By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
August 31, 2011

Two days after resigning from the Kansas City, Missouri School District, Dr. John Covington now has a new job.

The former KCMSD superintendent interviewed for the new position Aug. 26 in Michigan and accepted the role of chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority (EAS).

Covington will oversee Michigan’s new system to assume control of the state’s lowest performing schools in the bottom five percent.

According to the Detroit Public Schools website, the system will be implemented in the underperforming schools in the 2012-2013 school year and will eventually span the entire state.

KCMSD staff watched Covington’s interview with the Education Achievement Authority Executive Committee live online, KCMSD Senior Media Relations Specialist Andr Riley said.

Asked if the district knew beforehand that Covington would resign or was considering another job, Riley said, No.

Throughout the weekend, reader comments infiltrated media websites about Covington’s abrupt departure. Most of them were negative.

He had the future of Kansas City’s kids in his hands while he had a foot out the door, Christi Clemons Hoffman wrote on The Kansas City Star website. Now you see him for what he is… Yes, Covington needs to apologize to the community and its leaders – but especially to the families who put their trust in him.

Another post on the Star read, Obviously, you can never entirely blame someone for accepting a better job but this case is different. When he accepted his position here he promised to see it through so that the kids would finally get a quality education. He’s running out on 17,000 children who desperately need him.

A number of Kansas City residents also posted on the Detroit Free Press website and one Michigan resident pointed out that as his state’s economy continues to struggle, the state created a job inside Michigan, but hired from outside.

At one point, five candidates were vying for the chancellor position, but toward the end, all but Covington withdrew their application.

We were not able to have multiple candidates vying for the post because none wished to have their board think they were ‘fishing’ (for a job), Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts told the Detroit Free Press.

History is repeating itself, District 40 State Rep. John Rizzo said, and Covington has now joined the long list of previous KCMSD superintendents.

It’s another setback in the progress for fixing the Kansas City, Missouri School District, Rizzo said. It has just amazed me that we’re continuing to go through this (frequent turnover of superintendents).

What now?

KCMSD Board of Education will continue to meet this week to discuss an action plan and hiring an interim superintendent.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is also strategizing and figuring out the next steps to take with the provisionally accredited school district.

We’ve been through this before with Kansas City, and the frequent turnaround of superintendents destabilizes the leadership in the district. It can set the district back in terms of where it’s going, Tony Stansberry told Northeast News.

Stansberry, the DESE area supervisor for the Kansas City area with the University of Missouri-Kansas City Regional Professional Development Center, added that KCMSD may struggle to find a replacement.

At this time of year, it’s pretty tough to bring in a new superintendent because the ones that are marketable probably have jobs, he said.

Losing a superintendent could also threaten KCMSD’s ability to gain full accreditation, DESE Communications Coordinator Michele Clark told Northeast News. KCMSD is scheduled to receive its accreditation classification this fall.

There are a lot of factors that go into those decisions and stable leadership is one of those, Clark said of accreditation.

Accreditation is what we want, Rizzo said. At the end of the day, accreditation is something the kids deserve to have. They deserve to be able to count on their school.

KCMSD Board of Education President Airick West said the district will continue to focus on the scholars.

We have an obligation to the scholars of this community and we will continue to see that work through, West told Northeast News. The senior leadership team has not submitted any resignations. We have the people we need to keep this moving forward unimpeded and uninterrupted.

Asked if the district will continue to implement the Transformation Plan to improve academic achievement, West said yes.

We created that; we designed that, West said. We intend to implement it. We have a strategy for transforming education in this community and we intend to see that strategy through.