Why he decided to leave HISD: “The opportunity — which I did not seek, I was approached – but the opportunity to lead a school system of 1.1 million students with 1,800 schools, 125,000 employees, five times the size of HISD — at the end of the day was an opportunity to serve many more students that I couldn’t turn down … And people have been just very, very understanding. And when they understand the context – I’m not fleeing anything — they understand, ‘Wow, yeah, that’s a big system and I can understand as a superintendent, how, if it makes sense, something anybody would want to do.'”
If politics with the HISD board influenced his decision: “The decision was really predicated upon the kind of conversations I had with Mayor de Blasio in New York. New York is mayoral control, so there is no school board. It’s the mayor. As he and I had our conversations, we are politically and philosophically very aligned … The (HISD) board and I have had a great working relationship. We push each other’s thinking in a lot of different ways. Again, this is decision squarely based on the alignment that I felt and the opportunity to serve 1.1 million students in America’s largest school system.”
If a lack of an extension on his three-year contract -impacted his departure: “That did not factor into my decision. Quite frankly, I have a three-year contract. I know folks have talked about, you know, I’ve only been here 18 months, well, I only have 16 months left. So I was on the other side of that … Anybody who is working for a living is going to want to know if there’s some job stability and if not, they want enough time so that they can actually look at their options.”
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