Glass also served as Iowa’s chief state school officer. “Palo Alto has built something genuinely rare, and it is also a community that has been through a great deal,” Glass said in a statement. “I intend to listen carefully, be present in the schools, and build connections as my first priority.”

Also in California, leadership consultant and former Old Adobe Union School District superintendent was chosen as Pittsburg USD’s new leader. Santa Rosa City Schools’ next superintendent is , the deputy chief of continuous improvement for Oakland USD. Long Beach USD promoted Assistant Superintendent , a lifelong employee of the district, as its next superintendent.

Across the country in New Jersey, , the superintendent of Manville Public Schools for the past five years, will take the helm of Franklin Township Public Schools in September. , an assistant superintendent in The School District of Philadelphia, was selected to lead Vineland Public Schools.

Superintendent is moving to Surry County Schools after leading Elkin City Schools in North Carolina for three years. Hall began his career in Surry County Schools as a custodian and bus driver.

Indiana’s Plymouth Community School Corporation picked as its new leader. Campbell previously served as superintendent of the Columbia School District in Michigan for 11 years.

More new hires

• , Manson School District (Washington)
• , Frewsburg Central School District (New York)
• Anthony Limoges, Livermore Valley Joint USD (California)
• , Houston Public Schools ISD 294 (Minnesota)
• , Germantown Central School District��(New York)
• , Onondaga Central Schools (New York)
• Kathleen Scholand, SAU #13 (Maine)
• Keith Taverna, Andover Public Schools (Massachusetts)
• Jeffrey Trapp, Stockbridge Community Schools (Michigan)
• Josh Yonts, Letcher County Public Schools (Kentucky)

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It’s a core pillar of his leadership philosophy and why the North Carolina superintendent describes himself as “the student-centered superintendent.”

District 91心頭istration sat down with Spells to learn about his priorities for the upcoming school year, successes achieved in 2025-26 and involvement with the .

What’s top-of-mind for you heading into the upcoming school year?

Top-of-mind for me is always providing a great education for our students and ensuring they’re prepared for a career or college.

One of the first things I do when I move into a community as a superintendent is to try to become part of the community. I try to meet the families, meet the students, meet the principals, and just try to get a good feel of what’s going on. I just immerse myself in the community and let everybody know that we’re in this together.

We are all a team that I call “Team Hoke.” It means that we work together to improve student outcomes. That means going to different events. I go from everything to basketball games, to church and the church fish fry, becoming part of that community and letting everybody know that we have a task, and our task is improving student outcomes.

You have a track record for improving student achievement. What’s your strategy?

There are a couple of things I’m really proud of. One is our superintendent’s night out, where we invite our community to come in and talk to all the leaders in our school district. They can ask questions to all of my departments at this meeting.

We meet at one of our middle schools. We present what’s going on in the community and in the district. Then we listen to the community for feedback and answer questions to give people ownership of the district and what we’re doing. We like to do two or three of those per school year.

Find more solutions in the full ���Field Guide for People Leadership,��� which is available with��.油Then, navigate to the People section of the Content Hub, which is listed in the menu on the left side of 91心頭+.

You have experience leading districts through financial fallouts. What advice do you have for leaders who face budget uncertainty?

We have a philosophy here in Hoke County, and we have a philosophy in every district I work with. Every decision that we make, from the boardroom to the classroom, is going to be about students, and every decision we make is about improving the classroom. So we’ve learned to do more with less without impacting the classroom.

We sit down and do our budget, and if we have to make some cuts, we try to do things that have the least impact on classroom instruction. We try to do more cuts away from the building. A lot of our cuts will be central office or things that are on our wish list.

Tell me a little bit about your leadership philosophy.

I try to make sure that everybody in the district feels valued. The bus driver is the first person that the students see every morning. The cafeteria worker works with students and provides good meals. I make sure that everybody feels like they’re part of the team.

I find that if everybody feels valued, they work harder to support kids. The instruction and the academics go up when everybody feels like they have a part in what’s going on.

We also make sure that we’re communicating whatever we’re doing with our staff and that they have a voice in the process. We feel like that’s very important in the Hoke County Schools. We make sure that we keep our consumers, our parents and our staff informed.

We’ve also started a superintendent’s Christmas giveaway for our families. This year, we gave 25 families $105 to support their Christmas shopping. Hopefully, we can go up to about $150 next year. Again, we feel that it is very important to be part of the community.

Tell me about your involvement with the 91心頭 Leadership Institute.

I’ve been involved with 91心頭 leadership since 2018, and it’s just been amazing for me���the networking and the workshops on improving instruction and financial literacy, especially when I was a younger superintendent.

I learned so much just going to those meetings and having a chance to talk to other superintendents about what’s going on in their districts. I’m going to continue to be a member as long as I’m a superintendent. There’s just a wealth of knowledge in the room at the events.

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Leaders can or to be considered for one of four awards: Districts of Distinction, Leaders of Distinction, Women of Distinction and Superintendent of the Year.

Here are the criteria for each award:

Districts of Distinction

We are searching for pioneering initiatives that have made a significant impact on student achievement, engagement and overall educational excellence. This includes:

Innovative Practices: Recognizing districts that have implemented innovative and successful approaches to address educational challenges, improve student outcomes or enhance community engagement.

Student Achievement: Acknowledging districts that have demonstrated significant improvements in student achievement, including academic performance, graduation rates or closing achievement gaps.

Community Impact: Evaluating districts that have positively impacted their communities through initiatives such as partnerships with local organizations, community service programs or outreach efforts.

Leaders of Distinction

Leaders of Distinction provides an exceptional platform to recognize individual leaders who have demonstrated exceptional vision, executed innovative strategies and achieved remarkable results. Criteria include:

Visionary Leadership: Identifying leaders who have demonstrated a clear and inspiring vision for their district, fostering a culture of excellence and continuous improvement.

Educational Impact: Recognizing leaders who have implemented effective strategies resulting in improved student outcomes, increased graduation rates, or enhanced educational opportunities.

Collaborative Engagement: Considering leaders who have successfully engaged stakeholders, such as teachers, staff, parents, and the community, in the decision-making process and built strong relationships to support student success.

Women of Distinction

91心頭 is recognizing women who have demonstrated exceptional leadership skills based on the following:

Leadership Excellence: Recognizing women who have exhibited exceptional leadership skills in the education field, inspiring and empowering others to achieve their full potential, resulting in improved student outcomes, increased graduation rates or enhanced educational opportunities

Advocacy and Equity: Evaluating candidates who have been champions for educational equity, advocating for inclusive policies and promoting opportunities for marginalized student populations.

Superintendent of the Year

91心頭’s prestigious Superintendent of the Year Award recognizes bold and courageous leaders driving transformation within their schools and communities. We are looking for:

Educational Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead a school district with vision, fostering a positive and inclusive learning environment that promotes student achievement and well-being.

Community Engagement: Proven success in building strong partnerships with parents, community leaders and local organizations to support and enhance educational outcomes

Innovation in Education: Implementation of groundbreaking strategies and programs that drive academic excellence, equity, and continuous improvement across all levels of the school district.

The deadline to apply is Sept. 11, 2026. Learn more .

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Since becoming interim superintendent in July 2025, launched a 100-day plan focused on academics, operations and accountability. He also established five district priorities centered on literacy and mathematics achievement, student attendance, organizational development, college and career readiness, and enhanced support for special education and multilingual learners.

Joseph was previously superintendent of the Seaford School District in Delaware and Metro Nashville Public Schools.

In California, the Azusa Unified School District��picked Palo Alto USD Associate Superintendent of Educational Services as its next leader. L坦pez has worked in education across the state. Petaluma ISD hired , the assistant superintendent of high schools and college and career readiness in San Francisco USD and a former school board trustee.

was named the lone finalist to lead Grapevine-Colleyville ISD in Texas. Adams is the deputy superintendent of Garland ISD and has worked in education in Texas and elsewhere for nearly 30 years.

In the Northeast, Saugerties Central School District in New York promoted interim leader to superintendent. In Maine, Portland Public Schools Assistant Superintendent was selected as the superintendent of the South Portland School Department.

Maryland’s Washington County Public Schools elevated Deputy Superintendent Gary Willow to the top spot.

More new hires

• Thomas A. Butler, Brookfield Central School District (New York)
• , Oakfield-Alabama Central School District (New York)
• Brigid P. Collins, Bridgehampton Union Free School District (New York)
• Derek Lambert, Randolph County School District (West Virginia)
• Sandra Means, Wattsburg Area School District (Pennsylvania)
• , Bryan County Schools (Georgia)
• , Southeast Delco School District (Pennsylvania)
• Dan Sadler, Storey County School District (Utah)
• , Valley Grove School District (Pennsylvania)
• , Lancaster City Schools (Ohio)
• , Phenix City Schools (Alabama)
• , Cole R-1 School District (Missouri)
• Jordan Williams, Grady County School District (Georgia)
• Kyle Wood, Almont Community Schools (Michigan)

Artificial intelligence in action: Here���s what the most AI-advanced districts have in common��

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Nearly one-fifth of students describe themselves as “frequent checkers,” meaning they check their phones five or more times per day during class, according to new research from the .

Policies vary in enforcement, but the majority of schools enforce restrictions, according to the data. Less than 5% of students attend a school that either prohibits students from bringing phones to school or doesn’t have a cellphone policy at all.

The remaining students attend schools that either allow phone use in class, ban phone use in class or enforce a bell-to-bell policy.

More than half of students still check their phones up to four times per class���a habit that may be blunting the academic gains administrators had hoped restrictions would deliver.

Cellphone bans aren’t producing results

Schools that locked up student smartphones during the day cut in-class phone use by roughly 80%, yet saw near-zero average gains in standardized test scores. High schools and middle schools are trending in opposite directions.

A from the National Bureau of Economic Research examined nearly 1,800 schools using Yondr lockable pouches, drawing on GPS pings, state test records, disciplinary data, and student surveys across multiple years.

The study found that phone activity during school hours dropped by approximately 30% as measured by GPS data in the third year after adoption, and teacher-reported personal phone use in class fell from 61% of students to 13%.

Despite that reduction in scale, overall test score effects were statistically indistinguishable across math and English language arts combined.

The grade-level split is where superintendents will want to pay closest attention. High schools showed modest positive math gains equivalent to roughly a 0.9% increase in the score distribution, comparable to about one-fifth of the academic boost associated with a higher-quality teacher.

Middle schools moved in the other direction, showing small negative effects in math at roughly half the magnitude of the high school gains. Researchers suggest younger students may substitute phone time with other disruptive peer behavior rather than redirecting attention toward learning.

Find more solutions in the full “Field Guide for People Leadership,” which is available with .油Then, navigate to the People section of the Content Hub, which is listed in the menu on the left side of 91心頭+.

Discipline data adds another operational consideration. Suspension rates rose by roughly 16% in the first year after pouch adoption before fading in subsequent years, a pattern the researchers attribute to the enforcement burden of introducing any new restriction.

Student well-being followed a similar arc: it declined sharply at implementation and then recovered, turning positive by the second post-adoption year. Attendance, classroom attention, and perceived online bullying showed no meaningful change across the study period.

The findings come as two-thirds of U.S. states have enacted legislation restricting student phone access, leaving district leaders to navigate implementation without clear outcome guarantees. Roughly 62% of schools that adopted Yondr had previously operated under loose “no-show” policies, making the pouch a significant tightening rather than a marginal adjustment.

District 91心頭istration uses artificial intelligence to support research and drafting, with all content reviewed and verified by the author.

More from 91心頭: How to maximize edtech���while regulating screen time

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That finding anchors a new report from the ��examining how districts nationwide are responding to structural enrollment decline and what separates early movers from those who compound the problem.

The scale of the decline reframes it as permanent, not cyclical. National public K12 enrollment peaked in 2019 and has dropped by more than 1.3 million students since, with losses projected to continue through at least the early 2030s.

Meanwhile, U.S. birth rates have fallen 16% since 2007, meaning smaller kindergarten cohorts will keep moving through the pipeline regardless of any near-term policy response.

The financial pressure is most visible in underutilized buildings. National facilities data cited in the report show many large districts running schools at 60% to 70% capacity, and absorbing full fixed costs on half-empty buildings while cutting instructional staff and eliminating electives. Schools that shrink below their intended size become more expensive per student and less able to offer the programming families expect, which can accelerate further enrollment loss.

Timing is where districts either retain or surrender control. Those that begin planning 18 to 36 months before closures can align decisions with budget cycles, labor contracts and school calendars while maintaining loyalty.

Districts that wait until deficits become acute face a narrower set of options and far sharper opposition. Research cited in the report found that incremental, one-school-at-a-time closures typically fail on both counts: each demands a full political process, drains staff capacity and rarely moves the capacity needle enough to matter.

Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s December 2025 board vote illustrates what scaled, intentional action looks like. The district had watched enrollment fall from 70,000 to 34,000 students over two decades while operating 90 buildings, many in disrepair, against a projected $150 million deficit.

Its consolidation plan reduced K8 campuses from 61 to 45 and cut high school locations nearly in half. The district paired those reductions with a commitment to college-credit courses and career pathways at every remaining high school, framing consolidation as a program expansion rather than a retreat.

The report flags high schools as the next pressure point. Fewer districts have yet confronted consolidation at the secondary level, and less research currently exists to guide them. As smaller cohorts reach upper grades in the coming years, that gap will become harder to ignore.

District 91心頭istration��uses artificial intelligence to support research and drafting, with all content reviewed and verified by the author.

More from 91心頭: How 33,000 teachers want leaders to improve school culture

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Innovative schools are streamlining teacher efficiency, offering tutoring and providing access to rigorous content, according to from the Center on Reinventing Public Education. The researchers define these schools as “system improvers,” using AI to achieve certain strategic goals.

For example, these districts reported implementing AI-enabled tutoring, coaching and learning supports that improved test scores and saved five hours of weekly planning time for teachers,��according to teachers.

One chief technology officer set out to slash the time teachers spent on administrative tasks.

Meanwhile, a fraction of districts are known as “system changers,” meaning they focus on nontraditional measures of student success, including academic competencies or durable skills.

District leaders typically align these efforts with ongoing reforms: mastery- or competency-based learning, project-based learning or academy models. This way, AI serves as an “amplifier of preexisting instructional vision” that accelerates work already underway.

One district featured in the report is advancing mastery-based learning, an approach that requires teachers to redesign instruction, learning progressions, assignments and grading.

���You move at the pace of the teachers understanding their standards, and move at the pace of the teachers understanding student performance meeting standards,” said the superintendent. “We���re about a year and a half ahead of [our original implementation] schedule, and I think their organic AI use is what put it a year and a half further down the schedule.���

An even smaller share of districts, roughly 7%, are labeled “reimaginers.” Leaders are using AI to rethink learning and resource allocation.

These districts are using AI to restructure staffing, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. However, many districts are still in the early stages of this process.

���[We have seen] AI being a motivator for school systems to realize that outdated modes of instruction are no longer relevant,” said one school district’s director of AI and technology. “It���s a [moment of reckoning] where the economic forces are too strong, and if a kid has this tool and the skills, the sky is the limit.:

The research challenges a common assumption in edtech adoption: greater comfort with AI naturally leads to greater innovation. However, AI fluency does not, on its own, produce transformative outcomes.

Leaders must establish a clear instructional vision enabled by AI rather than��using it as merely an��efficiency tool.

Here are three recommendations:

• Articulate the problem you’re trying to solve: Define how AI addresses the problem and establish oversight for how AI is used across the district.
• Develop stronger evaluation approaches: Design more effective ways to assess how AI is changing classroom instruction.
• Invite parents, students and other stakeholders��to test new solutions to the problems they identify.

More from 91心頭: 3 ways districts are dealing with high diesel prices

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The findings come from the report, a collaboration between researchers at Harvard University and Stanford University that tracks academic recovery across thousands of school districts using the Stanford Education Data Archive.

The report identified 108 “districts on the rise”���those that significantly outpaced similar districts in both subjects between spring 2019 and spring 2025. District 91心頭istration chose five to showcase.

Marion County Public Schools��rolled out an evidence-based literacy curriculum aligned with the state’s 2022 Read to Succeed Act and restructured its coaching model around six-to-nine-week content cycles.

Between the 2021-22 and 2024-25 school years, the share of eighth graders scoring proficient or above in math climbed from 18% to 50%, and students in grades 3 through 7 improved by more than 10% in reading proficiency. Superintendent Chris Brady also made a deliberate bet against devices, implementing monthly technology-free days at the middle school level to restore direct student-to-teacher engagement.

Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises leveraged more than $420 million in to transform every school into a community school that serves as a hub for social services, healthcare and mental health support. The goal is to remove the non-academic barriers that suppress attendance and focus.

On the instructional side, the district deployed high-dosage math tutoring through a university partnership, built 26 literacy-intensive learning sites with on-site coaches and converted summer school into a paid extended learning season for high schoolers. Over nine years, the district has outpaced Maryland’s statewide ELA growth and logged three consecutive years of math gains matching the state average.

At the School City of East Chicago in Indiana, Superintendent Dr. Stephen Bourn辿s inherited years of leadership instability and responded with a five-year strategic plan anchored in a K12 instructional framework that standardized classroom expectations district-wide.

Critically, the district used ESSER money not to fill unsustainable staff positions but to create coaching programs eligible for Title I and other ongoing streams.

More from 91心頭:油3 ways districts are dealing with high diesel prices

In East Hartford Public Schools in Connecticut, Superintendent Thomas Anderson holds up to seven meetings each year, convening school and department leaders for central office to present systems-level data to help schools identify shared challenges.

The district has since seen performance increases in ELA, math, and science across all student groups, with two schools earning Connecticut’s “Schools of Distinction” designation for ranking in the top 10 percent statewide.

Kuna Joint School District in Idaho offers perhaps the longest runway for replication. The district began science of reading training for all staff in 2009 and extended that training to every principal, district leader and school board member over three years.

Today, the district runs weekly teacher professional learning communities, monthly principal-led “Guiding Coalition” meetings and a principal evaluation system explicitly aligned to research-based instructional leadership. The result is a culture of data use that survived a superintendent transition and continues to drive decisions at every level of the organization.

Read the report .

District 91心頭istration��uses artificial intelligence to support research and drafting, with all content reviewed and verified by the author.

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Nevada’s Washoe County Public Schools elevated Deputy Superintendent ��to replace the retiring Joe Ernst. McMaster first joined the district as a math teacher.

North East Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, promoted interim leader to superintendent. Jarrett was serving as the district’s chief instructional officer when he was named interim superintendent in December and was previously an assistant superintendent in Northside ISD.

has been the interim leader of Maryland’s Harford County Public Schools since January and is now its permanent leader. She has worked in the district for 30 years and previously served as executive director and director of elementary school instruction.

Anoka-Hennepin Schools, the largest district in Minnesota, chose chief operations officer as its next superintendent. Cole joined Anoka-Hennepin as a teacher in 1995. In Ohio, the Middletown City School District picked Princeton City Schools Superintendent as its next leader. Card also served as an administrator in Lakota Local Schools.

Former Palo Alto Unified School District superintendent was selected to lead Laguna Beach USD, where he was previously a principal. Austin also served as superintendent of Palos Verdes Peninsula USD.

In New Jersey, Superintendent is moving from the Barnegat Township School District to the Ocean City School District. Jason Fine was named superintendent of Ohio’s New Albany-Plain Local Schools. He has led Bexley City Schools since 2021.

Texas’ will take the helm of Lorena ISD after having led Bartlett ISD since 2019. In the same state, , superintendent of Red Lick ISD since 2018, is the finalist to lead Pittsburg ISD.

In Connecticut, Killingly Public Schools Superintendent was given the top spot at Ellington Public Schools. , who led Roanoke Rapids City Schools in North Carolina for five years, has been named the next superintendent of Southampton County Public Schools in Virginia.

More new hires

• , Northfield Public Schools (Minnesota)
• Scott Carroll, Hinsdale Central School District (New York)
• , Richmond Community Schools (Michigan)
• , Oregon-Howell R-III School District (Oregon)
• Kevin Dinning, Culver School District #4 (Oregon)
• , Lac qui Parle Valley ISD 2853 (Minnesota)
• , Dearborn Public Schools (Michigan)
• , Hoosic Valley Central School District (New York)
• , Pike Road Schools (Alabama)
• , Tillamook School District #9 (Oregon)
• , Hastings Public Schools (Nebraska)
• , Souderton Area School District (Pennsylvania)
• , Miami East Local Schools (Ohio)
• , Avondale School District (Michigan)
• , Bethlehem Area School District (Pennsylvania)
• Dan Sadler, Storey County School District (Nevada)
• Stacey Schmidt, Central Lee Community School District (Iowa)
• Karl Schneider, Fairport Harbor Exempted Village School District (Ohio)
• , Clarke County School District (Georgia)
• , Urbana City Schools (Ohio)
• Kevin Threadgill, Monroe County School District (Mississippi)
• , Mason County Central Schools (Michigan)
• , Bulloch County Schools (Georgia)
• , Lincoln Parish Schools, (Louisiana)

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Since the Iran war started in late February, gas prices have nationally. Every state is paying at least $5 a gallon on average for diesel, with states like California charging $7.415 at the pump, according to from the American Automobile Association.

As a result, more than one-fifth of district leaders and transportation directors report spending 11% to 20% more on diesel than their approved budgets allow this school year, according to a from The School Superintendents Association.

To prevent transportation disruptions, leaders have been forced to adjust spending in three ways: by absorbing extra costs within their current transportation budget (63%), transferring funds from other programs (32%) or using district reserves (19%).

Districts have��also made��operational changes to offset fuel costs, including revamping bus routes for efficiency, enforcing anti-idling measures, limiting field trips and switching to non-diesel vehicles.

A fraction of leaders resorted to staff and program cuts, according to the data. Some districts are shrinking support personnel (13%), reducing administrative staffing/spending (13%) and reducing summer instruction (12%).

Looking ahead to the upcoming school year, leaders were asked what they would cut��if diesel prices remain high. Here’s what they said:

• Reserve funds (38%)
• Unsure (36%)
• Extracurricular/athletic activities (30%)
• Facilities/maintenance deferrals (29%)
• Non-instructional staffing (23%)
• Professional development/consulting services (22%)
• Technology purchases/replacements (22%)
• Supplies, materials and textbooks (14%)
• Instructional staffing/programming (6%)

A national crisis

The findings reflect ongoing media reports of districts resorting to creative solutions to manage diesel costs.

In Washington, the East Valley School District is saving an estimated $50 to $100 per week by topping off its fleet in neighboring Idaho, according to .油It’s a solution inspired by the district’s bus drivers who encourage one another to cross the state line when convenient.

“They’re the ones who are asking because they care deeply about the district and care about cost savings,” Neale Rasmussen, the district’s chief financial officer, told��The Spokesman-Review.

The war’s impact on diesel prices has had a “substantial” impact on district operations in California, Siskiyou County Office of Education Superintendent Allan S. Carver told . The county spans roughly 6,347 square miles.

“We do what we can to save money, but there’s only so much we can do,” Carver told the news outlet. “As we start making our budgets for next year, this is definitely something we need to account for.”

More from 91心頭: How to prepare your school board for stormy seas

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