Fresh eyes preferred for next Fort Smith superintendent

It’s considered wise for vital public institutions seeking new leadership to consider internal persons in a process that also seeks qualified outside candidates. There are exceptions to that wisdom. The ongoing search for a Fort Smith Public School superintendent is one of those exceptions.

A Fort Smith superintendent is arguably one of the most important jobs in the metro. This person, ideally with oversight from a responsible board focused more on leadership accountability than accommodation, is charged to manage an education system that includes more than 13,600 students, more than 2,000 teachers and staff, 28 schools, and a budget of more than $200 million.

The Fort Smith Public School Board recently approved three finalists for the district’s top job. (Link here for details on the three candidates.) The three were selected from a list of 20 applicants.

Of the three candidates, two are not employed by the district, and one has been a deputy superintendent in the Fort Smith district since 2020 and has been in district administrative leadership roles since 2010. The board is scheduled to interview finalists the first week of April with the goal of naming a superintendent by mid-April.

Only the two outside candidates are palatable. The past few years of decisions and actions by the district provide us no room for comfort with an internal candidate. Put another way, an internal candidate who has been in top leadership circles is part of a decision tree that has produced, at best, questionable fruit.

Let’s review a few examples.

The district’s paid leadership could not or would not be honest about how much of the more than $120 million in millage-supported construction was spent with local firms.

The district’s paid leadership looked the other way when third-party managers overseeing the more than $120 million in millage construction used rules that made it difficult for local firms, especially architect and design firms, to bid for substantial projects.

The district’s paid leadership has yet to honestly address expensive design and construction problems with the Peak Innovation Center – even as professional services firms provided clear and troubling examples of district missteps. Even more disturbing, the paid leadership tried to place blame with others, including a threat from an attorney to a firm involved in the Peak project.

The district’s paid leadership has yet to answer how hundreds of personnel files, which included important personal and financial info, were found in unsecured, open dumpsters.

The district’s paid leadership has yet to fully explain why in 2023 it used private sessions with each school board member to develop and seek approval of an expansive and expensive plan to create pay schedule changes and provide pay raises. This unwillingness to discuss the public’s business in public came to light by a school board member troubled by the process.

The district’s paid leadership refuses to be honest about the sudden and controversial decision to reassign former Northside High School football coach Felix Curry. This inexplicable action resulted in a protest resignation by a school board member and lawsuit against the district filed in February.

We could go on, but the list above should be enough to support the point that fresh, outside leadership is the best hope to reverse what we believe is a troubling pattern of actions and decisions.

We hope a majority of school board members agree that the next superintendent needs to be someone from outside the district who will deliver transparent leadership focused on student and teacher support instead of administrative control, comfort, and, too often, deceit.