Center for Charter Schools hires interim executive director
The Center for Charter Schools at Central Michigan University will have a new interim executive director starting Nov. 1.
Mary Kay Shields has been appointed to the position replacing Jim Goenner, who will become president and CEO of the National Charter Schools Institute the same day Shields starts.
Shields has served as a deputy director of the center since 2007.
“I’m ready and I’m excited,” Shields said. “I’m very pleased that the university had the faith in me to step up in this interim position.”
Since its inception in 1994, the center has authorized and helped start more than 50 public charter schools throughout Michigan and now enrolls about 35,000 students.
Shields has been involved with Charter Schools since 1996. She started as special adviser to University President Leonard Plachta in 1999 and left to start a finance authority for charter schools in Michigan.
Her annual salary will be $126,677 in the new position.
Goenner calls his move a “win-win” for the university and him.
“I get to share what the university has developed across the country,” Goenner said of his new position, “and also bring back some of the best practices from around the country to the university.”
The board of directors for the National Charter Schools Institute offered Goenner the new position Oct. 1st.
Goenner said the center’s goal is “to win for kids.” He said the board saw a state and national network that would allow them to “hit the ground running” in influencing both policy and practices.
“I want to take the systems, tools and practices and share those across the country to help create more great schools to serve more kids,” he said.
Cindy Schumacher, also a deputy director for the Center for Charter Schools, said Goenner’s new position will bring additional prestige to the center.
“Jim will be able to reach to more schools on a national level in this new role,” Schumacher said. “The three of us have been working together for a while.”
Shields and Schumacher will continue the plans laid out for the center. Goenner said they will move CMU charter schools from gold to platinum standard.
Schumacher said he has full confidence Shields will do well in her new position.
“We worked on a vision and philosophy — as we’ve been building the vision, we’ve been doing that together as a team,” Schumacher said.
