Leander independent school district superintendent

Leander independent school district superintendent

Written by Staff Thursday, 07 February 2008

Bret Champion, LISD Superintendent

Superintendent Bret Champion officially took over for Tom Glenn Feb. 1, and immediately kicked off a tour of the district’s 30 campuses, beginning with Faubion Elementary School. Almost 14 years ago, Champion was at the school as a teacher, and he credits his LISD experience with planting in him the seeds of desire to serve students. He inherits a school district that recently helped Williamson County place ninth on Forbes list of best school districts for the buck, and said he plans to see that LISD continues the tradition of high achievement.

Q. What new things will you bring to the role of superintendent?

A. In the first few months, I’ll be bringing a lot of listening and learning. I’ve got four primary goals for the first six months. The first is to work closely with the board of trustees to ensure that our vision is a shared one that is going to take the district to the next level over the next several years. The second goal is to continue to build public trust, commitment and confidence in the district through open and honest communication. The third big goal is to evaluate our organizational effectiveness to ensure that the focus on everything we do is on student learning. And the last goal is really critical. It’s to continue the culture that we’ve developed here over the years. It’s a culture of students first, a culture of trust, a culture of continuous improvement.

My goal is not to take this district and totally turn it upside down and shake it up. My goal is to listen and learn and see where we need to improve and bring leadership to those areas and continue to take us forward to build on our strengths and improving where we need to improve.

Q. Tom Glenn was superintendent for 20 years. Is it hard to replace somebody like that?

A. Absolutely. Not just longevity. Even if Tom had only been here for six weeks, it would be difficult to follow him. He is a phenomenal leader. He listens well. One of his words of advice to me was ‘remember to go slow to go fast.’ Those are huge shoes to fill, and they are in fact unfillable.

Q. When did you consider becoming a superintendent?

A. When I was a principal. I took a look around and realized that my passion is for educating kids. I think that the public schools have such an important role to play in society.

Q. How does being a product of LISD benefit you in your new position?

A. It means that I know there are fantastic folks throughout this place. Any place you slice in this school district you’re going to run into people who are dedicated to improving things for kids. That includes our teaching staff for sure, our principals, our parents.

Q. What do you think is the district’s biggest challenge?

A. Rapid growth has an impact on everything that we do. One of the challenges is trying to maintain culture while we’re hiring hundreds of teachers, and while we’re bringing in 10 percent new students every year. Just keeping ahead of that growth and having systems and processes in place to make sure we are working well with the growth while trying to improve.

The second thing I feel we need to focus on is continuing to focus on the achievement gap. We expect that kids are going to take advantage of the International Baccalaureate program or the Advanced Placement program, or get college credit through some of the arrangements we have with trade schools.

Q. How do you propose to improve student performance?

A. The first thing I plan on doing is being out there and listening and learning, looking at the data, ensuring that the board and I have a clear focus on the areas we need to improve. The data will show some areas we clearly need to improve. Then, I want to take a look at things that are out there and work well. We are not the only district that is educating kids.

Q. Is there an area in the district that could use some work and how do you plan on rectifying that?

A. The district has looked at the area of science and has taken some great steps in improving our science curriculum.

We need to take a look at our English language learners and ensure that the programs we’re offering for those kids who are coming to us not speaking English are doing everything that they can.

Q. Leander has not achieved Recognized status since 2004. What will it take to get that designation back?

A. I think that the methodologies that we have in place that are continuing to look at our curriculum, that are continuing to look at the way we are assessing kids, that continue to look at narrowing the achievement gap — those are the types of things that we need to continue to focus on.

It’s important to remember that the Recognized status is one measure of things. There are a whole lot of other things that we need to pay attention to as well. We’re not discounting the rating that the state has, but we absolutely need to ensure that we’re focusing on the whole child. We need to ensure that we have a college-going culture that pushes kids as far as they can go. With those types of things, the test scores will come.

Q. Given what you know now as an adult, what advice do you have for students?

A. Explore everything. I haven’t stopped learning. I finished my doctorate but there are still things that fascinate me that I continue to learn about and read about. Second, explore things that you may not think are all that interesting, but check it out anyway. I ended up being an English major, and it wasn’t because I went into college thinking I wanted to study that, but I happened to. There was a spot available in an introduction to poetry class, I thought, ‘I’ll give it a shot,’ and I loved it. I found an area that I didn’t know I was going to love that much.

Q. What have you been reading?

A. I’m reading a book right now by Michael Fullen called Breakthrough. It talks about how you go about personalizing instruction for kids and providing the best learning for adults. I’m also reading Firms of Endearment, which talks about how companies that have a clear purpose and a passion for doing the right thing are actually very profitable. It’s a great read and really forms some of the core things that I believe about LISD.

• Education: Bachelor’s in English literature, University of Houston; master’s in education, Texas State University; doctorate of education, University of Texas
• Family: Wife, Marcee, is an adjunct professor at Austin Community College. Sons, Alan, 11, and Nicholas, 10, attend LISD schools.
• Contact Information: 434-5162

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