report.