The search is on for a new Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools superintendent.
Last week, the school board officially launched the application for its next chief executive as Nyah Hamlett prepares to resign at the end of June. Her contract was not set to expire until 2027.
Applications are due on April 14 and a draft timeline has set two rounds of closed interviews through the spring, with hopes of a final announcement by May 30.
“While many students in the school system have high academic achievement, there are those who still have unmet needs,” reads the job posting. “The board is strongly focused on and committed to providing equitable services to all students so that all may reach their potential.”
In launching the search, the board approved a $21,500 consulting agreement with the North Carolina School Board Association to manage the parts of the search process prior to a board review of the candidates. The board previously contracted with NCSBA in 2020, after then-superintendent Pam Baldwin resigned.
At its meeting this week, the board will give final approval to launch surveys to hear what exactly staff and community members want to see in their next chief executive. The surveys will go out through all of the district’s regular newsletters and social media, and NCSBA consultant Sam Thorp mentioned that other districts have even utilized local television news to reach residents who didn’t even have children in the district.
Members of the board spent much of their March 6 session wordsmithing the job posting, and those surveys, in hopes of attracting candidates who share the progressive district’s views on equity and the importance of reducing the gaps in student outcomes by race. In an oft-cited Stanford study, the district is labeled as having the second highest achievement gap in the country (as measured by standardized test scores).
The district consistently has among the highest graduation rates in the state (most recently 95 percent to North Carolina’s average 86 percent) but rates in the district among Black students (88 percent) and Hispanic students (84 percent) lagged slightly behind and recent data from the state department of public instruction show much larger gaps in reading and math proficiency among elementary schoolers.
Board member Barbara Fedders requested the removal of a line that framed that high graduation rate as a low “dropout” rate and later raised a similar objection to the use of that word as a noun.
“We are struggling with absenteeism like every other district,” said Fedders, pointing out that not every student who doesn’t show up officially drops out. “I guess I’m just adding, again, my issue with ‘dropout’ and certainly using it as a word to describe a human,” she said later.
Hamlett, who is taking the role of chief equity and development officer for the public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, said in an emotional February speech to the board that she has previously made decisions in the best interest of thousands of children, but the decision to leave was “in the best interest of the three children that I gave birth to.”
She also mentioned some of the uglier parts of the job.
“Since January of 2021, I’ve taken the Michelle Obama ‘when they go low, we go high’ approach to the false narratives, misogynoir and personal attacks, the threats to the safety of my family, and blatant attempts to undermine my leadership and my character,” Hamlett said.
She was likely pointing, at least in part, to the ongoing conflict with the Klosty family, who is currently suing the superintendent in a saga that involved Hamlett requesting a no-contact order after an episode in which Hunter Klosty called her a “plagiarizing bitch” when she withheld a fistbump from him at his 2023 graduation ceremony.
“I have every confidence that this board will select the right leader at the right time to carry this work forward—building on the foundation we have established to ensure that, no matter the distractions that arise locally, across the state, or on the national stage, the work of creating a culturally responsive community where safety and belonging are lived experiences for all will continue with unflinching resolve,” Hamlett said in the February speech.
With Hamlett’s departure, CHCCS will be the latest Triangle school district with a new chief executive. Wake County Public Schools and Durham County Public Schools hired new superintendents in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
CHCCS’s sister district, Orange County Schools, recently named Danielle Jones as the replacement for Monique Felder, another Black female superintendent who left before her contract was up. That departure became the focal point of a school board election cycle.
Any successful candidate will certainly need to do their homework by learning more about this specific CHCCS board and its priorities.
“I think the conversation is definitely needed, and I think it would be thoughtful for people to watch the board meeting, to be able to find out exactly what the board is looking for,” said Ashuana Harris, chief human resources office, at the recent board meeting. “So I think just the conversation in and of itself will help us to find the correct candidate.”
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Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at chase@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.