GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Marcia Lyles, the city’s top-ranking educator, has been offered the superintendency of a 17,000-student Delaware school district, according to a person who just left the meeting of the Christina Public Schools school board.

The six-member board voted unanimously to offer Lyles the position at about 9 p.m., Harrie Ellen Minnehan, a teacher who was at the meeting, just told me. Lyles, since 2007 the city’s deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, was not present for the vote, Minnehan said.

Minnehan described the school board meeting as unusually subdued, considering the magnitude of the announcement. “Usually when they announce something like that people are very excited,” she said. “Tonight, everyone just sat there stunned. You could literally hear a pin drop.” She said some of the 50 people in the audience got up and walked out before the vote in protest. “I could not sit in there when they voted,” Minnehan told me a principal friend said to her.

A reason for the unenthusiastic response is that the local teachers and principals unions had endorsed Lyles’ chief opponent, Freeman Williams, a longtime district educator. (more…)