Bellevue Schools Deserve a Full-Time, Committed Superintendent

Bellevue’s school district superintendent, Amalia Cudeiro, has been on the job officially since July 1, 2009. To my knowledge, she was hired as a full-time employee. How then do you explain the fact that almost 2 years later she is still listed as one of two senior partners at Targeted Leadership Consulting? “Maybe the listing is out of date,” you say. Unfortunately not. On the “Contact Us” page for TLC, Cudeiro’s Bellevue address is listed. The nature of a high-level administrative job is that it is supposed to be full time and then some. There should not be any time left over for even a part-time consulting career.

Question #1 then, is, Doesn’t the Bellevue District deserve a full-time superintendent, not one that is split partly between her job as school district superintendent and partly between her job as senior partner in a consulting firm?

Someone might point out that maybe it isn’t so bad, because the other senior partner in TLC is her husband, Jeff Nelsen. Maybe she’s just padding her resume by listing the consulting position as active while she really is 100% focused on her superintendent job in Bellevue.

Maybe. But if that’s true (the questionable ethics of continuing to list the consulting position aside), it raises Question #2, Why is husband Nelsen listed with a California mailing address, while wife Cudeiro is listed with a Bellevue mailing address? Does Dr. Cudeiro see Bellevue as a temporary assignment, after which she will relocate back to California? Or has she even relocated to Bellevue at all? Or is she possibly “commuting” to her Bellevue job while she maintains her real residence in California? Or is it more innocuous–perhaps she and her husband split their residences between Bellevue and California?  

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I do know that even the most charitable explanation of “split their residences between Bellevue and California” leaves me wanting a school district superintendent who’s much more deeply invested in the Bellevue community. I want a superintendent who wants to live here, not someone who is casting one eye backward toward another state. I want a school superintendent who is willing to put down roots in the community, who gets to know the mayor, city manager, chief of police, business leaders — and definitely stays around long enough to get to know some of the teachers! I don’t think it’s asking too much to want the leader of the school district to like the district enough to truly call it “home. ”

I think Bellevue deserves a superintendent willing to commit to the community and who is unquestionably working full-time at the superintendent job. Right now, Amalia Cudeiro does not seem to qualify.

I am not the first person to ask these kinds of questions. Check out “Amalia Cudeiro is starting out in Bellevue exactly like Libia Gil started in CVESD” in the San Diego Education Report Blog.

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