Acting education superintendent to leave in January

Louisiana’s education leader, Acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler, announced today that she is leaving the state education department next month after a seven-month leadership stint that began when her predecessor quit. Tyler says she’ll end her tenure with the department during the last week in January, as a new term of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education begins and the board searches for a permanent education superintendent. “My heart is filled with gratitude and hope that we will continue to provide our most precious resource, Louisiana’s children, with the education they deserve,” Tyler told BESE members, choking up. BESE members praised Tyler’s leadership of the department, which started in the middle of a legislative session. Significant budget issues were unfinished at the time, and the department was in the middle of a controversial revamp of teacher evaluation standards. Louisiana’s education superintendent oversees the state’s 70 school districts, which comprise 700,000 public school students. Tyler worked nearly four decades in education, beginning as a high school math teacher in Caddo Parish and later becoming a principal, among other jobs. She was the first woman and first black person to be selected as Caddo Parish superintendent. She retired as Caddo’s education superintendent in 2007 and was hired by then-state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek—who left the job in May—as his deputy superintendent. Gov. Bobby Jindal is pushing BESE to hire John White, superintendent of the state’s Recovery School District, as the permanent state education superintendent.