Former Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Sean McDaniel speaks at a Dec. 5 ceremony at district headquarters. McDaniel resigned from this post after the 2023-24 school year ended. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)
OKLAHOMA CITY — For 39 years, Sean McDaniel spent the month of August waking in the early hours of the morning and preparing for the start of school.
This year, what would have been his 40th working in education, teachers will ready their classrooms, schools will open, buses will roar to a start and students will arrive, but McDaniel will be elsewhere, preparing for what comes next after leaving Oklahoma City Public Schools.
“It’s weird, yeah,” he said. “I’m going to have to get used to this, I guess.”
McDaniel shocked the Oklahoma City community when he announced in February he would resign as the superintendent of OKCPS after the end of the school year, citing differences with the district’s school board . His six years at the helm of the district made him its longest-tenured superintendent in three decades.