Jesse Register among candidates for director of schools

Former Chattanooga director one of more than a dozen - story updated to clarify status of search

Email | Print By Amy Griffith Graydon

Former Chattanooga director of schools Jesse Register is among the pool of candidates for director of schools slated to be considered this evening by members of the Board of Education.

Three finalists will be identified tonight by hired consultant Bill Attea of search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates Ltd. Board members will learn more about the finalists from Attea this evening, and interviews are planned for this weekend.

Register was director of Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga for 10 years. School reform in that city has been praised publicly by the Tennessee Department of Education, and many of the DOE’s changes made at Metro Nashville Public Schools this summer were patterned after initiatives in Chattanooga. Register left Hamilton County Schools in 2006, and has since worked as an educational consultant.

School board members plan to extend a three- to four-year contract to the right candidate. According to Attea, good candidates will know that it takes at least that long to turn around a troubled school district. The hire may then become a long-term director, depending on performance – and on the state of Nashville’s school district at that time.

The director search is proceeding amidst an increasingly complex dialogue between the board and the Mayor’s Office. Mayor Karl Dean – who is paying for the board’s director search firm with privately raised funds – has publicly stated for months that he believes the board should hire an interim, rather than long-term, director of schools.

Nashville’s public school district is currently in a state of flux, in large part because of the district’s status under federal No Child Left Behind laws. Metro Nashville Public Schools, as a district, could this summer enter a legal status that would allow the Tennessee Department of Education to remove the director of schools. That legal status could also allow the state to appoint a trustee in charge of the school district – a role Dean has said he is preparing to fill, in the event that he is requested to do so.

Other applicants for Nashville’s director of schools job include Margaret Wilson, who worked as president and CEO of Nashville company EdSolutions, as well as former Hunters Lane Comprehensive High School Principal Oscar Santiago and former St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Diana Bourisaw.