Cobb school chief’s surprise exit sparks search for answers, new boss
Staff writer Alexis Stevens contributed to this article.
The unexpected resignation of Cobb County’s school superintendent has left parents questioning whether the budget-strapped system will be able to maintain its reputation as one of the top-performing districts in the state as it begins a new chapter in leadership.
So far, school board members are not detailing how they plan to proceed in finding a successor for Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, an exhaustive process which can take up to a year or more to complete in order to find someone qualified enough to lead a district as large as Cobb.
Hinojosa, 57, made his surprise announcement to school board members Monday night. He will leave in late May, at the end of the school year.
Hinojosa said Tuesday that he’d decided months ago to move to Texas to assist with aging parents but did not want to announce his decision until he had a solution to the $80 million budget deficit facing Georgia’s second-largest school district.
He now projects the district should be in the black for the next school year.
The school system is getting about $20 million based on the governor’s recently released budget, Hinojosa said, and is spending about $20 million less this year, largely because of a hiring freeze.
The Cobb district also expects an increase in local property tax revenues, though it will likely have to dip into its rainy day fund for up to $30 million to stay out of the red, he said.
“If I were the school board, that would be my No. 1 criteria — to look for somebody who understands the funding,” said Melanie Heineman, a parent with two children in Cobb County schools. “It’s still one of the top school systems. … Is that going to continue without funding? I don’t know. It might not.”
Hinojosa has led the district — which has close to 107,000 students in about 114 schools — since July 2011. His contract with the Cobb district expires in December. It contains no penalties for early termination by either party. Hinojosa served as superintendent for the Dallas Independent School District before accepting the Cobb County job.
The challenges of running a school system of Cobb’s size is a big reason why so many superintendents don’t last many years, said Frank King, whose company, King-Cooper & Associates, is currently searching for superintendents in Banks, Stevens, Barrow and Lamar counties.
“You can’t have a different CEO every two years and have a successful business, and the same is true in school systems,” King said. “You have to have a multi-talented individual in the position, and occasionally just one or two problems can completely knock them off course and make the job miserable, and oftentimes you have systems where there’s continual turnover in leadership.”
Hinojosa said he was not asked to step down over budget woes or as a result of criticism over the school system’s handling of last week’s winter storm, which left hundreds of students stranded on buses and at schools.
“Cobb was great to me,” Hinojosa said. “It’s a great school system. I’ve loved it, but I think it’s time for other people to do this.”
He said he plans to take a consulting job once he relocates but declined to name the company.
During his tenure with Cobb, Hinojosa led the district through some of its deepest budget cuts amid the economic recession. Parents argue education quality in Cobb has suffered because of the cuts: Classroom sizes have increased and teaching positions have decreased in recent years, with students getting fewer days at school.
But budget concerns are looking better, said school board members, who commended Hinojosa for his work with the system at Monday’s school board meeting.
Afterward, some members said they don’t think Hinojosa’s resignation was a reaction to any of Cobb’s crises, and added they’re not surprised he’s leaving, considering he wants to be closer to his 91-year-old mother in the Dallas area.
But David Banks, a longtime school board member, said Hinojosa has seemed less enthusiastic about the job, not visiting schools as much as he once did.
“I had a sense that there just wasn’t as much involvement as we had had in the past,” Banks said. “There could have been some more aggressive leadership.”
Hinojosa served as an educator for more than three decades before coming to Georgia. In Cobb, Hinojosa earned a base salary of $237,000 and perks that exceed $28,000 annually.
Moving forward, a major suburban school system like Cobb is likely to conduct a national search to find the next superintendent – a person who can fulfill lofty expectations and manage the stresses of a job that is similar to running a large corporation, according to education observers.
Superintendents often don’t last long, said Steve Dolinger, a former Fulton County superintendent, who now is president of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education. He said superintendents leave after only a few years either because they clash with their elected school boards, don’t perform well or find other opportunities, like Hinojosa did.
“You can be the ‘Superintendent of the Year’ one year, and a couple of years later be out of a job,” Dolinger said.
Superintendents in Georgia tend to last about five years, and their mean age is about 54, said Bill Sampson, a consultant for the Georgia School Boards Association, which assists school districts in their superintendent searches upon request.
“Everybody wants that special person, but the key for any organization is that relationships have to be built on trust,” Sampson said.
About the Author
Mark Niesse is an enterprise reporter and covers elections and Georgia government for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is considered an expert on elections and voting. Before joining the AJC, he worked for The Associated Press in Atlanta, Honolulu and Montgomery, Alabama. He also reported for The Daily Report and The Santiago Times in Chile.
