Collinsville Independent School District has hired Harold Colson to replace Superintendent Matthew Davenport, who resigned last week following months of controversies.
Colson comes from nearby Pilot Point ISD, where he was an assistant superintendent for six years.
Trustees unanimously approved Colson as interim superintendent during a school board meeting Monday night without discussion or comment.
Candidates were interviewed in closed session during a June 8 special meeting.
That’s also when trustees accepted Superintendent Davenport’s resignation.
Davenport started as Collinsville ISD’s superintendent in 2022. His exit follows resignations earlier this year of Assistant Superintendent Jeremy Harpole, Collinsville Junior High School Principal Jacob Williams, and baseball coach/special education teacher Derrick Jenkins.
Jenkins had been a source of controversies within the district—from volatility on the baseball field that led to multiple ejections and suspensions, to allegations of grooming girls via Snapchat and drinking with underage students.
He was placed on paid leave in October 2025. At Davenport’s recommendation, trustees voted unanimously in January to terminate Jenkins’ contract for cause.
After months of challenging his firing, Jenkins quietly exited the district in May, but he remains under investigation by the Collinsville Police Department and the Texas Education Agency.
Davenport also remains under TEA investigation for his handling of complaints against Jenkins.
Two other top Collinsville ISD administrators are under TEA review as well: Athletic Director Garrett Patterson (cousin of Trustee Ryan Patterson) and Garrett’s wife, Kim Patterson, who was the high school principal at the time of the complaints against Jenkins but has since been promoted to a newly created position of executive director of school operations.
Parents asserted that the administrators knew about past misconduct by Jenkins but failed to report him to the TEA as required by law until the most recent grooming allegations were made in October 2025.
A law firm retained by the district to investigate how school officials handled the misconduct complaints found “insufficient evidence” to support parents’ assertions; however, individuals who made the complaints declined to participate in the district’s investigation.
As Colson steps into the interim superintendent position, Collinsville ISD parents and staff are hopeful he will handle these inherited controversies and other challenges fairly and transparently as he is tasked with filling several key vacancies in the two-school district of around 600 students and 90 full-time employees.
While Pilot Point ISD is larger, with about 1,600 students and 200 full-time staff on four campuses, the two districts have the same proportions of economically disadvantaged students (45 percent) and similar percentages of students classified as special education (19 percent in Collinsville and 17.5 percent in Pilot Point).
Prior to joining Pilot Point ISD, Colson worked as an athletic director in Bonham ISD, an assistant principal in Bridgeport ISD, and a girls’ basketball coach at Guyer High School in Denton ISD.
Collinsville ISD trustees have not said whether Colson was hired to serve temporarily while the district conducts a search for a new superintendent or will be considered as a permanent replacement for Davenport.
