Carranza stuns HISD, accepts job leading NYC schools
Top education official unexpectedly leaves amid difficult time for district
Less than two years after he arrived in Houston with a mandate to restore trust and equity in Texas’ largest school district, Superintendent Richard Carranza shocked the city’s education community Monday by taking the job of leading New York City’s school system, a stunning departure as Houston ISD works to close a $115 million budget deficit, stave off a potential state takeover and recover after Hurricane Harvey.
Carranza’s departure came without warning in Houston, where many first learned of his decision through social media posts that showed Carranza walking into a New York City news conference. Mayor Bill de Blasio tapped the 51-year-old after his first choice for the job, Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, backed out last week during a televised school board meeting.
Carranza, who took over HISD just over 18 months ago, called de Blasio’s offer “an opportunity that I could not say ‘no’ to.”
The timing of Carranza’s departure could not be much worse for HISD, which serves about 215,000 students.
The district faces a massive budget deficit and a hefty “recapture” payment
under Texas’ school finance law, which could balloon by tens of millions of dollars depending on the outcome of a lawsuit against the state. Amid that, Carranza has offered a series of ambitious proposals in recent months, including changes to the district’s magnet programs and campus-funding models.
The district also faces potentially unprecedented state intervention, including a takeover of its locally elected school board if it does not improve academic performance or make dramatic changes at 10 of its lowest-performing campuses.
Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said he had to “pick my jaw up off the floor” when he learned of Carranza’s departure Monday. He said he understands why Carranza would take the new job but fretted over the timing.
“There was this big pit in my stomach because we have such massively important decisions happening right now. Of all times to be without a leader, I was thinking, ‘wow, this is not it,’” Capo said.
Carranza’s proposals and the threat of state intervention have created tumult across the district, marked by standing roomonly board meetings and boisterous community gatherings with concerned parents. Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of the Children at Risk education nonprofit, said the parent protests were symptomatic of larger problems Carranza faced.
“Frankly, Carranza has had a hard time of it in Houston,” Sanborn said. “The board was not into reform the same way he is, and these programs he started I think are good but not as bold as even the superintendent would have liked.”
Carranza said his decision to leave was based on the once-ina-lifetime chance to lead the largest school district in the country.
”The opportunity to now serve 1.1 million students is unlike any opportunity that exists anywhere in the world of education,” Carranza said. “There is no other New York City public schools.”
Details of Carranza’s planned departure were being worked out Monday afternoon. Carranza likely will remain HISD’s superintendent for days or weeks rather than months. New York City’s outgoing schools chancellor is retiring at the end of March.
HISD board members are expected to meet Thursday to discuss the district’s next steps. In a statement, HISD Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones said trustees “wish Carranza the best in his endeavors and appreciate the leadership he brought to this district.”
During his tenure with HISD, Carranza has announced sweeping proposals aimed at improving struggling schools, making campus funding more equitable, reshaping the district’s magnet programs and improving special education services. While some of those proposals have been enacted, such as the Achieve 180 campus-turnaround plans, most still are in developmental stages.
Sanborn said Carranza’s proposals now may shift without his oversight.
“Whenever a superintendent leaves, you see parts of their programs be dismantled, parts of them not implemented,” Sanborn said. “I imagine that’s what will happen with some of Carranza’s plans.”
Carranza has touted his proposals in recent weeks, at one point delivering an emotional, personal defense of the plans during a school board meeting. Behind the scenes, Carranza had been talking with de Blasio about the chancellor job for about a month, the mayor said. When Carvalho backed out of the job during a Miami-Dade school board meeting that was televised live — an embarrassment to de Blasio’s administration — the mayor turned to his second choice, Carranza.
De Blasio said he met with Carranza over the weekend, speaking for about 12 hours. He offered Carranza the job late Sunday.
“The decision was straightforward. Richard Carranza has done amazing work,” de Blasio said.
Carranza said his values in education aligned with de Blasio, making it “very easy for me to say I would like to be part of this movement in New York City.” His base salary in New York City will be the same as his HISD salary, which is $345,000.
In a statement Monday, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Carranza and de Blasio notified him of the impending move Monday.
“It’s important for (HISD) trustees to put in place a very capable interim leader as we navigate through the challenges the district is facing,” Turner said.
Carranza came to HISD, the nation’s seventh-largest school district, from San Francisco Unified School District, where he served as superintendent from 2012 to 2016. Carranza took over from Terry Grier, who retired after 6 1/2 years atop HISD.
He arrived as a personable, well-received choice following Grier, whose leadership style grated on some board and community members. He often spoke about promoting greater equity across the district and improving campuses in historically impoverished neighborhoods. His signature turnaround plan, Achieve 180, used about $15 million to improve educator quality and increase social services in long-struggling campuses. His personal background — the Spanish-speaking grandson of Mexican immigrants — and advocacy for undocumented students also resonated in a district where nearly two-thirds of the students are Latino.
“I definitely think it was refreshing for the city, based on what I heard and what I saw, that there was a Latino leading our schools,” said Sineria Ordoñez, interim executive director of the Houston Hispanic Forum. “The conversations we had and how he spoke, what his initiatives were, they came from an aspect that he understood some of our cultures.”
Some education advocates in Houston, however, questioned whether Achieve 180 would significantly impact students. Carranza’s plans for revamping the campus-funding model and tweaking the magnet school system also drew criticism from many community members, who argued the plans have not been fully formed or vetted. He also struggled to earn the full support of HISD’s board, especially during the first year of his tenure.
Jasmine Jenkins, executive director of the education advocacy group Houston GPS, said trustees have clashed over policy and personality in recent years. Jenkins said this year’s school board, which features three new members, has appeared more cohesive but has not voted on anything substantial since taking over in January.
Carranza’s departure “feeds into a narrative of an unstable and chaotic district that has very little leadership and doesn’t really seem to be focused on student outcomes,” Jenkins said.
HISD trustees did not respond to multiple calls for comment Monday. As the board contemplates an interim superintendent, one name already has floated to the top: Grenita Lathan, HISD’s chief academic officer.
Lathan served as interim superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District in 2009 and superintendent of Peoria Public Schools in Illinois, which educates about 14,000 students, from 2010 until she joined HISD in 2015. Lathan also spearheaded efforts that led to 20 HISD schools moving out of the “improvement required” state rating to a “met standard” rating during the 2015-16 school year.
“I have a lot of faith in her to focus on school improvement, and our No. 1 priority now is, how do we get these 10 schools through the year and out of ‘improvement required’ status,” Capo said.