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A week after Superintendent Cordova announces resignation, two more administrators say they’re leaving DPS

By Seth Klamann November 18, 2020 | updated 5 years ago

Two Denver Public Schools administrators are both leaving the district, Superintendent Susana Cordova said in a letter Wednesday, a week after Cordova announced that she had accepted a job in Dallas.

Earlier in the day Wednesday, Gov. Jared Polis’s office announced that Mark Ferrandino, DPS’s deputy superintendent for operations, would become the executive director of the state’s Department of Revenue. He will be followed out the door by Jennifer Holladay, the district’s associate chief of portfolio management, would also be leaving the district.  

Cordova said the timing was “undeniably difficult.” But she stressed that the two administrators were not leaving because she had accepted a job elsewhere.

“We are currently working on transition plans for both Jen and Mark to ensure that the work they lead continues,” she wrote. “I’ve been strengthened by the close working relationship I’ve had with both of these tremendous leaders. And it’s important to me to emphasize that these are decisions that Mark and Jen have been contemplating for many weeks.”

Cordova announced late last week that she had accepted a senior administrative role in Dallas. It’s unclear when she would leave; in her letter Wednesday, she wrote that she and the board of education were still working on a timeline and that the board was “working on its process for selecting an interim superintendent.” That decision would likely be announced in December. 

Ferrandino had been with DPS for six and a half years and was promoted to deputy superintendent two years ago. He led the district through its efforts to raise money via the ballot box, and Cordova wrote that he was “instrumental in ensuring that students had access to food, technology, and the internet”  during the pandemic. He will start at the Department of Revenue in late December.

Holladay joined the district in 2013 and bounced around various portfolio management roles; her role was to aid in supporting the district’s “innovation zone and charter schools in a wide range of operational areas,” according to DPS’s website. She was involved, Cordova wrote, in accountability changes and revisions to the school performance compact, which is the district’s framework for helping low-performing schools.

It’s unclear what Holladay will do next. She’ll depart the district in early January.

The shakeup comes amid a hard spell for the district. Last year, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association went on strike to address pay issues within the district. This year has been dominated by the pandemic, which has seen DPS — and districts across the state and country — shift repeatedly from in-person to online learning and back again. DPS brought some students back into the classroom in late December, only to announced Wednesday that all coursework would be conducted virtually after Thanksgiving break and through the end of the semester.

Though the district successfully pushed two ballot initiatives that will improve its financial outlook, it’s still facing a deficit, one that’s likely to be compounded by drooping enrollment. 

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