Folks wondered what would happen with the Great Schools Partnership after Buzz Thomas retired and replacement CEO Stephanie Welch resigned to take a job with Mayor Indya Kincannon. And we wondered what would become of Project GRAD after the school board almost defunded it last year.
Turns out, the town leaders knew and at 3:46 p.m. Friday, the rest of us found out.
Project GRAD and the Great School Partnership are gone. Rising from their ashes, fully formed, is Knox Education Foundation. And it comes with an apparently self-selected 12-member board of directors and paperwork filed to be a nonprofit and a website (that doesn’t work yet) and a new CEO already hired and coming to town from Florida.
Wow. Read about it at: KNOX EDUCATION FOUNDATION
Chris Letsos (from Linkedin)
The incoming CEO is Chris Letsos, whose profile on Linkedin shows him as president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Tampa Bay where he’s worked for 13 years. He’s got a bachelor’s in political science from the University of Florida and a master’s in international relations from Florida State. Apparently, he speaks English, Spanish and Greek. He and his family will be moving to Knoxville and he will start his new job in June.
An aside: There’s a reason folks dump big news at end-of-day Friday. Knoxville’s few remaining reporters can’t find anyone to interview. So, the story breaks one-sided.
Here’s the money quote from the press release: “There are currently no plans for changes to programming impacting students, schools, families and communities. The foundation’s structure does allow for expansion in the future.”
Sandra Clark is editor/CEO of KnoxTNToday.com