A pair of well-known Colorado superintendents are headed to new jobs in other districts.
The Littleton school board this week named Brian Ewert as the final candidate to be the district’s new superintendent. Ewert has been superintendent in the neighboring Englewood district.
Center district Superintendent George Welsh has been offered the superintendent’s job in the Cañon City schools.
Ewert came to Englewood in 2010 following a time when the district had gone through eight superintendents in 10 years. He launched a common instructional model, lengthened the school day and expanded student access to technology, among other initiatives. The 2,866-student Englewood district is rated at the improvement level in the state rating system, having moved up from turnaround status in 2010. Ewert is the current state superintendent of the year.
Littleton, with 15,691 students, is one of the state’s highest-performing districts, having been classified at the distinction level for the last five years. Once a contract if finalized, Ewert will succeed Superintendent Scott Murphy, a long-time Colorado school administrator who announced his retirement earlier.
For the last year Littleton has been at odds with the parents of Claire Davis, a student who was killed in a shooting at Arapahoe High School in December 2013. The family feels the district has not been forthcoming in in providing information about the incident.
The state superintendent of the year in 2014, Welsh is a former president of the Colorado Association of School Exeutives and was active on the plaintiffs’ side in the Lobato v. State school funding case.
Welsh is moving from the 649-student Center district to a system of 3,603 students in Cañon City. Center is at the accredited level in the state rating system, having moved up from priority improvement in 2010. Center’s improvement efforts were detailed in this 2012 Chalkbeat story. Cañon City is accredited with improvement.
District voters this week recalled two Center school board members who were critics of Welsh and retained a third member allied with the superintendent.