A Chance to be Frank in Fayetteville

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In spring 2014, the Fayetteville, Ark., school board was deep into a superintendent search. After the top candidate decided not to relocate, the search had reached an impasse.

That’s when board President Tim Hudson found the answer a little closer to home.

Hudson had been talking casually about the search with the guy who lived across the street from him. That guy was Paul Hewitt, an education professor at the University of Arkansas and someone who had spent 17 years in the superintendency of three California school districts. After weeks of conversation, Hewitt told Hudson he was available if the board needed him.

Within a month, he had the job.

Hudson calls the board’s surprise decision to hire Hewitt a “no-brainer” — a happy convergence of a district looking for a seasoned, high-profile leader and a former superintendent who felt the itch to serve on the front lines one more time.

Hewitt, 70, has brought not only decades of administrative experience to the job in the 9,500-student district, but also a freedom of action that comes from not having to worry about job security.

“This is going to make thousands of superintendents across the country really jealous, but I don’t feel any stress,” he says. “I don’t have to worry if the board wants to renegotiate my contract. I can be very blunt, very frank and very candid with them.”

The stress-free superintendency is something new for him. Stress, he admits, is not always a bad thing. It can push a leader to excel. But in the extreme, it can be life-threatening, as he says it was in a particularly difficult district he led.

“I looked at myself and said, ‘If I stay in this job I’m going to die. It will kill me,’ ” he says of that experience.

Hewitt retired from his previous superintendency — in the Mother Lode Union School District in northern California — in 2004. But, as he admits, he “flunked retirement.” He began working 55 hours a week as a consultant and as a member services representative for the Association of California School Administrators.

In 2007, he quit those jobs and moved with Linda, his wife of 45 years, to Fayetteville to become a 62-year-old assistant professor of educational leadership. Six years later, at age 68, he earned tenure.

With that personal challenge completed, he moved on to another, starting work at the Fayetteville district in July 2014. He focused on erasing the district’s $5 million deficit, cutting staff through attrition and renegotiating contracts. At the same time, he was able to provide a small salary increase to teachers — the first since 2008.

But even with all his experience, Hewitt says that after a decade away from the superintendent’s chair, he was surprised by an incident that highlighted the growing power and reach of social media.

An 8th grader arrived at school with a T-shirt that read, “Virginity Rocks.” School authorities, fearing the shirt would be disruptive in a junior high environment, asked her to change into a gym shirt, which she did. But the girl’s mother took the issue to Facebook.

“I got hate mail from Canada to Mississippi,” Hewitt says. “It was played out like we were against virginity. … I didn’t realize the impact social media would have, and how inaccurate information could be spread nationwide instantly.”

Associate Superintendent Kim Garrett credits Hewitt with handling that mini-crisis calmly and not letting it knock the district off stride.

“As long as he’s been in education,” she says, “it’s pretty hard to throw him a curveball.”