King hopes to unify EBR school board

If he’s hired as the next superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Samuel King says uniting the school board will be a priority. “Our work will be centered on the strategic plan,” says King, the lone finalist for the job. If everyone supports the strategic plan—and King says board members have assured him they do—then everything the administration and board do together should be aligned with it. “That in itself,” he says, “should result in that 6-5 split [among the 11 members] beginning to mitigate itself.” Some education watchers—including some board members—are skeptical as to whether or not King, who leads a 16,000-student suburban school district in Rockdale County, near Atlanta, is ready to lead a district as large and poor as East Baton Rouge Parish’s. But King says he’s been a teacher and an administrator in large urban systems. Due to recent population shifts, the Rockdale system is now 70% minority and 62% economically disadvantaged, yet the district has reached its “adequate yearly progress” targets for five straight years. He says achievement gaps between poor students and the system as a whole have narrowed. In December 2010, King was named Superintendent of the Year by the Georgia School Superintendents Association and Georgia School Boards Association. Last year, King was a finalist for superintendent positions in the Georgia counties of DeKalb and Cobb, according to media reports. While he is the only finalist remaining from the original 44 applicants, he is not guaranteed the job; the board plans to bring him back for further discussion. —David Jacobs