Trustees for the Southwest Independent School District voted unanimously Wednesday to hire Jeanette Ball as the district’s next superintendent.
Ball signed her new contract immediately after the vote, and she gave a short speech to an enthusiastic and supportive audience that included her family and Southwest ISD’s principals and central office employees.
"I'm coming into an amazing district that I call home,” Ball said, who started out as an ESL and history teacher at SWISD in 1995. “Never did I think that this dream would come true, because it was truly a dream for me to come back as a superintendent.”
Ball started this school year as superintendent of Judson ISD. She agreed to resign from Judson in November, a few weeks after Judson voters approved a new bond.
Her first day as Southwest’s superintendent will be Monday, Feb. 13.
Southwest ISD’s outgoing superintendent, Lloyd Verstuyft, announced his retirement in October. On Wednesday, he said he was confident he was leaving the district in good hands.
Ball’s first day as superintendent will be Monday (Feb. 13.) https://t.co/Kbp4c8txN9
— Camille Phillips - Texas Public Radio (@cmpcamille) February 9, 2023
“We're super excited. Today marks the first day of a new journey at Southwest ISD,” Verstuyft said. “We're going to see some really great things [with Dr. Ball].”
Verstuyft has led Southwest ISD since 2009. His final day with the district will be in June, according to SWISD spokesperson Jenny Collier.
Ball said Wednesday that she was committed to giving Southwest ISD students the support she didn’t always have as a student herself. She also thanked her family and said that they had “been through so much with me.”
“No one truly knows when you look at somebody what their life is really all about. A lot of us do a great job of painting a very rosy picture," she said. "But I would say most of us in this room [have had] struggles. ... My struggles started early when I was in elementary, and my teacher wanted to retain me. I had a counselor that told me that college was not for me. Another educator that said it was because my mother taught me Spanish, and it was all jumbled up in my head.”
The reason for her unusual mid-year departure from Judson has not been publicly explained, other than to say it was “in their respective best interests.”
Judson is now working to hire a new superintendent before board elections in May.
Ball was an assistant superintendent at Southwest ISD before she was hired as Uvalde CISD’s superintendent in 2013. She left Uvalde in 2018 to become Judson’s superintendent.
Judson enrolls more than 24,000 students. SWISD has about 13,000.
