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Pat Forgione

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Tuesday, 07 August 2007

Pat Forgione, Austin ISD Superintendent

When Forgione arrived in Austin in 1999 he was starting a new job in a new city and was newly married. AISD has had seven superintendents in nine years. The school district suffered a low bond rating and has been indicted for bad testing procedures. Now, Forgione is repairing the sprawling district and is helping AISD reinvent itself, even as it celebrates its 126th birthday.

Family: Married, three grown sons from a previous marriage
Education: Doctorate in Administration and Policy Analysis, Stanford University; Master’s Degree in Urban History, Stanford University; Master’s Degree in Educational Administration, Loyola College; Bachelor’s Degrees in Theology and Philosophy, St. Mary’s Seminary and University
Contact: 414-2412, superintendent@austinisd.org

Q. What are challenges AISD faces?: A. One of our big challenges is teacher retention. Many of the teachers we hire are young, and so they have family in Fort Worth or a boyfriend in Houston. We develop teachers very well here at AISD and a lot of the suburbs are trying to pick our teachers off because they are so well developed. There’s also the cost of living, if they can buy a house for cheaper in Manor or Pflugerville then why commute to Austin?
Q. How do you take care of Northwest Austin when you have such a large and diverse district?: A. Northwest Austin has tough clientele because if you’re not meeting their needs, they have the money to go somewhere else. The quality of those schools is good, so what we do to keep parents interested is to provide lots of options. When I started offering International Baccalaureate at Anderson High School, a headmistress from a local private school said her biggest competition wasn’t other private schools, but International Baccalaureate. McCallum offers a creative focus, and the Language Arts Sciences Academy campus focuses on math and science skills important to parents. Another challenge is that in Austin, we don’t have a level playing field. At Blackshear, I spend $8,000 per child, at Doss and Hill, I spend $4,200 per child so I’m spending twice as much on the east side as I am on the west side, where your readers are. Johnston got $10,000 per child last year and then Anderson got $5,400. Anderson has more experienced teachers, but I put more money over in Johnston so they could hire more specialists. You have to be committed to a diverse population in Austin.
Q. What’s one thing people may not know about AISD?: A. AISD has the lowest tax rate in Central Texas. We’re at $1.04 for maintenance and operation, but only at 12 cents for interest and sinking. Pflugerville is at 35 cents and Round Rock is at 25 cents. AISD is a good investment because we’re doing a lot with less money. Voters gave us authority to raise taxes five cents for over $5 million in bonds, but we haven’t asked for a cent of that yet. Our last bond referendum passed with a 70 percent vote back in 2004, and that was a tough economy. But people believed in us, and that’s what led them to be willing to make an investment.
Q. You spend a lot of time in the office. How do you stay connected with teachers and students?: A. I’m a big voicemail guy. I want to hear from people. I give people my voicemail and I get about 50 messages a day, and I listen to them as I drive around town. I also try to do classroom visits twice a week during the school year.
Q. How did you become involved in education?: A. I had been studying to be a priest, I was in the seminary, and it was during the Vietnam war. I was very patriotic and socially motivated. I decided the priesthood wasn’t my primary vocation, but I still felt a social calling. So I decided to teach at a black high school where there were 3,200 kids in a three-grade school. Later I ended up turning down a job at the best high school in Connecticut because I realized that I could learn more from this Baltimore high school. Later I went to Smith College for a summer to learn about black studies. It helped me learn to identify with the students I taught.