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Inside Move

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: September 20, 2008

This week, the Pinellas County School Board named Julie Janssen superintendent of schools. The post had been vacant since June, when Clayton Wilcox gave up the superintendent's job and headed off to New York and a job with an educational publishing firm. In his four years in the superintendent's job Wilcox tried to shake up the School District, ruffling a lot of feathers in the process.

The School Board turned to Janssen, a longtime veteran of Pinellas County classrooms and the School District headquarters, after Alberto Carvalho said thanks but no thanks when the board offered him the job late last week. Carvalho, 43, opted to stay home and take the Miami-Dade school superintendent's job instead.

The Pinellas board chose Janssen, 59, over the other remaining finalist, Nicholas Gledich, 55, chief operations officer of the Orange County School District. In going with Janssen, who despite a youthful appearance will be eligible for Social Security in three years, the board followed the lead of the College of Cardinals. In 2005 the princes of the Roman Catholic Church replaced the crusading Pope John Paul II with the then-78-year-old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a low-key Vatican insider from Germany, instead of tapping a cardinal from Africa or somewhere else in the Third World.

Having made an unsuccessful bid for the flashy Carvalho, the School Board seems to have done a quick 180 an opted for a few quiet post-Wilcox years under Janssen.

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