Replacing Carranza at HISD unclear
Board will meet in closed session to review options
How Houston ISD’s Board of Education will replace outgoing Superintendent Richard Carranza remained unclear Tuesday after trustees announced at a news conference that they would postpone discussions relating to Carranza’s departure until Thursday.
Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones said the board will hold a closed-session meeting to discuss the choice of an interim leader. One board member, Sue Deigaard, was out of town Tuesday and en route to Houston, so trustees “did not want to go any further into conversations,” she said.
“Those discussions have not taken place. We were just given the options today,” Skillern-Jones said.
Skillern-Jones said Carranza essentially gave her his “two-weeks notice” when he called her Monday to reveal his decision, suggesting he will leave the district this month. The outgoing New York City schools chancellor is retiring at the end of March.
“There is no other New York City Public Schools,” Carranza said Monday. “It was an opportunity that I could not say ‘no’ to.”
Carranza has been superintendent in Houston for 18 months. Before that, he spent
five years atop the San Francisco public school system.
The board has three options to replace Carranza, Skillern-Jones said: name a short-term interim superintendent and immediately begin a search for a more permanent replacement; name a longterm interim superintendent and postpone a superintendent search for a couple months; or post the position and hire a new permanent superintendent immediately.
First, trustees have to let Carranza go. According to Carranza’s three-year contract, which he signed in 2016, he can exit if both he and the board mutually agree on his departure. Skillern-Jones said trustees likely will discuss how they will handle Carranza’s contract on Thursday.
Several Houston education and civic leaders, including Mayor Sylvester Turner and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, offered warm words about Carranza during a news conference Tuesday while ensuring the district and city remains unified.
“I know I was surprised by Superintendent Richard Carranza’s decision to resign,” Turner said. “I wish him well, but we certainly will not let the abrupt departure create chaos for the state’s largest school district.”
Carranza’s announcement Monday caught the city and education leaders off guard, particularly given the multitude of challenges facing Houston ISD. Skillern-Jones said board members were not aware Carranza was interviewing in New York City until he called to inform them shortly before a press conference on Monday. The board may consider adding language to future superintendent contracts that would specify how much notice they would have to give the board before taking a job elsewhere, Skillern-Jones said, adding such a conversation would happen at a later date.
Houston ISD is grappling with a projected $115 million budget deficit, ongoing recovery following Hurricane Harvey and potential state sanctions due to chronically low-performing campuses. The district also is considering major changes to its magnet system and campus funding model, which Carranza has championed as an effort to create greater equity across Houston ISD.
Skillern-Jones said the board has not yet outlined qualities or characteristics trustees would like to see in a new leader. Instead, she said, trustees focused on three immediate goals: getting struggling schools out of the state’s “improvement required” accountability rating; keeping other schools from slipping into the state’s “improvement required” status; and making cuts to eliminate the district’s looming budget deficit in a way that least harms classrooms.
“The vision is set by the board, that’s the operating procedure, and the superintendent and the cabinet are tasked with the how,” Skillern-Jones said. “Our vision on this board has not changed. The leader who comes in will simply be tasked with the ‘how’ of the current vision.”
Turner said that no matter who is tapped to lead HISD next, it will take efforts from city, state and federal leaders to help the district thrive.
“This district’s success is not predicated on one person, it’s collective,” Turner said. “It depends on all of us as partners.”