Ex-Harris County superintendent wants previous job back. How does ChattCo board react?

After resigning last month as superintendent of the Harris County School District amid a dispute with the board, Jimmy Martin wants his former job back as the educational leader in Chattahoochee County.

Martin told the Ledger-Enquirer in a phone interview Friday that he would apply for the vacancy if he knew the five-member ChattCo board would welcome the idea.

“I really don’t want to get in the way of what they’re going to do there,” he said. “If they’re interested in me, I’ll definitely apply. I’d probably have to check it out before. I would see if they were, but if they weren’t I’d understand. They’re a good group of folks.”

Martin said he hasn’t had such a discussion with any of the ChattCo board members but “community people and folks who work for the school system,” which he declined to name, have encouraged him to pursue the possibility.

He was ChattCo’s superintendent for six years before the Harris County board unanimously hired him in April 2014. David McCurry, who was principal of Cairo High School, replaced Martin as ChattCo superintendent then retired last week.

While only two of the seven Harris County representatives remain on the board that hired Martin, four of the five ChattCo board members are left from the group that Martin worked with when he departed for the larger school system — and the only different ChattCo representative was on the board that hired Martin. So he has a “really good rapport” with the current ChattCo board, Martin said.

“I still love the folks there,” he said. “It’s a good community.”

Martin, 51, has worked for 29 years in education but isn’t ready to retire.

“Everything happened so fast in Harris County,” he said. “I honestly still believe I have a great deal to offer.”

ChattCo board chairwoman Christy Humber declined to discuss the possibility of Martin’s return.

“The board right now, we’re still deciding on what direction to take,” she told the Ledger-Enqurier in a phone interview Friday, “and until we decide, I won’t make any comment.”

Asked whether Martin left ChattCo on good terms terms with the board, Humber said, “He did. He said he wanted to be a superintendent of a bigger system.”

The next step for the ChattCo board will be to decide whether to promote somebody from within the school district or hire a consultant to conduct the search or do it themselves, Humber said. The board’s next meeting is Tuesday night, but that topic isn’t on the agenda, she said.

The ChattCo board appointed Tim Buchanan as interim superintendent. Buchanan is the CEO of ChattCo’s College and Career Academy.

This story was originally published June 8, 2018 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Ex-Harris County superintendent wants previous job back. How does ChattCo board react?."