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Nikolai Vitti (Twitter photo)
Detroit's newly elected school board has made its first big move.
Members voted Tuesday night to hire Nikolai Vitti, 40, as the district's first permanent superintendent, reports Lori Higgins of the Detroit Free Press. He's a native of Dearborn Heights and a graduate of Divine Child High School in Dearborn.
Vitti has been superintendent of Duval County Public Schools, a 130,000-student district in Jacksonville, Fla., since 2012. (Detroit has 40,000 students.)
He was chosen over Supt. Derrick Coleman of the River Rouge School District, who graduated from Detroit Public Schools.
"We had qualities that were unique to both candidates," board president Iris Taylor tells the Freep. Both show an ability to turn around struggling schools, she adds.
At Chalkbeat Detroit, an education news site, Erin Einhorn notes a bit of drama before the decision:
The vote — the first major decision by the city’s newly elected school board — was almost not unanimous. Member LaMar Lemmons initially voted against Vitti before switching his choice in the interest of allowing the new superintendent to know he has the full support of the board.
“I believe that both candidates are highly qualified. They both could lead our district,” Lemmons said. . . . But he noted that Vitti sometimes struggled in his current job in Duval County because some school board members did not support him and Lemmons said he didn’t want that to happen in Detroit.
“Whoever my initial pick is, if it’s not the will of the majority, I want it known that I’m changing my vote to be with the majority,” Lemmons said. “I think we need to move with consensus so the new superintendent has the entire support of this body.”
Einhorn last month reported Vitti's response to a family question after his school board interview:
“I would plan to live in city limits and would likely send my children to public schools.”
An online resume shows Vitti, former chief academic officer for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, earned two Harvard University education degrees -- a master's in 2006 and a doctorate in 2012. He also has a master's from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he earlier was a history major who graduated magna cum laude in 2000.
Detroit's new superintendent taught high school in Winston-Salem and New York City.
Vitti's Twitter bio says:
Dedicated to preparing students for success through great educators, parent involvement, community engagement, and effective and equitable resources.