Board of Trustees names Dr. H. T. Sanchez as lone finalist for Superintendent
During a Special Called Meeting on April 11, the Plainview ISD Board of Trustees voted unanimously to name Dr. H. T. Sanchez as the lone finalist for the position of Superintendent of Schools. In accordance with state law, the district must now wait 21 days before offering Dr. Sanchez a contract.
Dr. Sanchez holds a doctorate of education from Texas A&M University at Commerce. He also holds a master's degee in education from Sul Ross State University and a bachelor's degree in English from Angelo State University.
Dr. Sanchez has served in a variety of roles in public education over the last three decades. Most recently, Dr. Sanchez lead Tucson Unified School District, an urban district of over 49,000 students, as superintendent of schools. Under his leadership, the district transformed a structural deficit to a positive fund balance, eliminated annual layoffs as a means to balance the budget, and earned multiple state and national awards. Among those awards, Dr. Sanchez’s focus on increasing access to upper-level coursework earned the district recognition on the AP College Board Honor Roll for increasing the number of students from all ethnic and financial backgrounds taking AP courses and scoring at the highest levels on AP examinations. This prestigious award was given to only 3 districts in the state and 425 in the United States and Canada.
Dr. Sanchez has also served as a chief financial officer in a large, West Texas school district where he worked with the superintendent and the board of trustees to address a financial shortfall without layoffs. The methodology Dr. Sanchez used to balance the budget while maintaining the integrity of the classroom has been published in Rick Hess’ book, Cage Busting Leadership, and the Houston-Based Center for the Reform of School Systems uses his methodology to train school board members and central office leaders how to leverage scarce resources to secure student success.
Additionally, Dr. Sanchez served as a chief of staff, assistant superintendent, executive director, director, high school principal, middle school principal, and elementary principal in urban, suburban, and semi-urban districts across Texas.
Beyond his work in public education, Dr. Sanchez served as an adjunct professor for Texas A&M University-Commerce for six years. Dr. Sanchez taught doctoral-level ethics and philosophy as well as graduate level school law, the principalship, statistics, communication, and organizational theory.
In 2016, Dr. Sanchez was named one of the top 25 superintendents in the United States to watch, and in that same year, he was invited to present at Columbia University’s (NY) Teachers College on the topic of school district transformation in the areas of student discipline and academic achievement. In 2017, Dr. Sanchez was awarded the LULAC President’s Citation for Educational Leadership.
