COLUMBUS, Ohio — Columbus City Schools said it will have a new superintendent at the start of the next school year.
Who that will be remains a mystery as the district must first hire a law firm to find a search team to find the replacement for Dr. Talisa Dixon who announced her retirement last week.
Columbus school board president Jennifer Adair told 10TV in an interview Monday that Dixon’s plan to retire was not unexpected as the board had been working with her for a few months on her announcement.
Adair said the next leader will need to be multi-talented and what she called a “true CEO."
“Urban education is hard. We have attacks left and right from the statehouse, our politicians, we have COVID, we have restrictions, we have a lot of things going on,” she said.
Columbus' graduation rate is 79.7% below the goal of 81.4% set for 2020. By 2026 the district wants the graduation rate to be 86%.
Adair said the next superintendent will need to navigate the challenges put forth by politicians in the Ohio Statehouse.
“If there isn’t a place of trust or security, students can’t learn. What we are doing when we see these bills, whether it be CRT or whether we see it being attacks on LGBTQ communities telling students 'don't be who you are, don’t show up who you are' and then making our teachers, our valuable teachers afraid...that impacts that relationship and our students can't learn and our students can't be who they are and our students can't succeed. It is an attack on every single student in Ohio," Adair said.
Adair also addressed the lingering issues involving school buildings falling into disrepair and lack of air conditioning in every classroom.
“The board will be coming to the community in the next few years asking for help because we need to make sure we have the funds to do that,” she said.
10TV's Kevin Landers asked her why the problems persisted.
“It’s not the fault of one person. This is not a leadership failure, this is a system failure. We are all tired of band-aids. We are trying to lean in and do the hard work and figure out how do we change the system so this doesn’t continue to happen,” she said.
In the end, she said the next superintendent needs to be a leader with a large skill set.
“We are looking for a CEO. We are looking for an executive leader. We are the largest government in Franklin County and that is sometimes not understood. We have 9,000 employees, 47,000 students. We have a lot of property, we have a lot of investments, we have a lot of assets in the community, we have a big budget. Fundamentally, it comes down to valuing who are children are,” she said.
Angela Chapman, Chief of Transformation and Leadership, is the acting the interim superintendent effective Jan.1, 2023.