Superintendent of Public Instruction Don Bemis of Michigan has resigned after 2 years in the job.
Mr. Bemis, 56, had been on paid leave of absence since January. Gov. John Engler and Republicans on the state board of education had been pressing for Mr. Bemis to resign since the spring of last year.
Mr. Bemis will become head of a cooperative program between Wayne State University and Macomb Community College.
A search for a successor is under way.
Superintendent of Public Instruction H. Dean Evans of Indiana has announced that he will not seek re-election in 1992.
The 61-year-old Republican was the architect of the state’s “A-Plus’’ school-reform plan. He is currently weighing a bid for governor or another statewide office.
The Alaska Board of Education has chosen Gerald B. Covey to be the state’s new education commissioner.
Mr. Covey, 44, was employed by the Northwest Arctic Borough school district at the time of his selection.
Gerald N. Tirozzi, Connecticut’s commissioner of education since 1983, has announced that he is resigning to become president of Wheelock College in Boston.
Mr. Tirozzi, who late last year was reappointed by the state board of education to a third four-year term, oversaw highly regarded efforts to upgrade teacher standards, improve student assessment, and promote desegregation. He said he would meet with the state board of education to discuss a date of resignation.
Walter G. Amprey, a longtime principal and administrator in the Baltimore County, Md., public schools, has been chosen as superintendent of the Baltimore City school system.
Mr. Amprey will succeed Richard Hunter, whose three-year contract was not renewed after Mayor Kurt Schmoke said last December that he had lost confidence in Mr. Hunter’s performance.
The 46-year-old Mr. Amprey had been recommended to the board by Mr. Schmoke.
School trustees in Houston have named Frank Petruzielo, an associate superintendent in Dade County, Fla., to succeed Joan Raymond, the outgoing superintendent.
Mr. Petruzielo won the board’s unanimous approval at a meeting last month.
J. Michael Brandt, a principal at Cincinnati’s Woodward High School, has been selected as the interim superintendent for the district.
A divided school board offered Mr. Brandt a one-year contract that takes effect Aug. 1. Board members who voted against his appointment cited his lack of administrative experience at the district level. No search for a long-term successor to Lee Etta Powell, who announced her resignation in April, has been launched.
The Prince George’s County Board of Education has promoted Deputy Superintendent Edward M. Felegy to the Maryland district’s chief leadership position.
Mr. Felegy formally replaced John A. Murphy as superintendent on July 1. He was given a four-year contract with a salary of $120,000 per year.
Board members praised Mr. Felegy, who had the backing of union leaders and school employees, for his technical expertise and his stability as a 33-year veteran of the district, the nation’s 15th largest.
Several black community leaders asserted, however, that the board’s secret selection process was designed to guarantee Mr. Felegy’s promotion and to frustrate their desire to have a black administrator lead the district, which has a 65 percent black enrollment.
Jaime Escalante, the Bolivian-born calculus teacher who won national acclaim by encouraging the primarily poor and Hispanic students at an inner-city high-school to master higher mathematics, has left Los Angeles and will teach next fall in Sacramento.
Mr. Escalante, 60, whose flamboyant teaching style became the basis for the best-selling book Stand and Deliver and the acclaimed motion picture by the same name, announced in June that he was leaving Garfield High School, where he has taught for 17 years, in part for “a change in scenery” and also because his family had asked him to cut back on his work schedule.
But Mr. Escalante, who was ousted in a faculty election as head of the Garfield math department last year after a lengthy tenure, also said he was leaving because he perceived a lack of support from his fellow teachers.
