Kenneth L. Moffett of the Lennox school district in California has been named the 1994 National Superintendent of the Year.
Mr. Moffett was honored Feb. 11 at the American Association of School Administrators national conference in San Francisco. The award is sponsored by the A.A.S.A. and the ServiceMaster Company of Downers Grove, Ill.
Mr. Moffett has been a superintendent in the Los Angeles-area schools since 1976. In addition to being the Lennox schools chief, he spent two years as superintendent of the ABC Unified School District. From 1965 to 1976, he was an administrator in the Inglewood, Calif., schools.
As part of the superintendent of the year program, a $10,000 scholarship will be presented to a student at the high school from which Mr. Moffett graduated or the school now serving that area.
Resignation: Vincent L. Ferrandino, the commissioner of education for Connecticut, has announced that he will resign and accept the post of chief executive officer of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Inc., an accrediting agency in Bedford, Mass.
Mr. Ferrandino, who was appointed commissioner by Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in June 1992, said this month that he expects to begin his new job in August.
He said his decision to leave his $99,000-a-year job as education commissioner was influenced in part by Governor Weicker’s decision not to seek re-election this year.
Center Hires Educator: Michael Strembitsky, who has been the superintendent of the Edmonton schools in Alberta, Canada, for 22 years, will join the National Center on Education and the Economy on May 1. Mr. Strembitsky will direct the center’s High Performance Management Program--an effort to bring advanced organizational and managerial techniques to schools.
Under Mr. Strembitsky, the Edmonton schools have been decentralized in an effort to shift decisionmaking to the school level.
Mr. Strembitsky initially will work with the partners of the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, a reform program set up by the Rochester, N.Y.-based N.C.E.E.
New Commissioner: The New Hampshire state board of education has appointed Elizabeth M. Twomey as the new commissioner of the state department of education.
Ms. Twomey, now the state’s deputy commissioner of education, will take over the post from Charles H. Marston on July 1. Mr. Marston is retiring from the department after 31 years, seven as commissioner. Ms. Twomey has been an elementary school teacher, ahigh school principal, a superintendent, and an associate commissioner of education in Massachusetts.
Atlanta Retirement: Lester W. Butts has announced that he will retire as superintendent of the Atlanta school district at the end of the school year.
The Atlanta school board earlier this month formed a search committee to attempt to find, with public input, a replacement by the fall.
Mr. Butts, who has been with the Atlanta schools since 1959, became the interim superintendent in 1990, after the board fired J. Jerome Harris. He then was persuaded to delay his previous retirement plans and accept a four-year contract. But he was criticized as public perceptions of mismanagement and academic shortcomings led to a recent shakeup of the district school board.
