No.83 Resignation of Chairperson Ono and Superintendent Kojima and Transition to the New Board of Education System

Recently, Chairperson Yoshie Ono of the Inagi City Board of Education completed her term on September 30, 2018, and Superintendent Fumihiro Kojima completed his term on October 14, 2018.
Mr. Ono supported educational administration as a board member for 13 years since October 1, 2005, and Mr. Kojima served for 8 years as superintendent since October 15, 2010. We express our gratitude for their hard work.
In the third regular session of the city council this September, I proposed Akira Kato as the new superintendent to succeed Mr. Kojima and Makiko Sugimoto as the new board member to succeed Mr. Ono, and received consent for their appointment (see page 4).
Mr. Kato was born in 1954 and joined Inagi City Hall in 1977, working for 38 years until March 2015, when he was the Director of the Department of Education. After retirement, he has been voluntarily watching over the children of Minamiyama Elementary School, which he was involved in establishing.
Ms. Sugimoto was born in 1964 and has been teaching as a junior high school teacher since 1986. In Inagi City, she served as the principal of Inagi Fourth Junior High School for two years starting in April 2012 and worked as the Director of Educational Guidance for three years starting in April 2014.
Both have extensive practical experience in the Board of Education and are committed to educational administration with enthusiasm, so I ask for your continued support just as for their predecessors.

By the way, after the resignation of Superintendent Kojima, Mr. Kato was appointed as the new Superintendent on October 15, 2018, and at the same time, we will transition to the new Board of Education system based on partial amendments to the Law on the Organization and Administration of Local Education. This legal amendment itself was enacted on April 1, 2015, but due to transitional measures, the Superintendent in office at the time of enactment continued to serve under the old system until the end of their term.
Under the new system, the Chairperson, who is the representative of the Board of Education, and the Superintendent, who is the supervisor of the secretariat, have been unified. The old Superintendent was elected from among the five Board members, but the new Superintendent is not a Board member and is directly appointed by the Mayor with the consent of the City Council, becoming a special position of the city, similar to the Vice Mayor.
In the future, the Superintendent will operate the Board of Education as the representative along with the other four Board members. While the position of the Superintendent will change, the operation by the consensus of the five members will remain unchanged.
The transition to the new system accompanying the legal amendment has already been partially implemented. The "Comprehensive Education Council," which is a forum for discussions and coordination between the Mayor and the Board of Education, was established on April 14, 2015, and the fundamental policy for educational goals and measures, the educational guidelines, was decided at the Comprehensive Education Council held on May 11 of the same year as "Inagi's Educational Guidelines for Nurturing People and Culture through Interaction." With the appointment of the new Superintendent, we have fully transitioned to the new system.
This system reform aims to ensure the political neutrality, continuity, and stability of education while clarifying the accountability system in local education administration, building a rapid crisis management system, and strengthening collaboration between the heads of local public bodies and the Board of Education, representing a fundamental reform of the system.
In the future, we will advance education in Inagi in accordance with the educational guidelines while collaborating more closely with the new Superintendent and the new Board of Education.