A clearer picture of Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD’s next superintendent is forming.
The school board is interviewing candidates to succeed retiring Superintendent Jim Chadwell, whose last day is Jan. 31, 2025. Trustees plan to have a lone finalist for the job as early as November and no later than January, school board President Marilyn Tolbert said during an Oct. 28 meeting.
The search intensified in recent weeks. In October, trustees met for special meetings about the superintendent search seven times.
The school board is searching for a candidate who meets community needs as outlined in a survey. Trustees’ third-party search firm, Thompson & Horton, conducted the online survey in early October.
Residents said key priorities for Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD’s next leader include:
- Ability to manage a high-growth school district.
- Student centered and an advocate for teachers and public education.
- Someone who will communicate and engage with the community while being transparent, visible and accessible.
- Experience in education, including as a teacher and administrator.
- Have a sense of fiscal responsibility, know how to manage a budget and understand school finance.
- Set high expectations through accountability while also doing so with integrity, fairness, inclusivity and compassion.
Mike Moses, a former Texas education commissioner and previous Dallas ISD superintendent who is leading the district’s search, detailed to trustees in early October the district’s challenges and strengths as garnered through several focus group interviews.
Residents appointed to the focus groups by the school board told Thompson & Horton that student discipline, attacks on teachers and public education, and static state school funding are among Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD’s challenges, Moses said.
Another challenge community members highlighted to Moses for the next superintendent is the need to balance construction of new buildings and maintenance of existing ones between the east and west sides of the school district.
“They were appreciative of bond issues, appreciative of efforts, but still some people sense some challenges there,” Moses said.
David Thompson, a partner with Thompson & Horton who also is leading the superintendent search, pointed out residents were concerned about potential growth disparities between the north and south sides of the district, which sprawls from northwest parts of Fort Worth and includes Saginaw, Blue Mound and swaths of unincorporated Tarrant County.
Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD cannot maintain its growth by itself and needs to work with multiple cities and the Tarrant County government to ensure infrastructure is in place to support growing schools, Thompson said.
“That was recognized as a challenge that a new superintendent is going to have to come prepared, and then work with multiple other local organizations, to address,” he said.
Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD is working through the final projects of its $524.7 million bond from 2017 and first pieces of its $561.1 million bond from 2023.
Residents listed Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD’s small community feeling alongside its potential for growth as a strength, Thompson said.
“People kind of extended that to say what that means is people still know each other. There are still those interpersonal connections that give it more of a smaller community feel even as you’ve dealt with growth,” Thompson said.
Residents also saw the district’s strong and good governance, from the school board and superintendent on down to teachers, as a major strength, the lawyer said.
“The reason I want to call attention to that is we don’t always hear that,” Thompson said.
Jacob Sanchez is a senior education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
