The Las Cruces school board’s list of superintendent finalists will likely drop from four to three because one candidate is in negotiations to become the superintendent of the Kansas City school district.
Former New Orleans schools superintendent Tony Amato is working out a deal with the Kansas City board to become superintendent there, the Kansas City Star is reporting.
The Las Cruces board meets tonight to discuss its search. In addition to Amato’s likely withdrawal from consideration, two other finalists are also finalists for the top job in Aurora, Colo., and many of the candidates have controversial pasts.
Those pasts are being dug up and spread around by community members upset that the board eliminated Charles White, a former deputy superintendent for operations for the Las Cruces district, from consideration for the top job. Many principals and union members are also upset, believing White is the candidate who can restore calm to the district after the turmoil surrounding two of the past three administrations.
Two Las Cruces superintendents have left under clouds of scandal in recent years.
Amato was a controversial candidate. He was forced out of New Orleans in April 2005 after two years on the job because critics felt he wasn’t making progress in improving budgetary issues.
The other finalists for the Las Cruces job are David Barbosa, superintendent for the Grand Prarie (Texas) Independent School District; Sonia Diaz, former superintendent of the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Public Schools; and William Harner, principal of Gainesville Middle School in Gainseville, Ga.
The board also named alternates: Joan Kowal, Florida’s Nova Southeastern University Superintendent in Residence; and Chip Zullinger, former Manassas (Va.) City Schools Superintendent.
Barbosa’s contract is not being renewed after eight years on the job because the school board felt the district was not making progress. In addition, according to a 1999 article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he was involved in a controversy in which, while he was superintendent, a 17-year-old female high school cheerleader was paddled by a male administrator behind closed doors, with another male administrator present, after she was caught smoking.
Kowal was forced out of her job as superintendent of a school district in Florida in 1999 after three years, according to a 2003 article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She was then hired in 2001 to run a school district in San Francisco, but dismissed in 2002, the newspaper said.
Kowal blamed both on politics during an attempt to become superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools in 2003.
The public portion of the school board meeting is at 6:30 p.m. tonight at the district’s administrative office at 505 South Main Street. It will be televised on the city’s public access channel, Comcast channel 20.