MCCSC superintendent Jeff Hauswald looks on during a school board meeting last fall.
(Patrick Beane / WTIU)
Jeff Hauswald helped pass two referendums in two years as superintendent and guided Monroe County Community School Corporation out of the pandemic.
But recent policy proposals have been met with public outcry and rebuke from the school board.
And Wednesday night, a partnership that began three years ago ended.
The school board announced via email it and Hauswald had agreed to a buyout of the remaining term of his contract, which ran through June 30, 2026. He will remain in the superintendent role through the end of the 2023-24 academic school year. Hauswald will be paid his salary for the 2024-25 school year - $228,926.31 - in two installments, the first by this July 31 and the second by January 31, 2025.
“Dr. Hauswald has been a strong advocate for public education and has moved MCCSC forward in dealing with difficult subjects that challenge all of us that are in and support public education,” the board said in a joint statement. “We have a lot of work to do in Dr. Hauswald’s remaining months, and we know that Dr. Hauswald, the Board, the school community and the community at large will work tirelessly to continue to move us forward so that we do not lose any valuable time.
“We thank Dr. Hauswald and wish him nothing but success in his future endeavors.”
Hauswald wished MCCSC and the community the best and thanked them for the opportunity when he was hired in February 2021.
“I am grateful to the administrators who work tirelessly to help our schools excel and have enjoyed the opportunities to lead them and to learn from them,” Hauswald said in the statement. “I am proud of our accomplishments, and I look forward to watching from afar as the Board President and new leadership create a new and innovative path forward for the Corporation.
“I look forward to a strong finish to this school year and do not want my departure to be a distraction to the important work to be done between now and June 30, as well as the important work to be done thereafter.”
Hauswald succeeded Judy DeMuth, who retired on July 1, 2021. He had been the superintendent of the Kokomo School Corporation since 2010.
He said at the time his priorities were closing the achievement gap and dealing with the financial fallout from the pandemic. One way was to ask the voters to approve referendums to raise taxes for money to go to MCCSC.
The 2022 referendum overwhelmingly passed, allowing MCCSC to raise starting teacher salaries from $40,00 to $57,750 at a time when the system was struggling to retain and hire teachers.
Hauswald asked for another referendum in 2023, primarily for an early childhood education program. It passed, but barely.
It was a reflection of the public's waning support of the administration.
In May 2022, the corporation was called out for racial discrimination by current and former Black students. After focus groups, meetings and several revisions, the board approved a new anti-racism policy in March 2023.
"We're in a better place, we have a better policy," Hauswald said at the time.
But Hauswald faced criticism last fall when he proposed aligning MCCSC’s four high schools onto a common schedule. More than 40 Bloomington North and Bloomington South students and parents and community members spoke out against the change in a nearly six-hour school board meeting.
By the end of the night, the board voted to put any schedule changes on hold until at least the 2025-26 school year. It also stripped Hauswald of the power to make schedule changes.
“I sincerely apologize for a process that was overly messy,” Hauswald said that night.
Then, last December, Hauswald released a plan to consolidate Childs and Templeton elementary schools to balance socioeconomic status between schools. Children in kindergarten through second grade would to Childs, while those in third through sixth grades would go to Templeton.
“The estimated results in this change over a three-year time period would create an approximate SES percentage rate at both Child's and Templeton elementary schools of 37 percent,” Hauswald said. “It would truly balance those two schools.”
Some parents were concerned about the distances between the school and the possibility of having children at different elementary schools.
The board heard two nights of comment on the consolidation and said it will continue to study it. The board also announced at its meeting last month a plan to study redistricting to help improve socioeconomic status among all schools.
The school board said it would be “undertaking a search for a new superintendent for the 2024-25 school year.”
