Cobb’s superintendent finalist Michael Hinojosa Monday said he would spend his first 90 days on the job meeting with school administrators and the community to assess the district’s issues before suggesting any changes.
“I am going to be doing a lot of listening,” he said. “I know the numbers, I know the quantitative stuff but now I need to figure out the qualitative stuff, the stories behind the numbers.”
Hinojosa, 54, was announced as the district’s lone superintendent candidate Thursday and is expected to begin work July 1. Board members are negotiating the details of his contract, which won’t be made public until it is finalized after the state mandated 14-day waiting period. Board chairwoman Alison Bartlett confirmed Monday Hinojosa will earn $237,000 annually, or $29,000 more than his predecessor. Other details of his compensation are still being worked out.
The longtime Texan is coming to Cobb, Georgia’s second-largest district, from Dallas, the nation’s 14th largest. Monday, he made his first public visit to Georgia, meeting with top administrators, principals, media and members of the public.
In an hour-and-a-half stop at Smyrna’s Campbell High School, he fielded questions from community members and parents, including Northeast Cobb moms Susan Lewis and Fara McCrady, who pressed the superintendent on his academic policies and budget governance.
“We’ve done our research,” Lewis said. “We want to hear his take on the criticisms and how they are going to come to pass in our district if this hire transpires.”
The parents said they had concerns about his track record in Dallas handling budget cuts, but they liked that Hinojosa was from outside the state.
Hinojosa has lived and worked in Texas for most of his life, but said he was enticed to move to Georgia because his son lives here and is about to make Hinojosa a first-time grandfather . Two other sons will attend college on the East Coast this fall.
By law, the Cobb school board can only offer him a two-year contract. Hinojosa is one of the highest paid urban school superintendents in the country, with a base salary of $328,000, according to The Dallas Morning News. Here he will earn $237,000 in addition to Texas pension benefits worth more than $200,000 annually.
Hinojosa has experience with some of the changes soon to be introduced in Georgia classrooms. Dallas has been tracking value-added growth data for 15 years, he said, and uses it to pay out bonuses to teachers. Similar concepts used to measure how adept a teacher is at pushing students to achieve are in the works here.
Tania Phillips attended the event because her child is starting kindergarten this fall, and she wanted to hear more about Hinojosa's ideas around early-childhood education. She described him as "personable," and liked that he planned to listen in his first few days.
"This is a fresh start for me as a first-time parent," she said. "This is going to be a new superintendent. So it's very important for me to understand what his views are."
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