Education

Bellevue schools Superintendent Amalia Cudeiro resigned from her job Tuesday and has told the School Board she won't renew her three-year contract. Her last day at work was Tuesday.

"She had been with us for 2 ½ years and did a lot of good work," School Board President Paul Mills said Tuesday night. "She's leaving the district in good stead."

As examples of Cudeiro's work, he cited how the superintendent formed "instructional leadership teams" in which teachers helped each other.

"She believed in mentoring and developing from within," said Mills.

Six weeks ago, Cudeiro took a medical leave to help her mother, who is both a stroke victim and a cancer patient, according to a news release on the Bellevue Public Schools website.

Had she remained in the job, her three-year contract would have expired on June 30.

When she was hired, Cudeiro was one of three finalists for the Bellevue superintendent's job. One of the other finalists was Susan Enfield, interim superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, who has told the Seattle Board she will not apply for the permanent post without giving any reason as to why.

Mills, in the release, said he was dismayed to get Cudeiro's resignation, "but [I] understand Amalia has to do what is in the best interest of her family at this time. While Amalia led the district, she kept the board briefed of her family situation in California, and her decision to take a family medical leave was not a surprise to us."

Assistant Superintendent Eva Collins has been filling Cudeiro's shoes during her leave, and she has agreed to continue in that role while the School Board considers its options for filling the job, the news release said.

Cudeiro took the Bellevue superintendent's job in July 2009. She had previously worked in the Boston Public Schools, where she was a deputy superintendent from September 1999 to June 2001. After that, with her husband, Jeffrey Nelsen, she founded a consulting firm, Targeted Leadership Consulting. As a consultant, she worked in school districts across the country, helping principals and teachers become better leaders and work together more effectively.

Last August, at the same time it was approving its new contract, the Bellevue Education Association (BEA) gave Cudeiro a 97 percent no-confidence vote, pointing to her style of management.

Quoted at the time, BEA President Michele Miller said: "Over the past two years there was a lot of tension. ... You want to give someone a chance when someone first comes in. But this is her third year."

Part of the controversy was over Cudeiro's association with the firm she and her husband co-founded. Her contract with the district allowed her to maintain ownership in the company but not to work for it.

Cudeiro had never before led a school district and had said she didn't expect to again, and that seemed to be another concern of the BEA.

Cudeiro had been working to shift the teacher culture in the district. An important part of her philosophy is getting teachers to use "differentiated instruction" — in which a teacher uses different methods to reach students who are struggling while also challenging the brightest, according to a 2010 Seattle Times profile.

Cudeiro replaced the late Mike Riley, who had led the district for 11 years.

Riley had tried to tackle the achievement gap by creating a Web-based common curriculum for six core subjects. But the curriculum may have helped push a dissatisfied teaching staff to go on strike in 2008, a year after Riley left to take another job.

Material gathered by Seattle Times stafff reporter Erik Lacitis and information from The Seattle Times archives were used in this report.