OPS School Board President, Lacey Merica, introduced the third and final candidate for the next OPS Superintendent, Dr. Khalid Mumin, at a press conference yesterday afternoon.
Dr. Mark Evans, the current Superintendent, plans to retire at the end of this school year.
Mumin is currently Superintendent of the Reading Public Schools in Reading, Pennsylvania, a district with just under 25,000 students. He describes himself as a “student-centered educator.” When asked his philosophy about student discipline, Mumin says it stems from his time as a classroom teacher, using the model of “discipline with dignity.”
“And what the means is, you form relationships with students. When you deal with discipline, you deal with the consequences first, and then you move into a goal-setting process. As I have moved up in administration, you are looking at classroom management and then looking at full school processes and procedures around restorative practices and restorative justice.”
Mumin says one of the biggest challenges he would face if selected for this position would be learning a tremendous amount of information in a short amount of time. He says another thing would be building relationships.
“The challenge will be trust, and convincing stakeholders that I am in it for the long haul. Another thing will be looking at the strategic plan and actually having my colleagues, my administrative team, the teachers, buy into that I am on board with the strategic plan; we are going to put energy into the strategies. So, building that trust and collaboration”.
OPS Board President Merica says they plan negotiate a contract for the next Superintendent sometime late this month.
For more information, see superintendentsearch.ops.org