Superintendent in, Board Member out, as New School Leader Selected
The Transylvania County School Board has chosen Lisa Fletcher, a Cherokee County administrator, as superintendent. The decision helped lead to the departure of longtime Board Member Ron Kiviniemi.
BREVARD — The Transylvania County School Board on Thursday selected a Cherokee County Schools principal and curriculum director, Lisa Fletcher, to replace departing Superintendent Jeff McDaris.
But the choice also helped create one more leadership opening in a year of transition at Transylvania County Schools — cementing the decision of Ron Kiviniemi to announce his resignation from the Board last week, a year before the end of his third term.
Kiviniemi, who was the Board’s lone Democrat, disagreed with Fletcher’s hiring, he said in an interview Thursday, citing forums the Board had held with members of the community and faculty to inform the selection process.
These meetings resulted in a list of attributes desired in a new superintendent, and “in my mind there were two other candidates who were more closely aligned with those characteristics and qualifications,” said Kiviniemi, 76, who also cited health reasons, housing prices and proximity to family for his decision to leave the Board and move with his wife, Ann, to Berea, Ky.
He couldn’t discuss the other candidates, he said, because Fletcher was chosen in meetings closed to the public under North Carolina law.
Among remaining Board members, Chair Tawny McCoy cast the only vote against hiring Fletcher. She declined to elaborate afterwards, except to say that she will support Fletcher “and I look forward to working with her.”
Board Vice Chair Kimsey Jackson and Member Chris Wiener, on the other hand, praised the new superintendent’s qualifications and work history. Fletcher, 49, received her doctorate in education leadership from Western Carolina University in 2016, according to the Cherokee County Schools website.
A native of Cherokee, she has worked at the district for more than 20 years, she said after the meeting, starting as a teacher and currently serving as principal of Murphy High School and the district’s High School Curriculum Director.
“She’s not been a superintendent but she’s been principal of two different high schools,” Jackson said. “She made some changes and improved the performance of the high school, and I’m looking for that — improving the performance of schools.”
The Board narrowed down a long list of candidates to the four that it ultimately interviewed, Jackson said. A longtime engineer and manager at a large power company in Florida, he called the selection the “most intensive thing” he had done in his private or public career, though he added “there were never any harsh words or rancor.”
“There’s no political chicanery going on here,” Wiener said, adding that he viewed Fletcher as being “the best candidate (and) capable of making the tough choices that will need to be made over the years. We have a lot of stuff coming down the pike.”
One decision will be the replacement of Finance Director Gabrielle Juba, who has resigned from her position but remains on contract until Fletcher can name her replacement, McDaris said.
“We’ve had some applicants,” he said of that opening, but “I think that needs to be Dr. Fletcher’s decision . . . It will be her finance director.”
McDaris announced his resignation in January effective at the end of June, when Fletcher will take over his duties. At the meeting, McDaris jokingly told Fletcher, “I’m going to look forward to working with you for 36 more days.”
The state law that created partisan elections for the Transylvania School Board gives members the power to vote for Kiviniemi’s replacement. The law also says the appointee must have been registered as a member of the same party as the departing Board member for at least 90 days.
Sam Edney, chair of the Transylvania Democratic Party, said the party will recommend a candidate. And former Board member Marty Griffin, defeated in last year’s election, said he is putting his name forward.
“If I was to be nominated and elected, I would be happy to serve,” he said Friday.
Among the other issues Fletcher must address, Wiener said, is the long-delayed effort to complete $68-million worth of school renovations. Originally approved by voters in 2018 for comprehensive upgrades of Brevard High School and Rosman Middle and High schools, this money is now slated to fill capital needs across the district.
Wiener pointed to Fletcher’s experience with school construction projects in Cherokee as one reason she stood out among other applicants. Not only did she help supervise work at her high school, Fletcher said, she faced the kind of disruptions that such projects can create for administrators.
The replacement of roofs at her school dragged on after the start of a recent school year, she said, forcing her to temporarily run the school without the use of its cafeteria or gym.
She said that her immediate plans are to begin meeting with teachers and other district staffers. At Thursday’s meeting she told the Board she was “humbled” to be named as superintendent, adding that “your school system has always been one of the strongest in Western North Carolina.”
Both Wiener and Kiviniemi also pointed to another challenge, stemming the long-term trend in declining school enrollment — the basis of state funding — at the county’s schools.
Though Wiener said he was a proponent of school choice, Kiviniemi said he was concerned that enrollment and funding could be undermined by Republican efforts to dramatically expand school vouchers at the state level.
It was one of the factors that prompted Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to declare a “state of emergency” in North Carolina’s public schools earlier this week.
“It will rob public schools of needed funding and (it) sanctions discrimination,” Cooper wrote about the voucher effort in a press release. “Instead, use public money for public schools.”
Kiviniemi has a long history as an educator in Transylvania, including serving as principal of three different district schools and developing the elementary curriculum program as a professor at Brevard College. He came out of retirement 11 years ago to run for the Board because of his alarm over the direction of public education policy in the state, he said.
Considering the voucher plan and proposals for meager raises that will leave teacher salaries in North Carolina lagging farther behind those in neighboring states, he said, he is more alarmed than ever.
“It’s almost ts almost as though leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly is daring teachers to walk out,” he said.
Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com
Next paragraph explains it. Board didn't follow findings of that input, according to him
Not a fan of public school system. Charter school vouchers are needed for competition. While teachers demand more money, 30% of all black kids flunk the SAT. If the public schools cant perform, they need to die on the vine. A lot of money amounting to a lot of wasted time and wasted young people's lives.