WILMINGTON — Wilmington City Schools (WCS) Superintendent Mindy McCarty-Stewart is leaving that post after five years to become superintendent at Kettering City Schools, she announced Wednesday.
McCarty-Stewart started as WCS superintendent in July 2017, succeeding the retiring Ron Sexton.
“It is with many emotions that I share with you that last evening I accepted the offer to serve as Superintendent of Kettering City Schools,” she shared in a statement. “The formal approval will be at the May 17th Kettering Board of Education meeting. I look forward to this new phase of my career while knowing that I will deeply miss working with the students, staff, and families of Wilmington.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Wilmington City School District and it has been an honor to serve as your Superintendent over the past five years. Wilmington has been my home where I have raised my children and grown in my professional career. I enjoyed my 14 years working for WCS. The students of Wilmington are fortunate to have a staff of dedicated and caring professionals that work hard to provide the best education possible.
“I am proud of our schools and grateful to have been able to work with the Wilmington Team. I want to thank the Wilmington Board of Education for providing me with the opportunity to serve our school community and I appreciate their commitment to our students and staff. I will continue to be an advocate and champion for WCS.”
WCS Board of Education President Michael Flanigan said Wednesday he thinks McCarty-Stewart has done a lot of positive things as superintendent, as well as when she was WHS principal and her previous work years ago with Wilmington City Schools.
Flanigan related that the new position is something McCarty-Stewart feels is a good step for her, and he understands when someone chooses to embark on a good career opportunity.
Kettering has an approximate enrollment of 7,742 students, according to a fall 2021 report from the Ohio Department of Education. The Wilmington district totals 2,256 students.
Flanigan said very preliminary discussions took place Wednesday morning on how best to proceed with the superintendent search process.
In her first year on the job as WCS superintendent, McCarty-Stewart led the effort to re-structure the district’s three elementary schools by creating grade-level buildings. As a result, the WCS grade-level elementaries now group together all grades K-through-5 children by grade level, rather than by where they live in the district.
At a public forum in February 2018, the WCS superintendent said she believed the structure of grade-level elementaries will help the district facilitate best practices in the most equitable and efficient way possible for its students.
She also said at the time that there was a need to assess where the district was at, to “look at some hard data, look at the report card data and [economically disadvantaged] demographics. That’s hard to do, but it is our truth and it’s where we’re at today in this community.”
McCarty-Stewart has been in education for 27 years. Her early years were as a special education teacher at Upper Arlington Middle School and at Wilmington Middle School, followed by positions in administration including as principal at Wilmington High School immediately prior to becoming superintendent here. Before returning to Wilmington City Schools, she spent 11 years in administration at Mason High School, six of those as principal.
