Waldemar "Bill" Rojas is a former superintendent at the

San Francisco Unified School District San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), established in 1851, is the only public school district within the City and County of San Francisco, and the first in the state of California. Under the management of the San Francisco Board of Educa ...

(SFUSD) and the Dallas Independent School District (DISD).

Early career

In 1968 began his education career in the

New York City Board of Education The Panel for Educational Policy of the Department of Education of the City School District of the City of New York, abbreviated as the Panel for Educational Policy and also known as the New York City Board of Education, is the governing body of ...

(NYCBOE), beginning as a teacher and rising to the chancellor's executive assistant. After becoming head of SFUSD, in 1994 President of the United States Bill Clinton appointed him to the Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. In 1999 Bess Keller of '' Education Week'' described Rojas as "peppery".

Dallas Independent School District

He began his term as DISD superintendent on August 1, 1999. - Has detailed dates of superintendents from Chad Wollery to Mike Miles, but does not include people who only served as interim superintendents. The hiring vote on April 22, 1999, by the DISD board was unanimous. His salary was $260,000, the highest of any U.S. school superintendent. The relationship with the board deteriorated after he publicly criticized two board members at a news conference after it rejected his proposal to have Edison Schools operate schools. The board called a special meeting on whether to fire him, and Rojas chose to go on vacation to see his family, publicly defending himself and stating he would not resign. He was fired effective July 5, 2000. The vote to remove him was seven to one. He announced plans to file a lawsuit accusing two board members of defaming him, but received a settlement of $135,000, after the DISD board agreed to do so in 2002. This is on top of a $90,000 severance package. Rojas maintained that he had a positive impact on the district during his tenure.

Post-DISD

After his DISD tenure he became the vice president of

Advantage Schools Advantage may refer to: * Advantage (debate), an argument structure in competitive debate * Mechanical advantage, in engineering, the ratio of output force to input force on a system * Advantage of terrain, in military use, a superiority in ele ...

. Circa 2012 he resided in the state of Florida.

References

External links

* Living people Dallas Independent School District superintendents San Francisco Unified School District superintendents Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-bio-stub