BY ZACHARY REID
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
The long-running search for a new superintendent for Richmond Public Schools ended today where it officially began in August: with Yvonne W. Brandon.
The School Board removed the “interim” from her title, approved her selection as the system’s new chief on a 9-0 vote and awarded her a 3½-year contract. Details of the contract were not immediately available.
“It wasn’t easy but it wasn’t too hard,” said board Chairwoman Chandra Smith. She said she was impressed with how Brandon acted as an interim superintendent.
“She stepped up. She didn’t stop and rest. She owned it,” Smith said.
It shouldn’t take long for Brandon to settle in. She had run the system on an interim basis since Aug. 1, when former superintendent Deborah Jewell-Sherman left for a position at Harvard University. And except for a year at Virginia Commonwealth University, she has worked in Richmond schools every year since 1977.
She was the deputy superintendent from 2006 until July 31. Before that, she had been an associate superintendent for four years, the director of instruction for three years and worked in schools as a teacher, guidance counselor, assistant principal and principal.
“This is not time to rest on our laurels,” Brandon said. “There’s still a lot to be done.”
Brandon emerged as the top choice in a search that supposedly reached out nationally, though neither the board nor the committee it appointed to conduct the search produced any evidence of such. None of the candidates was named, and after a tepid attempt at transparency last summer, the board opted instead to exclude the public from the search.
The heavy lifting was done by a 15-person group of civic, business and educational leaders created by then-Chairman George P. Braxton. That group hired a national search firm to find candidates.
Braxton said then that an outside committee was preferable because it would keep the search from becoming political during an election year. At the time, three of the nine members, Braxton included, had announced they wouldn’t run for re-election. Ultimately, five of the nine seats changed.
Jewell-Sherman announced her plans for departure in early April, giving the board nearly a year to find a replacement. From the time when she actually left, July 31, state law allowed a 180-day window to fill the position with a permanent full-time replacement. The board took nearly every minute possible, officially offering Brandon the job less than four hours before the end of the work day on which the state deadline was to expire.
While leading a series of “Coffee with the Superintendent” sessions late last year, she said she was approaching the job as if it were hers.
That should leave her well-prepared to deal with a variety of issues immediately facing the system, including a $16 million budget shortfall and the need to fill a variety of upper-tier management positions.
Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or zreid@timesdispatch.com.
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