Rita Bishop

Rita Bishop will be Roanoke's next superintendent, the school board said today.

Bishop worked for the Roanoke school system for 10 years before taking the job of school superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., in 2004. Her last job in Roanoke was as assistant superintendent of instruction under the administration of then-superintendent Wayne Harris. The board voted 5-2 to offer her the district's top job. The two "no" votes came from Todd Putney and Jason Bingham.

"I think Roanoke City Public Schools can be a model urban district," said Bishop, who kept her house in Roanoke while working in Pennsylvania. "I want the best teachers and I will do whatever it takes to keep teachers."

"In an urban setting it's difficult and it's a very special kind of teacher that I admire who can be highly effective in an urban setting," she added.

Bishop, whose district is roughly six miles from the site of the 2006 Amish school shootings in Nickel Mines, Pa., that left five students dead, also called school safety her "number one priority."

Roanoke has been without a superintendent since early May when the school board and former superintendent Marvin Thompson negotiated a separation agreement with two years remaining on Thompson's contract.

Thompson had been in Roanoke since 2005 but his relationship with the school board soured in April after he secretely applied for a job in Florida.

With 11,415 students, the Lancaster school district is only slightly smaller than Roanoke. Like Roanoke, it is an urban district with a large number of poor students.

When Bishop took over, the Lancaster school district was struggling to recover from financial scandals and low test scores. Her predecessor, Ricardo Curry, was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud after he was found to have hired relatives as consultants and received kickbacks from them.

Bishop also faced a $3.4 million budget deficit when she arrived. Today, she said, the deficit has turned into a $1.7 million surplus. In 2004, Bishop had 109 teacher vacancies to fill in Lancaster. This year, she said, the district only lost 38 teachers.

At the same time test scores and the graduation rate have increased, she added.

Bishop will face similar problems in Roanoke, where teacher turnover, low test scores and crumbling facilities have plagued the school district over the past few years.

She also needs to mend fences with teachers and parents, many of whom felt demoralized under Thompson.

One of her first tasks, she said, would be to look at Roanoke's salary schedule and its school culture.

"My greatest concern is attracting and retaining the best possible teachers," she said. "You can talk all you want about what to teach but unless you have people to teach it it's moot."