Wake school board chairman is named interim superintendent in Warren County
Wake County school board chairman Keith Sutton has been hired to be the interim superintendent of Warren County Schools.
The Warren County school board voted Tuesday night to make Sutton the temporary superintendent from July 1 to Dec. 31. Sutton is an education consultant and longtime school board member but not a professional educator.
But Sutton said he recently completed a nine-month Urban Superintendents Academy course offered by the AASA, The School Superintendents Association. Sutton also said his years of experience in North Carolina’s largest school district, which has 160,000 students, will help him in Warren County.
Located about 55 miles north of Raleigh, Warren County has 1,700 students.
“Making a leap from governance to administration is two different things,” Sutton said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s not necessarily a seamless transition, but I want to put myself in a position where I could learn more about running the day-to-day of a district.”
Sutton, 51, said he would not resign from the Wake school board unless he’s offered the permanent position of Warren County superintendent. Sutton’s district represents much of Southeast Raleigh.
Longtime school board member
Sutton was appointed to the Wake school board in 2009. He most recently was reelected in 2020. He unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for state school superintendent last year.
Among the issues he’s focused on in Wake is reducing school suspensions and ensuring racial equity in schools.
The Raleigh resident is an education innovation consultant with FocusED, LLC, a firm he started in 2017 to support organizations in improving and transforming education. Before then, he was excellence director for BEST NC, a business coalition focused on education.
Sutton’s experience also includes having been executive director of the state NAACP and president of the Triangle Urban League. He worked in the campaigns of former U.S. Rep. Eva Clayton and former Gov. Bev Perdue.
“I think I’ve done a lot in my 11 years as a board member and made an impact in Wake County,” Sutton said. “I think there are other ways I can have a significant impact on the lives of people.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 10:53 AM.
