Beaufort County school board hires $140K deputy superintendent, two directors
Duke Bradley III was named deputy superintendent and chief of schools for Beaufort County School District Tuesday night, filling a position superintendent Frank Rodriguez created 45 days into his role to become “his No. 2.”
Bradley, who starts July 1, will supervise day-to-day operations at the district’s 30 schools. All district principals will report to Bradley, who will report directly to Rodriguez.
The school board approved the position 8-1-1 at the end of Tuesday night’s six-hour board meeting, after spending two hours in executive session.
Bradley’s salary will be $140,670, according to Human Resources director Alice Walton.
He holds a Ph.D in educational leadership from the University of Southern Mississippi, and “should be certified” as a superintendent in South Carolina by August, Walton said.
Bradley currently serves as the vice president of School Leadership and Accountability at Atlanta-based nonprofit 3DE Schools, which uses “public-private partnerships” to “re-engineer high school education,” according to its website.
The nonprofit’s model was piloted in 2015 at Banneker High School in Fulton County, Georgia, where Bradley was the principal from 2015 to 2019. He was Fulton County School District’s principal of the year in 2018.
He has not worked as a district-level administrator, which Okatie school board member John Dowling said was the reason for his lone dissent on the motion to hire Bradley. Hilton Head rep JoAnn Orischak abstained, and Bluffton/Pritchardville rep Rachel Wisnefski was absent.
“There’s no district-level experience,” Dowling said Tuesday. “Dr. Rodriguez said one of the reasons he is coming here is to get district-level experience. So I would not be comfortable about an acting superintendent who’s on an (on-the-job training) basis.”
The board approved the creation of the deputy superintendent role with a 10-1 vote in August.
During the board’s approval process, Rodriguez said the position will be “cost neutral” with the district’s $254 million budget for 2019-20, with funding coming out of support services that don’t include classroom materials or teacher salaries.
New communications, budget directors named
The school board approved two other administrators at Tuesday’s meeting.
Candace Bruder-Brasseur will replace Jim Foster, who is retiring, as the district’s director of communications. Her salary will be $86,299.
She was director of communications and marketing at the University of South Carolina Beaufort from 2011 to 2015, and director of communications at Beaufort’s Holy Trinity Classical Christian School between 2015 and 2018 before returning to USCB as senior director of communications, her current role.
Jennifer Hamblin will replace Reggie Murphy, who was recently named the district’s financial services officer, as director of budget and procurement. Her salary will be $87,610.
In her most recent position, Hamblin was associate director of finance and operations for the Mercer University School of Medicine’s Savannah Campus.