The Higley Unified School District approved a one-year contract June 5 for Sherry Richards to be its superintendent for the 2024-25 school year.
Richards will be paid $206,000 in the role. The contract notes she has "no legitimate expectancy of employment" beyond the one-year agreement and will be given notice of non-renewal of employment by April 15, 2025, as Richards plans to retire after the school year.
In fact, Richards planned to retire June 30 of this year, but postponed it to accept the superintendency for one more year after the board rescinded its contract offer to Nate Carman to be the next superintendent.
That happened after Carman was put on administrative leave March 25 from his job as superintendent at Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas, in the wake of an external forensics audit identifying Carman as having a possible conflict of interest regarding district purchasing decisions.
The HUSD Governing Board appointed Richards as its superintendent for the school year May 8, moments after voting unanimously to rescind Carman's contract.
Richards had served as interim superintendent for the 2023-24 school year after the previous superintendent, Dawn Foley, resigned in June 2023 and while the board conducted a search for a permanent replacement.
Richards joined the district in 2011 as a principal and then was promoted to executive director of elementary education in 2017.
In 2021, Foley made Richards her associate superintendent, making her the logical appointment for the interim role when Foley resigned in 2023.
While the appointment is for one year while a new search is conducted, Richards is not being considered an interim superintendent for this year.
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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