Richard Crandall, who took over in January as Colorado’s education commissioner, has called it quits, saying he was leaving the position for family reasons. Colorado’s education department has clashed with district leaders and politicians in recent years over various issues. In June, Marcia Neal, the state’s school board chairwoman, resigned after what she characterized as board dysfunction, and the state commissioner, Robert Hammond, later announced his retirement, too.
Crandall, a former Arizona politician, served a short stint as Wyoming’s state superintendent in 2013-14, before that state’s supreme court reinstated Cindy Hill, who argued the state legislature illegally forced her out of the job.
Ed Graff, the superintendent of the Anchorage, Alaska, school district, will become the new schools chief in Minneapolis.
A Minnesota native, Graff has been superintendent in Anchorage since 2013. He spent nearly his entire education career in Alaska, where heworked his way up from school principal, director of elementary education, and chief academic officer.
Anthony Hamlet, a Palm Beach, Fla., administrator who oversees the system’s struggling schools, has been chosen as the new superintendent of the Pittsburgh, Pa., district.
Hamlet has been with the Palm Beach district since 2014. He had a brief career in the National Football League, from 1992 to 1993, playing for the Seattle Seahawks and the Indianapolis Colts.
He has also worked as an assistant principal, a principal, and a teacher. He was also the Florida education department’s principal of the year.
Karen Salmon, who has served as the interim superintendent of Maryland’s education department since last fall, has been appointed by the state board to serve in the position full time.
She served for more than a decade as the superintendent of Talbot County in Maryland followed by a short stint as a district superintendent in upstate New York. In 2015, she returned to Maryland as the state’s assistant superintendent of college- and career-readiness.
