board appointed Lisa Sireno

A day after the surprise resignation of Missouri’s interim commissioner of education, the State Board of Education announced a new interim leader for the state’s public school oversight agency.

Lisa Sireno, deputy commissioner of learning services, will lead the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, according to a news release from the board. Sireno has worked at the department since 2015 and assumed her current position in July.

Sireno will be the department’s third chief administrator this year. Karla Eslinger retired in May after only two years on the job. And on Tuesday, interim Commissioner Stacey Preis delivered her resignation to the board.

Choking back tears as she spoke to reporters, Preis said she resigned “after much consideration” because she thinks “the board’s agenda is better served by a different commissioner.” Asked whether her resignation was prompted by the possibility of being fired, Preis said no one on the board had suggested that she would be voted out of her position if she didn’t resign.

Asked if anyone else had suggested that to her, Preis responded, “No, not directly.”

The news release stated Preis “unexpectedly resigned” with the “resignation taking immediate effect.”

Board President Brooks Miller said after the meeting that he did “not know much” about Preis’ reason for resigning.

The search for a new permanent commissioner was formalized Tuesday with the selection of The K12 Search Group to screen candidates and announcement that the search would be funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, Regional Business Council, The DeBruce Foundation and Town Branch Foundation.

According to its website, The K12 Search Group has “focused almost exclusively on CEO and senior leadership searches for charter schools and mission-driven K-12 education organizations.”

State Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin has been talked about frequently as a potential candidate for the commissioner’s job and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last month that she was interested. 

State law requires the commissioner to “possess an educational attainment and breadth of experience in the administration of public education.”

O’Laughlin’s Senate biography says she has experience “as a school bus driver, an administrator at a local Christian school and as a member of her local school board.” She also chaired the Senate Education Committee.

Before becoming deputy commissioner, Sireno was assistant commissioner in the Office of Quality Schools. Prior to going to work for the department, Sireno was associate director of the University of Missouri’s Assessment Resource Center.

The Missouri National Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, called on Sireno to seek full funding for the school foundation formula and to halt the development of the “A” to “F” grading system for school districts being developed at the direction of Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The board on Tuesday approved adjustments to the grading system and will send out data to school districts for review before making the results public later this year.

“A-F grading is the same top-down, cookie-cutter approach that has failed our students for decades,” said Rebeka McIntosh, president of Missouri NEA. “It treats students as data rather than individuals. It can’t see the counselor who keeps a student coming to school or the teacher who stays late to help a child catch up.”