LR5 hires Akil Ross as school district’s new full-time superintendent
Akil Ross got to take the “interim” off his title on Monday.
The Lexington-Richland 5 school board voted unanimously to hire Ross as the full-time superintendent of the Chapin-Irmo area school district. The hiring comes a little more than six months after Ross was named the district’s interim superintendent.
Ross’s contract will officially start Feb. 1 and run through June 30, 2025. He will make an annual salary of $210,000.
Ross praised the work of his staff in guiding the school district through a difficult time.
”It’s been a great six-month interview and I will continue to work very hard,” Ross said at Monday’s meeting. “This is home for me. I’ve worked for a long time in Chapin, I live in Irmo. ... I’m very excited about what we can build for our children.”
All of the board members at Monday’s meeting praised Ross’s eagerness to get work done during his short time on the job.
“It would be easy when you get the ‘interim’ title to just keep the wheels in motion,” said board member Catherine Huddle. Instead, she said, “He calls me every Sunday before the board meeting to go over the agenda, and we text back and forth.”
The board also voted to terminate the interim agreement Lexington-Richland 5 entered into with Ross’s education consulting firm, HeartEd Inc., in July.
In December, Lexington-Richland 5 announced three candidates for the permanent superintendent job, including Ross and two other candidates with administrative experience in school district administration: Sam Whack, the deputy superintendent of administration and instruction for the Jasper County School District; and Ronald larussi, the superintendent of Marion City Schools in Marion, Ohio.
The board met in a closed-door session for more than four hours on Dec. 6 to interview the three candidates.
New superintendent earned national accolades
Ross is an education consultant and former district administrator who was named the national Principal of the Year during his time at Chapin High School in 2017. At the time, Ross told the story of how he flunked third grade after trying to trick his mother by turning the Fs on his report card into As. He went on to earn a doctorate in education from the University of South Carolina.
Ross grew up in Washington, D.C., played linebacker for Duke University, and went into teaching with the goal of also coaching football. But his career ended up taking a different path. He taught social studies at Columbia’s Eau Claire High School, got his master’s in education from the University of South Carolina, and joined Chapin High as an assistant principal in 2005. In 2010, he was named principal at Chapin High.
Many Chapin-area parents credit him with making a good school one of the best in South Carolina after he became principal. With his leadership, the school’s graduation rate jumped from 82 to 96 percent, an improvement cited by the National Association of Secondary School Principals when Ross was presented with the Principal of the Year award in 2017.
Ross used his own academic struggles to reach students who faced similar issues. “I tell them academic struggles are a huge part of personal development,” Ross told The State at the time.
In another interview, Ross cited the example of his grandfather, a former sharecropper with a sixth-grade education whose “hard work and sacrifice allowed him to own a home in a prestigious Washington, D.C., neighborhood. It was his actions, not his words, that inspired me the most,” Ross said.
After holding an administrative post with the district, Ross later left to form the HeartEd consulting firm.
Making a mark
Since he began the job July 1, Ross has moved quickly to put his mark on the district, shaking up district office staff and bringing in an outside consultant to evaluate the district’s operations. Ross previously told The State he wants to focus on getting resources to teachers and students in the classroom and to work out divisions that have sprouted within the community since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some board members expressed concerns about the small number of applicants who applied for the job. That’s been credited to Ross’ strong application as a candidate.
Ross was hired as interim superintendent this summer after the controversial resignation of former Superintendent Christina Melton.
Melton had been named South Carolina’s superintendent of the year before she suddenly quit in June. Her resignation came after an often tense relationship with the majority of school board members over the district’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, from how quickly to return to in-person instruction to whether to require masks in school.
The hiring of Ross on an interim basis caused some controversy because his contract is structured as a deal between Lexington-Richland 5 and his consulting firm, HeartEd LLC. That sparked a complaint to the district’s accrediting agency Cognia by a group of former superintendents and school board chairmen, which itself led to a lawsuit from the district against one of the former officials behind the complaint.
Cognia has said it does not plan to take action over the former superintendent’s complaint.
This story was originally published January 10, 2022 at 7:37 PM.
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