WESTMINSTER — Roberta Selleck, the controversial superintendent of Adams County School District 50 who is among 45 administrators vying to lead a large Florida school district, has taken emergency family leave from her Colorado job.
Selleck, who was named superintendent in August 2006, will be gone for an undetermined amount of time.
The announcement of her departure came after the school board met in an April 3 executive session, said district spokesman Jason Kosena.
The board also met in executive session April 1 at the district’s administrative offices at Westminster High School. During that 2 1/2-hour session, the board’s five members met with the district’s attorney, Martin Semple.
Selleck did not attend the meetings. Kosena said Selleck is in Arizona tending to her mother.
Deputy Superintendent Pam Swanson will take over Selleck’s duties while she is gone, Kosena said.
Selleck is among the candidates for superintendent of Collier County Public Schools in Naples, Fla. The district has 50 schools and serves a student population of about 43,000. Candidates are scheduled to visit the district next week; all 45 are named on the district’s website.
Selleck couldn’t be reached for comment. Her tenure with Adams County 50, which includes 10,000 students in 19 schools, has been tumultuous at times.
She led an effort for a $90 million revamp of Westminster High School that earned her the wrath of school board member Marilyn Flachman and others who claimed that proceeds from a November 2006 bond issue were misspent.
Flachman said the bond money should have been more evenly spread throughout the district and wrote a letter to a local newspaper apologizing to voters. Flachman declined to comment Monday.
Selleck also took fire for pushing “standards-based” reforms in the district. The most radical portion of the new approach, which began in 2009, placed elementary and middle-school students in classrooms based on their achievement levels, rather than ages.
No district as large as Adams County 50 has tried such reforms.
Officials saw scores drop in several areas of the Colorado Student Assessment Program test in 2010. However, Selleck said the dip in scores was to be expected because the changes in the district were so new.
“It is exactly what we predicted would happen,” Selleck told The Denver Post. “It is the infamous ‘implementation dip,’ It will take us three years, maybe four or five.”
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
