The Board of School Commissioners of the Indianapolis Public Schools has chosen three individuals as finalists to succeed Dr. Eugene White as superintendent.
The finalists are: Dr. Lewis Ferebee, Millard House and Thomas Darden Jr.
The community will have an opportunity to meet and hear from these three finalists June 27 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the IPS Education Center, 120 E. Walnut St., downtown.
The IPS School Board will interview the three the remainder of the week and could make a selection as early as Saturday.
That individual will have the responsibility of running a school district of 29,803 students serving a community with a population of 297,326; that’s 40.1 percent Black; 10.2 percent Hispanic and 48.2 percent white, where 20.1 percent of adults over 25 are college graduates and where 50.1 percent of all children under 18 live below the poverty level.
Some of the three candidates, who are all African-American, have many years of experience in education as teachers, principals and administrators while others have extensive years of business and entrepreneurial experience.
Two were raised outside Indiana; one is an Indianapolis native.
Here’s a quick look at the background of the three IPS Superintendent finalists:
Dr. Lewis Ferebee has 16 years of education experience. Currently, he’s chief of staff of the Durham Public Schools, a position he’s held for three years. The Durham district has 33,000 students and serves a community of 287,695, which is 33.8 percent Black, 13.5 percent Hispanic and 42.3 percent white. Some 42.1 percent of Durham adults are college graduates and 28.9 percent of children live below the poverty level.
Before coming to Durham, Ferebee was regional superintendent of the Guilford County Schools in North Carolina. Guilford has 72,000 students in a community of 495,279, which is 34.2 percent Black, 7.3 percent Hispanic and 53.6 percent white; 33.8 percent are college graduates and 23.6 percent of the children live in poverty.
Prior to becoming a regional superintendent, Ferebee worked nine years in the Guilford County Schools as an instructional improvement officer and school principal.
Ferebee holds a Ph.D. in education from East Carolina University, a master’s degree in educational leadership from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from North Carolina Central University.
Millard House, an 18-year education veteran, is the chief operating officer for the Charlotte/Mecklenburg County Schools, a district of 144,000 students serving the residents of North Carolina’s capital city and county of Mecklenburg. The district’s overall population is 944,373; 32.1 percent Black, 12.4 percent Hispanic and 50.3 percent white, with 40.6 percent college graduates and 23.7 percent of children living in poverty.
Prior to coming to Charlotte, House worked four years in the Tulsa, Okla., School District as a deputy, associate and area superintendent. Before that he spent four years as area superintendent of the KIPP Schools in Tulsa, a position he assumed after being a principal and teacher in Tulsa Public Schools for nine years.
Tulsa school district of 287,695 is 20.1 percent Black, 16.0 percent Hispanic and 55.0 percent white, with 24.9 percent of adult college graduates and 34.2 percent of children living in poverty.
A native of Tulsa, House earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Montevallo in Alabama, and a master’s in administration from Northeastern State University, and completed a Fisher Fellowship from the University of California in Berkeley.
House is married with two children.
The only superintendent finalist with an Indianapolis connection is Thomas Darden who is currently the executive director of New York Schools for ASPIRA, an organization that is developing charter schools in New York City.
Darden has 36 years of employment experience, four years in public education and 32 years in the private sector in manufacturing and finance.
Before going to ASPIRA, Darden served nearly three years as deputy chief of strategic programs for the School District of Philadelphia where he helped develop that district’s Renaissance School program that turned around 17 low performing schools.
Prior to that, Darden worked in the private sector in a variety of positions in corporate American and for top industries.
A graduate of IPS Arsenal Technical High School, Darden worked seven years for Detroit Diesel Allison in Indianapolis as a production engineer. From there he worked for Borg Warner. He took his engineering expertise to Rhode Island where he worked for GTECH, Surgilase Inc. and UltraCision.
From there, Darden entered the world of finance and venture capital firms.
After working with Advent International, then Wind Point Partners, he finally founded his own firm, Reliant Equity Investors in 2000, where he stayed for nine years until he decided to devote his career to public education administration.
Darden received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the General Motors Institute and an MBA in entrepreneurship from Babson College.
