San Antonio ISD Leadership Reshuffle Following School Closures Due to Heating Failures

The San Antonio Independent School District is facing a leadership shakeup after Superintendent Jaime Aquino announced the resignation of two top officials in the wake of school closures due to heating and plumbing malfunctions, as San Antonio Report and KSAT revealed. Ken Thompson, Deputy Superintendent of Operations, and Mike Eaton, Chief of Operations, stepped down after problems with the school district's heating systems led to the decision to shut down 98 schools, affecting approximately 47,000 students across the district.

Superintendent Aquino acknowledged the situation in a letter to staff, saying, "Although I have accepted the resignations of Ken Thompson and Mike Eaton, I also recognize their significant contributions to our district on behalf of our students," Aquino stated, alluding to complicating factors such as "aging infrastructure, system failures and being underfunded by the state," according to the San Antonio Report. With San Antonio's temperatures plummeting well below freezing, the district had experienced more than 50 consecutive hours of harsh cold, leading students who returned from the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday on Tuesday to find classroom temperatures intolerably low.

Aquino's commitments to action include an external investigation into the breakdowns and the presentation of a report with findings; he promises to reopen classrooms only when it is safe to do so. "We are painfully aware that San Antonio ISD was the only school system in the region to experience this significant of a systems failure," Aquino said as stated by KSAT's memo. The district has also taken steps to mitigate the immediate impact on students and families by providing over 18,000 meals through curbside pickups and instructional resources online.

In the meantime, Senior Executive Director of Child Nutrition Services, Jenny Arredondo, has been appointed to take charge of the Operations Division on an interim basis, with support from Deputy Superintendent Patti Salzmann as they work campus by campus to ensure schools are ready, Aquino explained that "while there will be adequate temperature throughout the school buildings, there may still be some areas that require further attention," he reassured parents in a video message, indicating schools would be ready for students again on Monday, according to the San Antonio Report. The district also plans to excuse all student absences during the days of closure and exclude them from perfect attendance calculations, as noted in a KSAT report.

The San Antonio Independent School District faces a critical moment to address its infrastructure issues and rebuild trust with families and staff amid these operational missteps. As Aquino said in his statement to staff, "Apologies aren’t enough" for the disruptions caused, signaling a drive for substantial and systemic changes moving forward.