Two finalists were considered for FCPS superintendent – then one dropped out

UPDATE: Cheryl Logan has taken her name out of the competition for Fairfax County superintendent. She informed her board the same day the NAACP announced the two finalists.

The Fairfax County School Board has narrowed the selection of the next school superintendent to two finalists, the Fairfax County NAACP reported April 9.

The finalists are:

• Cheryl Logan, the superintendent of Omaha Public Schools in Nebraska since 2018, and
• Michelle Reid, the superintendent of Northshore School District in Washington state since 2016.

The school board is expected to announce a decision within the next few days. FCPS Superintendent Scott Brabrand announced last summer he would leave his position at the end of the year.

In a letter to the school board and community, the Fairfax County NAACP raises concerns that the board would replace Brabrand with someone who leads a much smaller district with very different demographics.

Northshore School District (NSD) has only 20,000 students, while FCPS has about 180,000, making it nearly10 times bigger.

According to the NAACP, “many people on the panel [that interviewed the finalists] were shocked that a superintendent with only a $400 million budget (versus a $2.7 billion FCPS budget), 2,100 employees (versus 25,000 FCPS employees), and surprising achievement gaps despite relatively high wealth and low poverty” could have ended up as one of two final candidates.

NSD has just 2,000 English language learners (9 percent of enrollment) compared to 46,000 (26 percent at FCPS). Twelve percent of NSD students are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, compared to 26 percent at FCPS.

Fifty percent of the students at NSD are White, 13 percent are Hispanic, 25 percent are Asian, and 2 percent are Black.

At FCPS, 38 percent are White, 27 percent are Hispanic, 20 percent are Asian, and 10 percent are Black.

Logan’s experience seems to make her better suited to lead FCPS.

Omaha Public Schools enrolls about 50,000 students. Twenty-four percent are white, 37 percent are Hispanic, 7 percent are Asian, 25 percent are Black, 77 percent are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, and 38 percent are English language learners.

Before serving as superintendent in Omaha, Logan was the chief academic officer for the School District of Philadelphia, the eighth largest school system in the country, where she was directly responsible for the academic achievement of 135,000 highly diverse students.

According to publicly available data analyzed by the Fairfax NAACP, Logan made significant gains in student achievement in Philadelphia, including increased high school graduation rates, the expansion of career and technical education programs, and a substantial growth in reading achievement among students at every level from grades 3 to 7. There isn’t enough data on Omaha, to judge academic achievement trends.

In contrast, the NAACP couldn’t find any evidence showing increased performance at NSD during Reid’s tenure.

The NAACP had urged the Fairfax County School Board to select a superintendent “with extensive leadership experience in large, complex, and extremely diverse systems, and to have faced and attempted to solve problems similar to those we face: teacher shortages, achievement gaps, opportunity gaps, large English language learner populations with low graduation rates, large numbers of students from economic disadvantage, vast geographic diversity, wide economic disparity, and more.”

Related story: FCPS Superintendent Brabrand announces departure

The Fairfax County NAACP had lobbied unsuccessfully to be included in the panel that interviewed the two finalists on March 28 and 29.

“We were concerned there were no panelists there to represent the interests of our most vulnerable students: students with disabilities, students of color, and English language learners,” the NAACP states. “Also, there were very few people of color on the panel.”

While the panelists signed nondisclosure agreements, the NAACP states, “the difference in pertinent experience between the two finalists was so shocking that people felt a responsibility to advocate that our school board select the candidate with the best chance of success here in Fairfax County.”

“We were inundated with messages from whistleblowers sharing names and data points as well as overall impressions,” the organization continues.

Following the interviews of the finalists, panelists reported that Logan vowed to expand FCPS’ world-class course offerings to nontraditional populations and spoke about the importance of public accountability to community organizations and families.

Logan speaks fluent Spanish and taught Spanish for many years in Prince George’s County. She spoke about her reputation of being “tough on the issues but not on the people” and her practice of thoroughly addressing system-wide problems while maintaining an emphasis on building trust among stakeholders.

Reid’s ideas were less specific and more “broadly visionary,” largely centered upon proposals FCPS had already implemented in the last two decades, the panelists reported.

The NAACP is concerned that NSD didn’t screen every child for gifted education programming and that it took an outside consultant to bring to Reid’s attention that the district had a fundamentally racist process.