John Hoy will leave his job as an assistant commissioner for public school accountability at the Arkansas Department of Education at the end of June to become superintendent of the 1,678-student Helena-West Helena School District.
Hoy, 55, is changing jobs but not bosses because the Helena-West Helena district is under state control and the district’s chief executive is appointed by and reports to Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell.
An assistant commissioner since 2011, Hoy most recently was assistant superintendent for two years in the Monticello School District. His other experience includes serving as the federal programs coordinator in the Lee County School District, principal in the Hughes School District, and as a teacher in Forrest City and in Atlanta.
Hoy is a native of Hughes. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a specialist credential, all from Arkansas State University.
Hoy’s salary in the Helena-West Helena district will be $130,000, said Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the Education Department.
In September 2010, the state Board of Education placed the Helena-West Helena district into the state’s fiscal distress program for spending practices that if left unchecked would leave the district with an illegal deficit, and for audit findings of inappropriate district expenditures, including those on alcoholic beverages and personal travel.
Conditions at the district were such that in June 2011 Kimbrell exercised his legal authority to take over its operation, dismissing both the superintendent and the locally elected school board.
At that time Kimbrell appointed Susann McCommon, director of the Great Rivers Education Service Cooperative in Helena-West Helena, to be the district’s chief executive officer, and Ulicious Reed, a retired Marvell School District superintendent, to be chief operations officer.
Besides Helena-West Helena, other Arkansas school districts now under state control for a variety of reasons are Pulaski County Special, Dollarway and Mineral Springs.
Hoy’s appointment will create a second vacancy in the ranks of Education Department assistant commissioners this summer.
Megan Witonski, assistant commissioner of learning services, is leaving the state agency to take an assistant superintendent’s job in the Springdale School District.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/27/2014