The Ann Arbor Board of Education voted 5–2 on September 13 to accept superintendent Jeanice Swift’s resignation. The negotiated settlement came just five weeks after a surprise 4–3 vote to notify the ten-year veteran that it intended to terminate her contract (see “Swift Decision,” September).
Susan Ward Schmidt, one of the nay votes, called the board “dysfunctional and disrespectful.” The two dozen folks at the meeting applauded Susan Baskett, the other dissenter, for describing the board’s action as “just plain wrong.” And all the schools’ union chiefs spoke in the superintendent’s favor and vehemently criticized her removal.
Longtime Swift critic Jeff Gaynor defended himself by saying “I stand by my statements”—he had previously described the delayed revelation that a school bus aide had assaulted a special ed student as a “catalyst” for building dissatisfaction on the board with Swift’s leadership. Then the meeting broke down in general confusion, with trustees talking over one another and several motions made at the same time. Through it all Swift never looked up from taking notes.
At last president Rima Mohammad called the motion and the board approved the agreement hammered out by the schools’ and Swift’s attorneys. She will continue as superintendent until October 31 while the board appoints an interim or permanent replacement. Then she will serve as “transition advisor” at least through December 31 at her regular pay rate of $230,000 a year. She’ll also receive a one-time payment of $345,000, equal to eighteen months’ salary—the payout guaranteed in her current five-year contract for termination without cause.
When Mohammad called a recess after the vote, Swift left the meeting. After ten years at the job, the departing superintendent leaves a legacy of new programs, expanded enrollment, and strong financial management capped with a $1 billion infrastructure bond. But some parents criticized her handling of the pandemic, and two board members elected last fall, Mohammad and Jacinda Townsend Gides, joined longtime critics Gaynor and Ernesto Querijero in the August vote.
Five days after voting to approve the settlement, Townsend Gides handed in her own resignation from the board. While she agrees the board is in terrible shape and acknowledges that she had said she planned to stay despite taking a job at Brown University, she says her youngest daughter was bullied by board members during the conflict over Swift’s termination and wanted to leave. “It’s been brutal,” Townsend Gides says. “It was, like, traumatic.”
Swift is the fourth southeastern Michigan school superintendent in two months to leave under difficult circumstances. Rochester Community Schools’ superintendent resigned after a lawsuit over the district’s pandemic policies. A controversial assembly caused Bloomfield Hills’ superintendent to retire early, and nobody knows why Grosse Pointe Schools’ superintendent and three of his top officers resigned.
The board planned to begin its search for Swift’s successor as the Observer went to press. But now evenly split between the departing superintendent’s critics and supporters, even agreeing on a replacement for Townsend Gides is likely to be a battle—much less persuading a strong candidate to take charge at a system that just ousted Michigan’s 2018 superintendent of the year.
