The two men vying to be the next superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools will meet with the public Tuesday in a pair of forums.
The Jefferson County Board of Education named Ben Shuldiner and H. Brian Yearwood as finalists after a nationwide search. The men come from districts much smaller than JCPS — Kentucky’s largest school district. And they both boast track records of boosting student performance in the years following a pandemic slump.
Tuesday’s forum will be their first and only interaction with the public before the school board makes their pick two days later. Whoever the board chooses, one thing is certain: The next superintendent will have a full plate.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting’s Jess Clark and the Courier Journal’s Krista Johnson have a wealth of knowledge about the district and in this installment of Digging In they share what they know about the finalists and what questions they hope get answered during Tuesday’s forums. Click the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
This transcript is edited for length and clarity.
Jess Clark: Ok, first off let's give folks a little info about who these candidates are. What did you learn about finalist Ben Shuldiner?
Krista Johnson: Shuldiner is a Harvard graduate who spent most of his education career in New York City before moving to Lansing, Michigan a few years ago. Since being there the big thing that he has helped the district do is increase graduation rates. They also opened a career and technical high school under his leadership and increased the district’s enrollment of about 10,000 kids.
JC: The other candidate is H. Brian Yearwood, who left Columbia Public Schools in Missouri, a school system of 19,000 students that’s pretty diverse with a high poverty rate. Yearwood spent most of his education career in Texas and can tout a significant increase in his last district’s rating on the state school rating system. So Krista, these forums are Tuesday afternoon and evening. What questions are you most looking forward to hearing these candidates answer?
KJ: I think one big focus of the next superintendent will be on diversity and inclusion. Both candidates in their applications noted a deep commitment to diversity and inclusion, but JCPS will likely be scrutinized at both the federal and state level in coming months after current superintendent Marty Pollio declined to sign the letter from the Department of Education agreeing that DEI initiatives are illegal. This could jeopardize federal funding and our next leader will likely have to make a decision moving forward on how they’ll manage that controversy.
JC: I’m most interested in hearing them talk about what makes them qualified to run a district of this size. JCPS has 96,000 students and has a city-sized budget and a student population with many different needs. Our English Language Learner population is bigger than the entire student population of each of their last districts. And there are some operational challenges, like transportation, I’d like to hear them get into the weeds on, especially since neither of them has managed an in-house transportation fleet as superintendent.
KJ: Absolutely, I’m sure there will be a large learning curve. In addition to the future concerns about federal funding, board members are currently forced with trimming the budget ahead of next year, given the expiration of COVID funding. Because of this there are some concerns about ongoing construction projects. The board just formed a committee to explore ways to generate more revenue, which could mean for Louisville homeowners an increase in their property taxes. The last campaign launched to do this was in 2020 and it was really contentious, involving lawsuits. So, our next leader will have to deal with a pretty divided community with many residents arguing JCPS already has too much money.
JC: I’m sure we’d like to hear ideas about how these finalists can improve academic outcomes here.
KJ: Absolutely. While all the previous challenges mentioned are really important to the organization of JCPS, the reason we send our schools is so they can learn. JCPS continues to lag behind the state on most metrics, including its attendance and proficiency rates on tests.
JC: Like a lot of districts with lots of high-needs kids, there is a lot of room for growth in education outcomes here in JCPS.
