Smith County Board of Education Director of Schools Round 1 Interviews 2/28/2026

001I got >> All right, I'm going I'm going to call this interviews session meeting to order. But before we start, Mr. P. Uh, one thing we need to to sh up. Uh, uh, being the circumstances of the board, uh, Mr. shoulders is not going to be able to be here today for his family. And uh Mr. Taylor, he's not going to be here today. He should be back home this weekend. Uh of course, Mr. Lewis is is on video chat virtual because he's he's dealing with CO right now. So, we do have actually six members present for the interview. That being said, uh we're not going to be able to uh pick the three candidates today because for the integrity of the board, uh we want all eight candidates here when we vote for the

002three. So with that being said, I've kind of pulled the board right quick. We are going to postpone the three person interview on March the 9th, the Monday night at 5:00. But we still are going to have a board meeting where we can choose the three candidates that we want to take to the final round. And right now, if it's fine with the board, I'll entertain a motion. Let's We've got our regular board meeting and our board retreat on Tuesday, March the 17th. We'll be here all day. I know it makes it a hard weekend, but I want to I want to tendly set Monday night at 5 o'lock. That's all right, y'all. 5:00 for the uh final round interviews for our three candidates. They they all said they they was fine >> on the

00316th and then that way on the 17th what we plan we can to name our new director of schools that that's fine with the board. I would I would entertain a motion for that. >> Make a motion. >> Motion made by Dr. Mack, second by Hess. Any discussion on that? All in favor say I. I. >> So, we'll still have a board meeting on Monday, March 9th, and that will choose down the three candidates. And then on Monday night, a week later, March the 16th, we'll have our interview. And then March the 17th, director's schedule board meeting, we'll pick our new director. Okay, good. With that being said, we're going to start on the interviews and uh Mr. P, the lucky man got number one. So, so what we're going to do here, we're first

004going to we've got 10 questions and there's maybe two questions in each question, some of the questions. So, be ready to uh give us the the the best answer you can give us. And uh we're g Well, Johnny's volunteering. We're gonna let him he's going to ask all the 10 questions. And then at last, the six board members that's here are going to come back around with their own question, maybe off of something you might have said or just something out of the blue or just they they've got a personal question they want to ask you. Okay. All right, Jay. >> All right. Good morning, Mr. Towns. For coming uh on behalf of the school board, I'll be reading interview questions. So, uh, question number one, uh, tell us a little about yourself and why

005you want to be our next director. Well, um, I was, uh, born not too far from here. Grew up, uh, little community called Kato in Traville County, but about a mile from Mon and Smith County. Went to school, Trout County Schools. went to the University of Tennessee, got my bachelor's and master's degree in animal science. Uh worked for a few years for the University of Tennessee uh in research and education, worked for the extension office, worked at the research center in Crossville, Tennessee. And I wanted to get back closer to home. Uh so I was fortunate enough to be able to get a job with the agriculture extension service in Charles County. worked there for a year uh and got to work with um school kids through the 4H program. Uh was good friends with

006a teacher there. One thing led to another. They had a position that opened up. Got into K12 education teaching a there. Uh taught there for three years. Moved to Mon County, moved jobs to Mon County. Uh worked there for five. Uh while I was there, um had the opportunity to go back to school, get my administrative license, and I really enjoyed teaching at in Mon County. U I love working with kids FFA program. Uh but after I'd been there five years, uh I had an opportunity to take an administrative job or at least apply for one and that was here in Smith County at Smith County High School. uh that has I've been here since then. I started out as an assistant principal there. I worked in that role for three years. Then was principal

007for two. Um Miss Melinda Spidey left here for another job. So I've been here for the last seven years u as the career technical education director and high school supervisor. Uh why would I why am I interested in this role? Um, to be honest with you, I never started in K12 education with a desire to be a director. Uh, I wanted to teach and I wanted to be around kids and it just seems like those roles have have found me for one reason or another. Um, I enjoyed administrative roles at the high school and I've enjoyed my role here. They've all been different. uh and the impact that you make uh in students lives are a little bit different depending on the role that you're in. Uh but over the last seven years, we have

008started um a lot of good things here in SN County and we have I believe a wonderful school staff. Uh we've got good school leaders. Uh they put our kids first. Uh that that's that's important to me. Uh we started some great things I believe in career in technical education. I want to see those things follow through. We've started a lot of good things. Our our performance in our schools are increasing and getting better and I want to see those things, you know, I want to see them through. So that that's my line for putting in for this job. >> Thank you. So question number two, what is your leadership style and what strengths do you bring to this position to leave Smith County Schools successful? >> Well, as far as leadership goes, there's a

009lot of different ways to go about that. Uh but I think the the two things that have to go hand inand if you're going to be an effective leader, effective organizations, uh you have to have good relationship building skills, uh and you also have to be an effective communicator. Um I'm not a I guess bark at people on you got to do this this this this and this. Uh but I think clear communication on what the expectations are uh from the top down and you have to empower the people that you work with. Working in a position in a school as a principal you have to have an effective staff around you. You have to have effective assistant principles and you have to have effective teachers and you have to communicate that vision and goal

010that you have for your school. You have to communicate that to those folks and hire good people and let them do their jobs. Um and and that that's what I believe in. But but it starts with relationships. Teachers can't be effective teachers if they can't have good relationships with their kids. And the same is true inside of school. principles, assistant principles, coaches. Um, everything that we do, it's built around relationships and effective communication. >> Um, what would be your three-year strategic vision for Smith County Schools and what measurable indicators would you use to evaluate progress? Well, a three-year um vision for the schools, if you're leading a school system, u I think one of the things that's got to be at the top of the list is is academics. I mean, that's that's why we're

011here uh to educate our students. And u I think one of my goals would be to continue the progress that we've been making. uh we see improvement across across our grade levels and across subject levels. Of course, we had a big uh dip just like everybody did a few years ago when CO 19 pandemic came along and we rebounded from that and we're seeing improvement. U of course we get annual uh metrics on our academic performance that we go through every year both at the district level uh school level and at the classroom level. Uh so continuing that vision uh and then of course uh with this role a big uh part of the job is fiscal management and responsibility u and I you know there's been a lot of talk about our budget funding

012and those sort of things and I think just uh I think it's going to take two or three years to look at our departments and programs and our schools and make sure that we're managing as effectively and efficiently as we can. I don't think that's something that a new director is going to come on the job and July one and is going to fix or make a lot of changes between July 1 and December one or even June 30th. I think it's going to take a little bit of time u to evaluate those things and see uh what improvements or tweaks need to be made. And then uh just continuing uh big part of what I've done and it's it's near and dear to my heart. I told you where I started out at as

013an a teacher uh career in technical education. Uh the programs and initiatives that we've started in that I want to see those come to pass. Um the I I try trying to start calling it CTE career center but the old save a lot and getting that building finished up and going. uh seeing students going through that um I want to see that running uh like we've envisioned for that to be. >> So how should a district balance preparation for postsecary education workforce readiness and career technical pathways? >> How do we balance those? Uh well, in in my opinion, that's that's our job is to make our students ready uh for post high school. Uh and there are a lot of opportunities today uh that that we didn't have uh even 15 20 years ago. There's

014opportunities for our students in high school, uh, in middle school, and even in elementary school that we didn't have, uh, 20, 30 years ago. I think you have to, and we talk to teachers about this all the time. If you're if you're teaching, you have to have the end in mind. You have to have where you want to get those kids need to get to. You need to have that in mind when you start. Um and so providing uh those opportunities for our students and over the past several years and it's not unique just to Smith County, but the number of early postsecary opportunities that students have today that they didn't have even when I was in high school. Uh that they're able to take college courses while they're in high school. Uh they get

015exposed to that. They get exposed to how that process works. uh when they go to college, uh they're going to have a lot more responsibility placed on them than what they are in high school. And we try to transition that. You don't want to just completely throw all that on them in high school. Uh but it's and I tell students this all the time, uh especially when I was in high school and working as a high school administrator and you had students coming from middle school in high school. Uh they were always nervous, eighth graders moving up to high school. And I would tell those students, you're ready when you get to eighth grade and you finish that, you're ready for high school. Uh, and you wouldn't be when you were in second grade or

016third grade or fourth grade, but by the time you finish middle school, you're ready for high school. And what we want our students to have is the tools that they need to be successful. Whether they want to start into the workforce, uh, whether they want to go to technical school or whether they want to go to a four-year university, we want them to be prepared for that. And I think the things that we've got in place now, we're we're getting our students. How would you improve student performance on state assessments such as Tennessee Ready while maintaining a well-rounded educational experience? Well, that uh I'm a believer in this u test scores are important, right? that that's one of the ways we get great uh as a school district, as a school, as a teacher. Uh

017but it doesn't paint the whole picture. Uh that's the same thing we'll tell students when they're going to college and colleges will tell them as well. It's required that you take the ACT to get into college. They have minimum scores, but they don't tell the whole picture of that individual. Uh test scores are important. Um and we have and this is not something new but something that we've started uh and it starts again starts from this office um creating the vision uh for our schools and working together. This u there's not a magic um there's not a magic peel or solution that you can just say oh this will fix or this will make a test scores you know knock them out of the top. It's complex. It's difficult. uh the students that we have

018coming to us are faced with so many different things. They're coming from different backgrounds and different home lives and different challenges that you know a lot of times we don't we don't even know we may know they're having a difficult time or having a hard time. So it's important to make sure you know what what we want them to do is be able to have possess and have those skills academic skills to where they can be successful. Uh but that starts with school leaders uh working with teachers u and teachers working together. Uh one of the things that we've been doing for the last several months we have academic meetings monthly with our principles and we do walkthroughs in schools not to uh catch a teacher doing something or not doing something but to help

019them. It's a it's a collaborative effort. U that's we don't work in silos. I have to work in the current role that I'm in with other supervisors here. We don't we don't just work on our things. We work together uh to try to tackle the problems and issues that we have in the district. The same works in a in a effective principles. They're in classrooms. They're seeing what's going on and they're trying to help those teachers be as effective as they possibly can. Um, how visible should a superintendent be within the schools and how would you structure ongoing engagement with students and staff? I think that's important. U I think it's important to uh not just well let me address the schools first. Um I don't I don't want to be uh in this role

020and be unapproachable. Uh I think superintendent ought to be visible u in her buildings uh from time to time. Now uh I don't think uh you know a director of schools ought to be uh feared when they walk in the door and everybody like oh the director's here today. U but at the same time I think uh I think it's important for the students and teachers and uh parents to know that the director is interested in the things that are going on in their buildings. And you know, we've got nine schools here in Smith County. Uh I don't know that the director is going to be in in all those schools every day or even every week, but I think certain amount of visibility uh and accessibility within those schools and not just the schools,

021but in the community too. Uh I think uh it's it's an important role. Uh I think as a school system uh things have changed over the last several years and you know there are lots of education options for our families and our students today that wasn't there didn't exist 30 40 years ago and and one of the things I think we need to do is promote uh our school district and promote the good things that are going on that we offer the things that we can provide uh opportunities that we can provide for our students here in Smith County and that we're we're a premier education option here. We know that the state law requires that school age children have to go to school, but they don't have to go to us anymore. They can

022choose private school. They can choose home school. They can do a lot of different things. And I think one of the things that that we need to do and all of us do, but primarily we're not our brains just aren't wired that way in K12 education. We're more about, you know, teaching kids and trying to make as much progress as we can those kids. We don't think about self-promotion, and I don't mean it in a negative light, but I think we do need to promote uh the good things that we're doing here in this district and opportunities that our students here in Smith County can have through Smith County schools that they just can't get other places. Thank you. says, "How are public schools funded in Tennessee? And do you believe the community should better

023understand school finances? Why or why?" Well, of course, you all know this. Uh the school funding formula has changed in the last three years. Used to be based on uh BEP formula. Now it's the TISA formula. Uh schools are funded both state and locally. uh there's a base funding amount that we get for our ADM which is basically the number of students that we have uh attending or enrolled rather here in the district. Uh those are based upon attendance or not attendance enrollment records that are uh gathered monthly. um we get funded um I think the BEP formula the first year of it it was at $6,875 per ADM uh that number has increased u every year I think the second year was $7,75 the third year or the year that we're currently in I

024think we've been funded at $7,295 u a portion of that base is restricted to or minimum amounts for teacher your salaries. I think last year or the current year that we're in, we're required to spend enough of that money to make our minimum salary $47,000 across the state. That's a requirement. Uh this next year will be 50. And so we haven't seen what that number is going to be uh yet, but that base number should increase as well to bump that up. Um that's the base. Uh from there um there are uh direct funding uh based upon we're I think a sparse district we get are classified as that. We get an additional percentage of that base. We also get an additional percentage based on the number of economically disadvantaged students that we have. Uh

025and then we also get uh additional funding uh based upon u our students with disabilities depending on what disability they have that's written into their IEP, what services they need, those uh pay a percentage of that base as well. Uh the last part of that uh I guess part of the funding formula are career and technical education courses. Uh that those are not uh determined based upon the base amount of money. Uh but the state has set a uh schedule for those programs of study and those uh course progressions. Uh the first couple of years there were it was it was just a base or a flat $5,000 per CTE student or CTE ADM. Uh this year we're being funded I think a year one level one course is $5,100 and I think a a

026level three year four course is funded at $5,700 per ADM. Uh so that is added to that. Um and then the last that is that is the the the basis for how schools are funded. Um of that total what that's totals up to the state is responsible for the majority of that portion but local uh local funds are responsible for a portion as well. Uh, of course I think uh we also get federal funding. Um, one of the grants that I'm responsible for is the Perkins grant. U Perkins and Perkins Reserve passes through the state. U those two together about $110,000. Of course, Dr. Johnson manages a the consolidated budget. Uh, and then Eric Swan manages special education. we get some federal funding for those as well. Um the the last piece of funding u

027not talking about external grants or things that we may get but uh that's part of the TISA funding or outcomes uh bonus funding that comes in December. Uh those are based upon three different uh metrics. With elementary students, it's the third grade, the number of students that are proficient. They are in the met or exceeded category on the ELA test. Or if they weren't uh proficient in third grade, if they make significant growth in fourth grade, we get paid a percentage of the base on those students. And it's different depending on if if they I think it's 10% of the base. uh unless they are an economic disadvantaged or special education student, then it's 20% of base. Middle school, it's eighth grade. They have to be proficient in math and ELA TCAP assessment or uh

028have significant growth from the seventh grade test. High school, it's based on uh the college and career ready indicators. Uh we get bonus funding on graduates uh that there's four or five different criteria. if they make a 21 on the ACT and then it's something in addition to that if they have um received industry credential um and we do that in all our CTE courses. So, uh, also if they have three what they call early post-secary opportunities, they're taking dual enrollment, pass that course. Um, and again, it's it's weighted the same way. If it's a student that has disabilities or economically disadvantaged, we get 20% of the base for that outcomes. I think this past year, we got somewhere around 27 $280,000 just on our bonuses for those three outcomes. But that that's the basis

029for how schools are funded here. So, next question. What are the first three areas that you would review when assessing a school's district's financial health? >> Uh, well, first of all, I want to see um um what the the expenditures are. Um see the plan that's been put in place uh for the um school district. Um prime most of our budget's made up of of salary benefits. Uh and we're are a large employer. Uh we have a lot of employees, nine schools. Uh and I think if you're looking at um financial uh responsibility, I mean there there are things that we have to pay for, right? Uh we've got I mean I say things we have to pay for. For instance, transportation department state doesn't require us to provide buses, but my gosh, we've got

030to do that if we want kids to come to school. Uh I was a kid that my parents both worked and they left early in the morning. That's the only way I can get school. I rode the bus till I turned 16 uh and got my driver's license and was able to drive to school. Uh and I I think going through uh each department and just making sure that we're as efficient as we can possibly be. Um, I think that efficiency goes, you know, uh, through our our staffs and our schools. And, um, I think there's things that you have to look at just to make make sure that we're we're run efficiently. I'll tell you this um with the things that I've managed and um started out pretty small when I was uh teaching

031in an A classroom, but I had a school fund that I was responsible for. Uh that I had to make sure that I had enough funds when I was teaching a that we could do what we needed to do as far as a greenhouse, taking kids here, there. Uh, and we basically the way we had to make money was fund raise. Uh, and I I it to me it was like it was my money. If I'm going to be working that hard, I just looked at it like it was mine. And so I wanted to be as efficient as I could possibly be to make sure that we're getting maximum amount out of every penny that we raise. And I think that's the same thing to you go for, you know, even it's a it's

032a much larger scale obviously, but I think we have to maximize and get uh the most out of of every dollar that we're spending and keeping in mind, you know, uh why we're here, you know, why we're here to do the best thing that we can for our kids and prepare them. Uh but I think looking at efficiency and uh those things, I think that would be primarily what we have to look at. Uh, in the event of a budget shortfall, would you be willing to make staffing cuts if necessary to meet financial obligations or would you try to find new revenue streams to address the gap? >> Well, I think the the it's a complex it's a complex issue. I don't think there's a one magic pill that's going to fix anything. Uh I

033think it'll take a combination of things. I think it'll take a combination of uh maximizing our efficiency and increasing our revenue stream. Now someone might say how does a school how does a school district increase the revenue streams? Well, we increase it by increasing number of students that we have. Now we have seen growth in Smith County schools. We've seen growth in student uh enrollments in places, but we've also seen decline in other places. And I think uh you know maybe we have to think outside the box a little bit uh to try to recapture uh some of those students. I I know we referenced uh the co 19 pandemic and that's for most of us trying to something we've tried to forget and put out of our mind. Uh but during that period we

034lost a lot of kids, lost a lot of students and some of them never came back. Uh and I think maybe uh thinking outside the box and things that we can offer u families and students of Smith counties to try to encourage to get some of those back. I don't think the population in Smith County is declining. We still have a lot of kids u that are here in Smith County, but I think that's a part of it. I think uh you know doing the most that we can to maximize that TISA funded to make sure we get every dollar that we can. Uh we and again it's it's what I tell my people uh we're we're we want to do what's best for the kid, right? uh those I mentioned those TISA outcomes bonuses,

035you know, we we'll get if a kid takes an industry uh credential test and they get pass that test, that helps us, but we want to make sure it's helping the kid. We don't want to just do things just just to make kids do it to help our bottom line. Uh we want to do what's right uh for our students and our kids. And I think if we keep that in the forefront of things, um I think we'll move in the direction we want to move. But it's going to take I believe a multiaceted approach. I don't think there's a one thing that just fixes everything here. That's that would be my least. >> The 10th question that we have is where do you see the greatest opportunities for improvement in our school district? >>

036Greatest opportunities for improvement. Uh well, I think we have a lot of we have a lot of good things that are going on. And I say that because I'm in classrooms. Uh I see the good things that are going on. Um I think we have the opportunity. Uh our I I'll just be honest, our test scores aren't where we want them to be. They've improved. They've gotten better. There are a lot of districts in the upper Cumberland region that would like to have the test scores that we have. Uh, but I think there's room for improvement uh with all of those. I think there's um at the high school level. Uh I've seen it here at the middle school. I've seen it uh at our K8 schools. We have good people that are working so

037hard. I mean, they are really working hard to improve uh the outcomes for kids. Uh, and I think continuing to provide the things that they need to be able to do that. Uh, I think, you know, one of the big things that that we need to do that sometimes we it may not be the first thing we think of, but it's educating our community, educating our parents, uh, about the opportunities that are out there, the things that we have to offer for those kids. Uh we've seen improvement uh in if you look at our average ACT score uh it's it's got up to about 20. We were on target to the state goal a few years ago was to get every every the average in Tennessee to be a 21 by 2020 and then co

038happened and everybody went backwards and we were on pace to get there. Uh, of course that didn't just affect kids in high school, affected kids all the way down to kindergarten. Uh, and we we are, you know, five or six years postcoid and we're uh getting, I believe, where we want to get to or we're improving. Uh, but what we have seen, we've seen an increase in the percentage of kids that are hitting that benchmark. Uh, that's increased year over year over year. Uh, we want that to continue. Uh I I think it's important that we make sure that our kids that want to go to college, they want to be a doctor, they want to be an attorney, they want to be a pharmacist, they want to be a physical therapist, that they they

039have the things uh they have the right preparation here so that they can leave here and be successful. Uh and just as important, we can't forget about the kids that u they want to work with their hands. They want to go to work as soon as they get out of high school. Uh we have opportunities for kids to work while they're in school. Um and and we help put students and employers together. Uh that that's one of our charges, too. Um is to try to try to do that and and just set kids up to be successful. Uh that's what we want. Um we've got the greatest resource uh that there is and that's our kids. And we want we want our kids to be successful. Identify what they think they'll be good at, what

040they believe they want to do. Uh provide them with the things so that they can be successful on that path. Uh but that that's what I'd say. And we've still got room to go. We're not where we want to be in all of that. But we're improving and we're getting there. But that's that what I I'll respond to that question. >> All right. That that's your 10 set questions we have to ask. Now, the the board members might have a question they want to ask. And uh uh Scotty, I'm going to Scotty Lewis, I'm going to start with you, but I do know you're long winded, so uh >> I'll be I'll be brief, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me? Okay. >> Yes, sir. >> Uh Mr. Towns, one of the questions kind of referenced

041uh and for lack of a better phrase, community relations. uh you know, while you're not in a an elected position, we do have to interact a lot with other, you know, county agencies and things like that, and that's important to me. Can you kind of give me your thoughts on how you would move forward uh with a higher profile in this role uh building some bridges and things uh with other agencies in the county? >> Sure. Um, I I think it's uh if you're um the the director of schools in Smith County, I think you have to have a good relationship um with uh the Smith County Finance Office. I think you got to have a good relationship with the uh the county commission. uh uh those I think a lot of the times the

042reason that we have u of course we're you know what the board of education and the director of schools responsibilities are they differ you know from what the the primary charge of the county commission is however uh they're both interrelated and they both need to understand the challenges and things that both of them face and I think uh being visible at some of those um just u being visible in a community. You know, uh there are things that uh that that that go on here and and I you know, I remember back when I was uh uh working as principal at Spring County High School. Uh per uh that that position, you could have been at something at the high school every single night just about year round. Uh, and one of the things that

043I try and it's, you know, most people think about the athletic events that we have, ball games, things of that, uh, that everybody likes to come out to. Uh, and I enjoy those. Um, and and those are important. They're important part, uh, of the school system. Uh, but there's other things that are important, too. You know, whether it's, you know, uh, the band has concert one night. uh I couldn't make it to every single thing in that in that school. Uh but I tried to spread out and come to as many things I can just be visible just so they knew that I knew what they were doing and that it was important to me. Uh and I think uh the role that's here uh the director of schools role I think it's important to

044be visible in the community uh just so you know not to say look at me but just to be part of the community see what's going on in the community and uh I think if we um understand better understand each other u then we can have better relationships moving forward. So that's how I would answer that question. We start here, Mr. As you're aware of the general general fund is fail, I think 2.8 of last year, maybe they may call another three to four this year. agriculture projected. If we get a situation where we have five million left and the board has to reduce the funding that we set director to operate under. You may have to make immediate changes. What will those make? I know that touches sort of on a question we had,

045but I guess u I'm just looking for I don't know a different answer maybe not a different answer but put in those words we can't I don't feel like we can pass the same budget as a 381 that we passed >> well um if that's the case uh I mean I think there you know there are some things that um I I don't know there their staff changes every year. I if you work in a school system, u there are people that are retiring every year, there are people that are leaving every year, and then that we're hiring people every year. Um and I I would be lying to you if I said, you know, um yeah, I'm willing to just start slashing up one side and down the other, but I think you have

046to be, you know, just like we tell teachers when they're looking at data, there's a kid behind every data point. uh behind every position here in the school system, there's a family, there's a livelihood. Uh but at the same time, you have to balance that with efficiency uh in our schools and in our district. And if that's the case, then u the first thing I'm going to do is not lock myself in a room by myself. But I think well, it's something we'll have to do together. uh and I say that the the principles, department heads, uh and the director of schools to see how we can be as efficient as we possibly can. Uh again, I don't think it's a it's a it's a one uh one thing. I mean, it would be we'd

047all love it, right? I mean, we'd all love it if there was just one thing that we could do uh and and make everything like we want it to be. Uh I think it's going to take u a multiaceted approach and uh I think it's I think it's going to take a little time. Uh and u just from I haven't uh looked at everything. I don't you know I don't manage the school district's budget. I have the pieces that I'm responsible for. Uh but I think it will take a little bit of time. Uh and I think you have to take the approach that uh uh we've got to do what we got to do. Okay, >> down. Um, would the U, this is just a hypothetical question in a sense, but the two high

048school principles, I'm just going to use them as an example. Would they be allowed to run their schools as they wish? And or they be running under a policy that you felt like it would be fair to both sides to the students on each side. Maybe principal at one school was more lenient on um I'm just going to make up some that's not their parking lot's trashy students are just throwing trash everywhere and then another come to another school and that frank it looks like it's golf course you know it's so my question is are you going to try to use them as the best you can to run it same in in both both sides of Well, I think it's important um having worked in that position, right? I' I've worked as a principal,

049worked with other principles and uh what every principal in this district um our guide to go by uh is the board policy. So we have to stay within board policy and um but within that board policy uh I think building level principles have to have some autonomy to run the uh as long as they're staying within the framework uh of what the board policy is. U I'm not a micromanager. I I don't want to be uh and in a district the size that we are uh with the number of schools that we have uh the the director of schools can't be the principal at every build or or act in that way if that makes sense. Uh so I think you have to uh give those principles the autonomy to do their job. Uh but

050at the same time, if there are things that that as a director that you think need to be changed or tweaked, I think that you have a conversation with them. Uh and you know, we've got two high schools here. Uh we've got three K8 schools here. Uh got a middle school, got a K2 uh school, and then have a another elementary school. So, we we've got lots of different frameworks. They're all different. uh the challenges, some of them are similar, some of them are different. Uh we that's one of the best things that we have done uh in my opinion, in my time here is getting those principles together monthly for an instructional academic to let them talk to each other uh because they share ideas. This is how I've done this here. uh and

051sometimes they can take it back to their building uh and it and it's something they can implement, they can work or they can tweak it. Um it's been something that's been really good. We've had uh principles uh just in the last few months go and do walkthroughs with the other principles at their schools just to see things that they've got going on. Uh you know, in this role when when I was Smith County High School principal, I wanted Smith County High School to be the best it could possibly be. uh in the job that I have now, high school supervisor, CTE director, I want I'm responsible for the high schools and helping both those principles and all those teachers, I want both of those high schools to be as good as they can possibly be

052academic wise. They they both have, you know, some differences and some different challenges, but >> no, I don't want to, you know, go in and say, "Hey, both y'all got to do exactly the same thing down the line." And I think both not not only the high school with the others they need some autonomy to be able to do their job. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> So you know that we are under the uh one act which is a touchy subject around so I understand that but I just wanted to ask questions. It says how do you build a working relationship with our county mayor and the commissioners that is cooperative but preserves the school systems independence and vision. Uh well, I think it's important to for everybody to be at the table. Uh

053I think it's important for conversations to take place. Uh I think it's important for both sides to have an understanding uh of the challenges that they face. And uh you know, you mentioned the uh A1 act and county finance and and I have that's changed, you know, life for me. some it's just different than what it was before. Um I have a good relationship with all the people that work in that office. Um and have never had a a bad relationship with anyone on the commission or county mayor or anybody else. Um but I think it's important u to have those conversations and also you know you can't you can't compromise what what we're about, right? I mean the what the schools uh and the board of education and the director of schools their responsibility

054is to do the very best that they can you know as efficiently and productively as possible but manage the school system u and you know the county's got u you know passes the budget of the school system but they've got a whole lot of other things that they've got to worry about and I think you know just communication being able to sit down at the table uh with folks um be accessessive I think that'll help and go a long way. >> Mr. Towns, for many years, the National Education Association and many institutions of higher learning have promoted an agenda that undercuts our nation's traditional American values such as patriotism, etc. What actions will you take to protect the traditional and conservative values that are held by our community and its families? Well, I think uh

055you know just being vigilant u on things that you know this is a conservative community uh for the most part. Um I have conservative values. They're things that are important to me. Um and I think uh you know we can't just and staying and I want to be careful about this too. You know we we're we're a public education. There are things that um you know we have to comply with the law. Uh we have to uh you know and I don't always agree with what the law is just to be perfectly honest with you. I don't I don't know that anybody does on everything. Uh but there are parameters that we have to work in. But I think uh you know we we have a lot of uh programs and initiatives that are going

056on in the classroom uh that promote those things. You know, you walk in our buildings and you're going to hear the pledge of allegiance in the morning. Uh you're going to hear a moment of silence. uh you know uh there there are uh we have Veterans Day programs, we have things in the community. Uh the community here is so passionate uh about their schools uh about their people in the community. uh I think the things that we have to be careful of and you know we have from time to time every so many years we have to adopt curriculum uh and we don't have any control over what a curriculum gets proved uh and a lot of the things that you hear on the news and there are things that that get in some of

057those curriculum uh and sometimes we don't always find them until you're teaching it. Uh now y'all that have been on the board for a while you know how that works. the state they first have to approve all the vendors and then we get an opportunity to go through that curriculum. U and you know there are some that that we look through that just um don't represent the values I guess you might say. Uh they don't write a lot of curriculum just for Tennessee. They write it for national uh write it for the whole country. Uh and there are places that aren't u don't have the same values that we have here in Smith County. Uh but I think just doing our due diligence u to to try to you know instill those values in our

058kids. U you know I I thought about this last night. Uh our kids that come to us today uh they they're they're from every different walk of life, from every different family structure. Uh some of them, you know, I I'm um Some of you may know this. Uh before I started working here as full-time bus driver when I was teaching too. And I never let my license go. Um, and I also for Miss Diane from time to time, uh, when she gets in the bind, and you ride those bus routes and you see, uh, you know, kids on the same bus and some of them, uh, just and, you know, I don't know all the particulars of every situation, but, uh, you see there's a lot of differences in the kids that are here and

059the resources that they have before they get here. And some of our kids, you know, the the the most stable uh person or people that they're around in their lives are the few hours that they're at school. Uh they get two hot meals while they're there. Uh and you know we we've got to remember that as educators uh as leaders in our buildings uh that you know those those kids you know we have to do the very we have to be our best every day for them. Uh I think if we do that uh it starts with hiring good people. Um, it starts with with that u having a clear vision for for what you want uh accomplished and clear expectations. And I think when you do that uh and put on the right example

060every day, I think we continue u to hold the same values and traditions that we've had here. >> Thank you, Mr. P. I want to ask one one well maybe two questions. Finish this up. You have any children? >> I do. I have one. One daughter. >> She publicly educated, private school educated or homeschooled? >> She attends a public school. Uh she is a senior in high school. Uh will be graduating in May. Uh from Kraville County High School, she's attended there. Uh the entire since she started kindergarten, when she started in kindergarten, uh my wife was a teacher uh at Kra County High School, so she rode school her every day. She dropped her off. Uh my wife is a registered nurse and uh she taught in the CTE department down there. Actually taught

061for uh TCAT Hartsville, but she actually worked in the high school down there. Uh done that for a few years and then got back into um practice in healthcare. She worked in nursing down there several years. Now she works at hospital here in Carthage. Uh but after my daughter had been in school there for four or five years and had her friends and relationships there uh she didn't want to to change school. Yeah, she's been a she's a product of public education as so am I. >> All right, Mr. Times, thank you for your time. Appreciate you. And uh we'll let you know something on the 16 uh the 9th. >> The nth. No, no, tonight. Yes, it will. >> Well, I just want to tell you all I really appreciate the opportunity to be

062here tonight. I just know how much the story's last. >> You did a good job. You done a good job. Public education is shining through. That's right. I know you're intelligent, but I sound like Now she's passed about her. Yeah, I told >> Are going. >> Yes. You talking about the graves? >> Yeah. >> How are y'all? It's the hot seat, I guess. Right. >> Better. Or you can use the podium, too. >> Okay. I think better standing up. >> Yeah, I do too. And I Your voice uh is a little louder if you're standing. >> Yes. Perfect. This is for this room. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> There we go. >> I do have it right there. There we go. That'll make me stand still. We have some questions. Let me get you a

063fresh water. I like that switch. So, did you live in >> I did not. We lived in I said and then I know exactly your number. >> Yes. >> Oh gosh. It really it doesn't even look nothing. because it used to be that there was nothing. >> Yes, it was. on the Atlanta Highway and now >> really important stuff. >> All right, we're ready. >> Okay, >> start. And uh we we've appointed Mr. Hess. He done an excellent job with these questions. So you can understand it pretty good. So we'll start him. We have 10 questions to ask you and then we're going to come back around with one question for six times. >> Okay. And uh did I tell you um make sure I I don't know. Uh we're not going to interview on

064the the night. >> Okay. On the 9th, we are still going to meet and pick the three. >> The 16th, Monday afternoon on the 16th about 5 o'lock one, we'll get in touch with you. That'll be the last round of interviews and then we're going to pick the director of school on the 17th. >> All right, perfect. >> Okay, >> that's perfect. Thank you. >> Okay. All right. On behalf of the board, we want to welcome you and thank you for coming. Uh the first question that we have is tell us a little about yourself and why you want to be our next director of school. >> Absolutely. >> Well, thank you and it's an honor to be here. Um I am a 38-year veteran educator. I started my career in North Carolina and we

065moved to Georgia. I worked in a rural school system there for seven years and then we moved to a little more suburban area, Conjurs, Georgia, where I spent another seven years um teaching and became an assistant principal at a high school. Um I went from being a second grade teacher to a high school assistant principal in about 24 hours. So there was a little bit of a shock there the first time the bell rang and all the children walked around and they weren't in line. That was a little bit of a shock. And um we then moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Um I was an assistant principal at a high school there. Then became an elementary school principal and worked in three different schools in Knox County schools. And um then moved into central office where

066I supervise our preschool programming. So I get to spend my days with 100 preschool teachers and about 2,000 preschool children. So that's that's the highlight of of my day. Um, personally, I am a proud mom. Got three Tennessee Tech grads and very proud of the my children. And, um, in terms of why I'd like to come to Smith County, it we've been coming to Smith County for the last 10 years. Uh, we've been to football games. We we've been to band competitions, color guard competitions, and I love the feel of Smith County. It reminds me of the place I grew up in. It it reminds me of one of the first school districts that I taught in in in Georgia, just a small rural community that values its people and values its history. And that's

067what attracts me to this area. Um, the other part of that is you have a wonderful little school system. It is a small, vibrant school system that's making great gains. You're doing great things for kids and I would love to be a part of making even greater games happen for those kids. >> Uh question two is what is your leadership style and what strengths do you bring to this position to lead Smith County Schools successful? I am a very supportive and collaborative leader. It's something that um that early on in my principal ships I realized that teachers and families need to be heard and they need to be valued and they need to know that there's someone there to advocate for them. And that is what I have always done as a teacher, as a

068principal, and as a school district leader. is just to make sure that people are heard and that we make decisions that are best for children and families while also supporting those teachers. Uh the one one thing I used to tell my teachers when I was a principal is I'm going to let you do your job. I'm going to get out of your way, but I'm going to support you and I'm going to hold you accountable. And I feel like in that style, it allowed teachers to grow. It allowed my schools to grow. It built that sense of autonomy with teachers, but it they also knew that at the end of the day, I was there to support them and I would hold them accountable, but I would also help them if if they needed it.

069I think I can I can bring that easily to Smith County. The other part of my district job has been to support principles. So I work directly with coaching principles and looking at school data and helping them make datainformed decisions to meet the need needs of children. And that has been I think um the most important job that I've had in my career is to help those principles make those great decisions, but to be there and coach them, to be a problem solver alongside them and say, "Here's what we've seen. We we've done visits to classrooms. Here's what we've heard. Now, let's talk about what do we need to do next to meet those needs? >> U what would be your three-year strategic vision for Smith County Schools and what measurable indicator would you use

070to evaluate progress? >> Just gonna write that. I'm gonna write that down. >> Say that at the beginning. Anything I would So I think in three years, one of the things that we would want to make sure that we have really spent some dedicated time on is increasing those ACT scores and those measurable parts along there are looking at what's happening in our elementary school math programming. Then looking at our middle school programming. Are we using our curriculum appropriately? Are we assessing? Are we filling in gaps? How are we using our responses to intervention to help those children pass that algebra one assessment? Because that's that's the gateway to upper level math. And then working with the high school, high school math teachers to say, "Okay, these kids are ready. We've worked really hard in

071middle school. we've got these strong math scores and let's look at then how do we continue to grow that that accessibility to upper level math courses and um I say that because we've spent a lot of time in our district looking at those algebra one scores and the impact that has on the ACT level. So I think that would be the first thing that we would really need to work on is deciding what we can do to to support that. I think the other part of that um three-year strategic plan is increasing the opportunities for career and technical um aspects of students co um high school careers along with getting them college ready because we know our students are going to go one of two ways, right? They're going to go to college, they're going

072to go straight in a career. So, our job is to make sure that they are prepared for whatever it is they choose to do. So looking at our career technical fields and making sure we've got options that are meeting the needs of industry, but then also making sure that every child that wants to go to college can go to college, they are highly prepared and ready to be successful because ultimately we want them to come back to Smith County, right? We want them to come and work here. And I think that would be a big piece of the three-year strategic plan. I think the additional piece of that is looking at how are we strengthening our foundational skills in terms of math and literacy, looking at um third grade TECAP scores and looking to increase

073those proficiency rates. Your proficiency rates are pretty good actually. They're they're they're higher than the state, but they can always be higher. and thinking about those pieces of the curriculum in our pre-K through third grade classrooms and are they preparing kids foundationally for what we need them to do once they hit upper elementary, middle, and high. I think that's a big piece of it. Um I think the other part of it that would be very important three years in is to make sure that we are holding on to our staff. Um element schools are hard to staff. there aren't the candidates out there. We used to get 300 applications. Now we're lucky if we get 50 or 12. And so looking at what we need to do to hold on to our staff. I think

074that's very important. And that comes along with high quality professional development um salaries that are competitive and also that the teachers and our administrators have the support that they need so that they come to Smith County and they want to spend their whole career here. And I think that's very important because it is hard to find great candidates and we need to hold on to the ones that we have. >> So how should a district balance preparation for postsecary education, workforce readiness, and career technical pathways? >> Can you repeat that one more time? >> Yes, ma'am. How should a district balance preparation for postsecary education, workforce readiness, and career technical pathways? So that preparation for postsecary career and technical or workforce readiness starts the minute a kid hits the door. It starts when they walk

075into preschool and kindergarten. It doesn't start when they're in the ninth grade. If we wait until then, we've waited too late. So, I think we go back to are we preparing kids in the preschool through fifth grade um arena with high quality math instruction, high quality literacy? Are we making sure that our children have the skills that they need so that they can participate in upper level mathematics that they can take advanced placement courses? And to that end, I think we look in terms of middle school at those really strong preps for algebra um and those really strong science preps so that once again they get to high school and they can choose I'm going to take an advanced placement class. I'm going to invol be involved in dual enrollment or I really want to

076go into the career technical field. I'd love to be an electrician. I'd love to be a plumber. What do I need for that? And once again, making sure that we have created a a preparation from pre-K through 8th grade. So when they hit nth grade, they can go where they want to go. They can make that choice, but they've been well prepared. The other part of that are those partnerships. So partnerships with community colleges so that we can offer dual enrollment courses. Uh it would be great if our high school seniors could go into college with at least part of that freshman year taken care of. It certainly would save their parents some money and it would make that that transition easier because they've had some college courses. Looking at our AP course levels in

077terms of are we offering an AP English and AP history? Do we have some AP sciences and math? And that's really important for students who want to go into medical fields or engineering to have those high quality AP math and science courses. The other part of that career technical piece is looking at industry certifications and where we can support students to get those industry certifications so that they can walk out of high school ready for apprenticeships. One of the things we've been exploring um in my district is an a path to get students their CDA, which is their um equivalent of a child development associate credential so that they can walk into our elementary schools as teachers assistants and they've been highly trained. And we know that that CDA credential is something they can get

078in in high school. And then that also helps that EPSO number because we've got more industry certifications. But I think looking at those opportunities where we can partner with industry, partner with our local businesses to get students involved early and then turn around and work with them to get those industry credentials before they ever graduate. That would be so powerful for a student to graduate from high school and they have a high school diploma and they've got an industry credential and they graduate on May 30th and on June the 1st they're an apprentice somewhere. Uh, question five, how would you improve student performance on state assessments such as Tennessee Ready while maintaining a well-rounded educational experience? So, balance is very important and access to arts and music and extracurricular activities are so important to help

079the child be well-rounded. They also support a child's engagement and involvement in school. And we've seen that over time where a lot of kids I work with high schoolers. We had a lot of kids who came to high school because they love their art class. You know, they love their they love their PE teacher. Their band director was the best. And that makes a huge difference in the motivation and engagement for students. And it's important that they have access to that. But the other part of that is we have to make sure that we are implementing our curriculum with fidelity and integrity. Are we following our state standards? Are we implementing the curriculum that we have? And then are we nimble enough to meet the needs of children when they struggle? So thinking about what

080do our interventions look like for kids that are having a hard time and have we started those interventions early enough? they waited too late. We know when kids enter school in kindergarten, the gap between being ready and not ready is about right here, right? In eighth grade, it's about right there. So, thinking about how do we close those gaps that children may have very quickly in kindergarten and first and second grade. If we want to strengthen those TEAP scores, if we want kids to be proficient or above, it starts not in third grade, but once again, when they walk in in prek and kindergarten, and are we making sure that our kids are ready? Are they on grade level? And that requires all of us to be very engaged in the instruction that's happening at

081every grade level. And one of the one of the things that we use, we use this instructional practice guide where we go in and look at instructional practices in classrooms and we take lots of people with us, which is sometimes a little intimidating when six people walk in a teacher's classroom. But it's been a great way for us to take a temperature of where we are instructionally and then think about what we need to tweak or what kind of professional development we need. And I think those kinds of practices help us balance that instructional expectation with where our kids are, but also helps us plan appropriately. And then we're not taking kids out of their art class in the sixth grade. We're not pulling them out of their PE class in the seventh grade for

082intervention because we've got them where they needed to be before they got to middle schools. Question six is how visible should a superintendent be within the schools and how would you structure ongoing engagement with students and staff? >> So I'm going to say very invis very very visible. You should be in those buildings every day if you can. And I know there's a lot of desk work that happens. That that was my realization when I moved into central office that there's a lot of desk work and a lot of phone calls. But it's very important to be there. It is important to be there to open doors in the morning and to help with bus duty. It is very important to be in classrooms. I would want to be in a classroom every day if

083I could. It's important to have sitdown time, one-on- ons with principles. That's something that um that I do in my district is at least twice a month I have one-on-one sitdown coaching opportunities with principles. I think that's incredibly important because that helps us know what direction we need to turn if we need to make a course correction somewhere. It also helps us identify what are the bright spots, where do we need to send somebody to see something awesome that's happening. And it's it's just it's very important to be in those buildings and also accessible to community and families um so that the community gets to know gets to know me and that families know me. It's important to be at sporting events and band competitions and um you know plays that a school is doing

084a chorus concert. I think all of those things help people respect the role and respect the person because they see them as accessible. You know, it always surprises me when I go to a parent night at one of the schools that I supervise and they go, "Gosh, you're here. Why are you here? Why would I not be here? You're doing an awesome thing." So it it's very important I think to be daily visible >> says how are public schools funded in Tennessee and do you believe the community should better understand school finance? Why or why not? >> Well absolutely the community should understand. I I don't think most people understand how we are funded. I think they would be very very surprised if they saw the TISA rate per student because I think people many

085outside people who don't daily engage think that school just happens and they don't understand the funding or the lack thereof of funding. And it's very important that we advocate for better funding, fully funded schools and programming. And the way that we do that is we help our community to understand because they're our best advocates when it comes to that. Yes, we can we can ask, we can beg, we can but to get our community involved because I think if they understand where the funding comes from and then how the funding is distributed, then they're going to support us when we make decisions. but they're also going to help us if we need to advocate. And and I say that being that I oversee a program that is completely funded through grants. Preschool programming is completely

086funded through grants. And if that funding went away tomorrow, a very viable and important piece of a child's instruction goes away. And when I tell someone, well, you know, our program is grantf funded. They go, what? What you mean? Said, yes, if if that grant goes away, we don't have preschool for 1,800 children. So, I think it's very important that they understand this is grant funded money. This is federal money. This is how this federal money works because we know that can be a scary point sometimes with how that funding is and when it comes in and how much it's going to be. So I think it's it's incredibly important that the community understand that. It's also important that our schools understand that there it surprises me that sometimes our teachers and our principles and

087our staff may not understand that funding. And so sometimes you have to make hard decisions. But if you've not been transparent with the funding, then people they take it very personally. They get angry and and then you realize, well, maybe we should have been a little more transparent with that. Especially looking at the personnel that we fund with grant money because we know that's soft money, right? It's not we can't guarantee it. What are the first three areas that you would review when accessing assessing a school district's financial health? So, I'd look first at grant funding once again and how we're spending that grant funding. Um, are we spending it in a way that directly supports students? I think another area is looking at how are we spending this money in the daily management of

088the schools. So a lot of that is about the condition of the schools, the condition of the you know all of the needs in terms of maintenance of schools. I think we need to look at that. The other part of that is we need to look at um personnel in terms of how are we funding are we funding people who are doing the same job when one person could do that job or are we over have we overextended someone and then the job's not getting done. So I think it would be very important to look at the grants, the needs of the schools in terms of maintenance and daily support. And then once again looking you know at that that individual funding and the looking closely at the budget in terms of have we invested

089it in the right things because in my mind every dollar that we spend should be directly accountable to what happens with children. And if it's not, then we need to look at that. >> In the event of a budget shortfall, would you be willing to make staffing cuts if necessary to meet financial obligations or would you try to find new revenue streams to address the gap? >> I think sometimes you have to do both and and I will say I'm living that now. I'm living that now. I think um you pursue those additional revenue streams, especially to support programming that makes a difference for children. But at the end of the day, if cuts have to be made, you have to do it. Um I've had to do that. I was the principal of a

090title one school that had a tremendous budget and of title one that came to our title um funding streams come directly to our schools and uh there was a redo of the way the funding was assessed several years ago looking at that free and reduced lunch and my school lost about $150,000 in funding. That's a lot of money. And because we had hired people with those dollars, I had to let those I had to let three people go. Those are the hardest conversations I've ever had. And but we had to do it. The money wasn't there. The district didn't have the money. And so, unfortunately, sometimes we have to make really hard decisions based on that money. And realize that it is not personal. That is it is unfortunately the nature of public schooling because

091we we don't create money. We you know we create great kids but we don't create our own money and we so it's you're held you're held by the purse strings and I think it's just something that when that happens you have to make those hard decisions but you look at impact and try to make the least impact on what happens in a school. >> Question 10. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for improvement in our school district? >> So, first of all, congratulations on being an advancing district. That's pretty awesome. Um, I've looked at your your test scores and um your test scores look pretty strong. Your graduation rate is fabulous. 96% is wonderful. Um, I'd like for us to improve that ready grad rate a little bit. um that's around an 80 78%

092so it would be great to improve that ready grad rate which is also looking at some of those those industry certifications participation in CTE are we making sure those kids have that opportunity for dual enrollment I think that right that's a huge piece that one we make sure our kids are prepared but two it also makes our the school system look stronger and once again strong school system strong industries families amilies want to move here and you create this great cycle that then is bringing more money into the county ultimately. Um I think another part place that we can look is around um the literacy and numeracy specifically um the growth scores in some of our schools aren't quite as high. Uh part of that is that they've got really high achievement. So you've got

093to keep pushing kids to to do a little better. But I think definitely looking at that literacy and math instruction specifically in our our lower grades and once again those algebra scores. Um I think digging into that middle school math prep for algebra is going to be key. >> All right. Thank you. Now we're going to do a kind of round table. Everybody's going to ask you a question. And uh I'm going to start with Mr. Willis. He's behind you. He has >> Hey, Mr. Lewis. >> Mr. Lewis, you can start and ask your question. >> Okay. Thank you, sir. And ma'am, thank you for being with us today. I've really enjoyed listening to you. Um, I want to ask you and and I come from a family that has uh cumulatively about 130 years

094service in our school system. So, it's it is I I love your openness and that you find importance in being visible in the schools and things like that, but beyond that, as you know, what I'm probably headed to, um, we do have to interact with county government and things like that as well. So, what what importance would you place on like being visible with county commission meetings and things like that? because we we've got to have that relationship with them obviously. So, could you expand on your feelings on things like that? >> Absolutely. And yes, we do because they fund us. So, we definitely need to interact well with the county commission. I think it's very important to know your county government officials. I work very closely in our district with a couple of our

095county commissioners and also um with the folks that oversee some of our business business and industry in terms of sharing with them the bright spots in our schools, sharing with them the needs. And so I think it's very important to interact with those people. I mean my thought is the first week I would be on the job I would make sure that I've met every one of those people. and um that we have created a partnership and a partnership is incredibly important with your city government because these people fund us. So, we need to have a great working relationship, which I think requires transparency, but I think it also requires an openness to hear what they have to say because they're the people that are on the front line of attracting industry and looking at

096community growth and we need to make sure that we understand each other's goals so that we're working for the same thing. >> Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. M as director, would you allow each school's principal to hire their own staff with a lot without a lot of oversight from you or would you be more involved in the hiring process? I think the most important thing to do is to empower and train our administrators so that they can make those decisions. I think that's incredibly important because they know they intimately know the needs of their schools. But the other part of that is have we worked with our principles in terms of great hiring practices? Do we have a set of expectations, questions, rubrics for scoring future employees so that we're making decisions based

097on the needs of the school, but also the needs of the district. So, I would I would want principles to make those decisions. Now, if they had a tough position they were hiring for and they wanted me to sit in on an interview, absolutely. I do think that the the superintendent should be highly involved in the hiring of principles, but I I would trust them to make those decisions because we've entrusted them in that position. >> You're welcome. >> That was sort of the question that I was going to ask, but um as the school superintendent director goes the opportunities I've seen I feel like I know that we lean toward the um postgraduates going to the college and that's very important we need engineers doctors those people that the bluecollar aspect of this is

098how do you feel that your role as a would um help kids that are following that career path how would you implement some anything different that that you could see that would maybe help our school system in that I know we have a CT program. >> Yes. Yes. Um I will say when I was an assistant principal at the high school level it was very eyeopening for me that we were preparing part of our children some of our children for the world they were going into. There was a number of children we were not adequately preparing and that's sad. you're graduating from high school, you've got a lovely diploma, and it really won't help you a whole lot. And we need to make sure that kids that aren't interested in college, not considering college, are

099wellprepared. And that's one of the things that that I've seen um very strongly support CTE in the district that I work in. We have actually partnered with our business owners and we're calling them our industry champions. And I love this idea of partnering with the folks that are doing the work, the water and sewer company, the manager of the Walmart, any the large industry, the the zinc mine, you know, all of those things that we have partnered with those folks so that we know what they expect in a graduate. And that's incredibly important because we can teach them to read. We can help them do their math, but we need to know what is it that you are looking for. And is it that we need to make sure that they've had a strong math

100background, that they've had a strong reading background. I had an aha moment years ago. I was working with ninth grade and we had given a reading assessment to our ninth grade and most of the students in nth grade didn't read on grade level. So, we were working on that and they said, "Well, let's let's filter these kids toward career tech. They're not going to go to college." So, not a problem. So, my boys are car nuts. They love cars. I went home and grabbed a Chilton's auto manual. Ran it through our database. The readability level of a Chilton's manual is a 1400. The readability of an AP AP English class is about 1,200. So we were expecting students to go into highly technical fields, but we were underpreparing them in terms of what they needed

101for literacy and math. And I think it's really important that we focus on making sure that our kids are ready. And that's one of the things that we can do. The other part is partnering with those industries and looking at those industry certifications. I think that to me is one of the most important pieces in that CTE world is looking at okay you are going into automotive and light engine repair. What's the CTE certification that you need? Do you need that auto is there an there's an automotive certification that we can get you. and how have we prepared you and how have we supported you? Did we partner with someone to give you some co-op experience? I think that's very important, those early experiences as eth and ninth graders to see what's out there because

102they don't know. And then helping those students as they go forward um looking at is there's an eighth grade interest inventory that we give to students to help them think about what careers they might be interested in. and then school counselors who are the key to this. School counselors are the key and helping students decide which path they want to go and then making sure that we've got all the pieces in place that make it easy. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> So, I'm just going to stay with the same question that I have. It's not really a followup, but we adopted the 81 act. And I just want to know how do you build a working relationship with the mayor and county commissions that cooperate but preserves the school systems independence and >>

103so once again that's transparency. I think it is that there's an open line of communication in terms of um spending time together to understand each other's expectations. At the end of the day we are the decision makers for the school system. And that's important for the mayor to understand, county commission to understand. But the other part of that is we also need to show them the fruits of their labor. Once again, okay, you give us this amount of money. This is how we're spending it and we're spending it wisely and we have these results. And I think when you've started that relationship that then helps them because then if you have to go we really need a little more money then we can say but look what we've done with what you've given us and

104this is how we can continue because we have these results. Um but the the very important piece is to have that good working relationship. Um I in in my role actually work very closely with um the mayor's office. There's a couple of folks that work we work very closely to um look at child care initiatives in our district and so I've worked very closely with them and I think it's that they see me as a working partner and then in the end we have the same goal which is we want a better community for our children and our families. I mean that's the ultimate goal. And so I just think it's it's very important to be transparent, but also to be willing to listen to one another. Um I've seen what happens when there's an

105adversarial relationship with a mayor and a school superintendent and it doesn't work and at the end it's the detriment of the school system. So I think it's just very important to be open and willing to listen, but at the end of the day, you're the fierce protector of the school system. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Mr. For many years, the National Education Association and many institutions of higher learning have promoted an agenda that undercuts our nation's traditional American values, such as patriotism and others. What actions will you take to protect the traditional conservative values that are held by our community and its families? It's very important to listen to families. It's very important to make sure that we are following the curriculum. We see problems when people delve away from expectations in the

106curriculum and in our standards. Um but at the end of the day, we're responsible for what our children learn, not an outside organization. They don't dictate to us what to do. We need to do the best for our children and families. And in that, right, I'm not afraid to stand up if I need to and say, "We're not going to do that." Um, and I've had to do that. We're going to follow the Tennessee code annotated. That's the law. It tells us what to do. And that's our governing body, and that's our support in those situations when things have gone gone a little arai. And um it's very important that we consider the needs of our community because we know what our families expect and we know what our families need. And um in the

107end, like I said, we follow the law and um we're not afraid to say we're not going to do that here. >> You're welcome. >> I'm actually going to have two questions. Okay. I was Uh my question is uh you said you had three children take practice. >> Yes sir. >> Home school, private school, public school educated. >> All public school educated. >> Now question and I promise Mr. Joe t I told y'all the reason he weren't here. He had this specific question for you and he asked me to ask it. So I'm going to ask you and don't don't be real long winding it but >> I don't know where this is fixing to lead but I'm going to ask. Okay, I'm bring it on. I'm ready. >> He must know something. I don't

108know. You have a doctor. >> Yeah. >> What' you write about and why? >> So, I looked at um and yes, I will not read the whole dissertation to you. Um I looked at principal behaviors in rural schools and how teachers view their principal in terms of the impact on school culture. And it was very interesting because I did the work in rural schools um in East Tennessee and I surveyed about 150 teachers and 145 of them identified their principal as supportive. And that says something right there. They were also schools with long ter low turnovers, long-term principles in very small rural East Tennessee communities. And um that spoke to me about the beauty of a rural school system in that we you have something here that not a lot of places have. You know,

109you've got people who are dedicated. You've got families who have been in education for years and their grandmothers and their grandfathers and their great-grandmothers. And so it's just um it spoke to me about the importance of what happens in a rural school rural school system and the importance of preserving that culture and that climate of those schools. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> I guess we're done and thank you and >> Oh, I did tell you. >> Yeah, I did. The next meeting will be if you've chosen March 16th. >> Wonderful. Well, it was an honor to speak to you and to meet all of you and thank you so much. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> And you're free to leave. >> Okay. >> Yes. Okay. There you go. Thank

110you so much. It was great to meet you. Thank you. You're welcome to stay too. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you so much. It was great to meet you. We ready for the next one or >> not? I'm sorry. Mr. >> Oh, yeah. Thank you. >> Oh, good job. Y'all want some water or snack here or something? Banana or something? Sorry. We'll be holding do This is less for this room. Are you sure? I told the I think they are Anybody else? We got We got plenty. You're home. All right, we're going to go ahead speed up time. So far, we legally hadn't got in trouble. So, it's no longer I think I already told you, Mr. Ash, the board's decided that we would we would have our meeting on March

111the 9th, Monday night, choose three candidates. We're going to do the uh interviewing process on Monday, March the 16th, like five o'clock for our final three. And then on March the 17th, we're going to hire a director retreat the next day. So that that keeps us all in line, kind of shifts y'all just a little bit, keeps us in line where we want to be dire. And uh we've had Mr. H. He's done an excellent job reading our 10 questions and we're going to stay with him and he'll go through the questions and we'll get done at the end. We're going to round to six and we'll have follow. Okay. >> All right. On behalf of the board, we would like to welcome you and thank you for coming. If you need me to repeat

112anything, I didn't have to say this at the beginning, but you need to repeat anything, I will. >> Question one is, tell us a little about yourself and why you want to be our next director of school. Well, uh, I grew up here. I graduated from Smith High School and, uh, I've had a long, long educational career. I have been successful everywhere I've been. I opened I've opened two schools, a middle a rural middle school and a academic magnet school, and both schools were very successful. But Smith County was very special to me growing up. It has uh given me a great foundation for my life and now I'm toward the end of my career and I'd like to give back. I feel like I have a lot to offer the students of Smith County.

113I still have numerous great nieces and great nephews that go to school here along with people uh that I graduated with and went to school with. Their children are here. I have uh ties to every school in the county in some form or fashion. I attended Pleasant Shade, which is of course no longer here, but uh in Forks River and then I went to Smith County. My father graduated High School. I was principal at several schools in Smith County. Uh so I feel like I have a lot to offer and I want to give back to the people. We are moving here. Uh they are digging my footers next week for my house. So once again, no matter what happens with this job, I will be your neighbor in the near future. Uh so you

114I do want to help the kids of Smith County be better. >> Question two, what is your leadership style and what strengths do you bring to this position to lead Smith County Schools successfully? >> I do think uh my varied background is my greatest strength. Uh I have uh taught at I taught McCain one year but uh Brentwood and Lever which are polar opposites of schools. I have been an administrator at Leverne High School. I opened Christian Middle which at that time was a rural scope. There's not much rural left in Virginia but at that time it was uh and now I've been at Central. So I think my diverse background gives me a lot. I've taught AP classes as well as standard classes. I coached I coached football, basketball, baseball, and track at different

115times uh in my career. So, I have a great understanding of um every aspect of education. I've served on numerous committees. I've lobbied in Washington. I have lobbied in Nashville. I have uh helped spend millions of dollars on uh school management systems and technology in Rutherford County. Uh so you know I do have a very diverse background which is one of my greatest strengths is I have done everything and seen everything. Uh and uh what was the first part of the question? >> What is your leadership style and what strengths do you bring to that position? Uh I'm I'm a big believer in situational leadership. My style changes as the need arises. Uh sometimes decisions have to be made instantly. Uh safety and things like that and I have no problem making those decisions. At

116other times uh you can have time to get input from all stakeholders and that's a better way to do things. At times it's impossible but um I do like to have as much input as possible. You know, most decisions in schools affect numerous people and you should have their input from the people affected. So, uh I do believe in getting as much input as possible, but at different times I'm willing to make whatever decision is necessary. Question three is, what would be your three-year strategic vision for Smith County Schools and what measurable indicators would you use to evaluate progress? >> Well, um, you know, the first thing you would want to do is evaluate everything. Uh, you know, I have not been here before obviously. So, you know, I would want to evaluate each department,

117each area, the central office personnel. I do a deep dive into the school system as far as staffing at schools, what's appropriate. Um, but I would think in three years you would want to develop programs to improve uh offerings for uh your high achieving kids as well as your other students. Uh look at your ACT plan. Try to improve the ACT as much as possible. Uh it opens doors for students >> and um you know I do think Smith Countyy's can grow quite a bit but um you seem to be in good shape as far as uh buildings. Your buildings are actually very nice considering I went to school in most of them. Uh they've been really well maintained over the years and uh expanded. But um it uh it is surprising sometimes that you

118know Port River, Union Heights, all those are from the late 50s. But um you I do think you should look there should be you know should be plans for the spending the money making sure it's as efficiently spent as possible. You know money is not the answer to everything but it is the answer to some things. So, uh I do think you need to evaluate that and see where we can save. You know, we're uh if we are getting our bang for our buck, it's very important. It's not our money. It's not the commission's money. It's the people's money, and we need to make sure that we're getting every dime out of it we possibly can. But um yeah and a three-year plan that is something that should be developed with of course the board

119uh the principles the teachers and the parents and we need to develop that. I don't have detailed plan at this moment because uh I don't have the input. That's one of those decisions that does require quite a bit of input. How should a district balance preparation for postsecary education, workforce readiness, and career technical pathways? >> I think the secret to education is easy. It's focusing on each child. It doesn't matter whether you have 3,000 children or 52,000 children. Uh you've got to do what's best for each child. Each child needs to be pushed. You need to get the most out of every child. That's one of the things we do at my school. Uh, you know, we work very hard in everything we do to get the most out of a child. Uh, you need

120to make sure your CTE offerings are updated in what's needed. I see sometimes CTE offerings aren't what the community needs. uh you need to work closely with the business leaders in town to make sure that uh the workforce that they are our kids are workforce ready that they have the skills that are needed and a lot of skills are transferable whether you're going to college or whether you're going to work uh you know punctuality being on time work ethic uh being thorough being organized uh schools can help with all the they call them soft skills but I don't really like that term because I think they're important for that. Uh whatever you plan to do after high school, those skills, we should work on those skills. Uh and there's many ways to accomplish that. But

121um you know, I do think your postsecary postsecary program uh you make sure there are course offerings for the kids. Uh you do need to improve your ACT. Uh it opens scholarships and also opportunities But it's not mutually exclusive. When you improve the preparation for the ACT, it also improves the kids reading skills. It improves the child going to work in a factory. Uh they're going to be able to get promoted a lot easier because they do have those skills. They're going to be better workers. You know, part of the people paying taxes in this county are people that own the companies and things like that. And we want to make sure we're giving them the best worker they possibly can. Or that child that wants to be a doctor or a dentist, we want

122to make sure they have the skills they need to go to UT or Tennessee Tech or Harvard for that matter and um be successful wherever they go. Question five, how would you improve student performance on state assessments such as Tennessee rating while maintaining a well-rounded educational experience? >> Well, I do think sometimes in Tennessee, we get so focused on the test that we forget other things, but it's really important. Of course, we both schools where I have been principal, uh, we've done excellent. It should be expected at my current scope, but at Christian, we were in the top 10 in the state most years in every area given on TAP. Uh we focus on the standards. We focus on what is not teaching to the test, but if what's on the test is what an

123average third grader should know, then there's nothing wrong with teaching that material. uh when you do benchmark testing along the way, you measure the progress during the year and you make adjustments as needed. You give the teachers the training that they need to be successful on these tests. Um it's very important, you know, that you respect the job your teachers do. Um every everything in a school goes back to the teacher. If a school system's successful, it's the teacher. If they're not, it's the teacher. And uh sometimes I think we forget just how important they are. Uh but giving them the skills they need to teach for for the TCAP for the test um is extremely important and you know I do think once again paying attention to it what you pay attention to is

124what's important and so I do think benchmark testing would help a great deal. Uh, I think doing some, uh, PLC's, professional learning communities. A lot of the schools in Smith County are have what's called singletons. They'll be in Port River, I think, has one third grade teacher, one fourth grade teacher, that sort of thing. And they with the through the use of technology, they can work with other teachers on their, you know, and have some support from within. Uh, you, you know, you don't have to spend a lot of money. You don't have to bring people in. Uh there's some great teachers in this county and we should uh capitalize on their skills, but uh without you without spending an extra penny, you can have a teacher in defeated meeting with the teacher in for

125at River to discuss curriculum. There's a lot of things you can do with what's already in place here and it is capitalizing on the teachers that are already here. So, how visible should a superintendent be within the school? And how would you structure ongoing engagement with students and staff? >> Well, one of the things I think could help first of all, I think a superintendent has got to be a part of the community, not just visible in schools, but I think a superintendent should be at the T-ball games. Uh, you know, there's obvious things here. you would I would expect your superintendent at every Carthage and wonderful game in history. U there are certain things that are obvious but uh I also think the music night at Union Heights, you know, the superintendent should attend

126uh things like that. Uh I follow several of the schools on Facebook and you know when they when the kids win awards, it should be a superintendent standing there handing them the awards. Um, I think a super there's no limit to the visibility a superintendent can do. I spend a lot of time at school. We attend, you know, band, choir, strings, basketball, baseball, uh, drama. Uh, I'm at school all the time and I enjoy it. I'm lucky enough to be married someone that thinks date night involves going to school, but uh, I don't see that changing. I I really do think you can't be visible enough in the schools and you know I think that superintendent gives her confidence. I can remember as a child sitting at Fort River and the superintendent eating lunch with

127us. Uh it was a big deal. I also think that's helps build community support. When that child, when that kindergarten child goes home and tells mama that our superintendent was at school today, that builds the support when they see you at basketball. You know, if I'm watching a basketball game, honestly, I'd rather not discuss the problems of the world. I'd rather watch a basketball game, but I'm available to discuss them or set up a time to do it. Um, there's also some other things of a teacher advisory committee. You pick a teacher at every school. You meet with them once a month, once every six weeks, and you get input from them in a it's a formal setting, but it's a comfortable setting where they feel comfortable asking questions, getting, you know, you getting information,

128they get information. Uh the worst thing in the world is for a teacher to be sitting there with a question and not being able to get an answer to it. You know, I in the philosophy if you email me and I don't email you back, I die. So, you know, I do get back to people and usually instantly as quickly as possible. I don't do it driving on the road, but uh as quick as I can, I get back to teach people when they get when they contact me. Um uh but I certainly get back to teachers as soon as possible. But the more I'm around the teachers, the more they feel comfortable asking me those questions. You know, I want to feel like I'm part I've um always felt like people work with me,

129not for me. You know, I have 12 people at Central that I guess I'm their direct boss, but we work together. We're part of a family. And you know, I'm in charge. That's never a question. But I don't have to make them feel that way. I, you know, we work together for the kids. Seven says, "How are public schools funded in Tennessee? And do you believe the community should better understand school finance? Why or why not?" >> Well, I I think everyone should spend a lot of time uh learning on finance. Again, as I said earlier, um it's not our money. It's not the commission's money. It's the people's money. And they should understand, they should also understand, you know, by credit cards and loans, too. But, uh hopefully we'll do a better job teaching

130that. But we are funded through property tax and sales tax for the most part. There's also some federal dollars that come in principally school trainings, title two, uh, title one schools when you have a high poverty rate, uh, special ed, a lot of money is funneled through for special education and the Perkins Act gives money to CTE, um, or additional funds to CTE. But um I think the more information the public has on how we spend their money, the more comfortable they are with how we spend their money. I think transparency is extremely important. Uh the commission has a very tough job. We get to spend money, they get to ask for it. So, you know, that's a difficult job. It's easier to sell, you know, put a product out there than it is just

131ask to give us money. uh we have to remember that you know there are political constraints in that as well. We have to respect the fact that there's a tax increase they got to run on it. Uh they've got to you know they are responsible for that. So we do need to uh spend the money and explain it better. Sometimes we spend so much time ask asking for things and uh talking about the why. We don't talk about the why. uh we are the experts on education. Other people don't have the background. We need to take the time to explain why we want to do things a certain way, how we came to that decision. Um and I think that helps the comfort level of people and the commission. Um as I said earlier, money

132is not always the first answer to everything. Sometimes it is the final answer. But if we're creative and we try everything we possibly can uh and they and we develop that relationship where they trust us. Trust is not given, it's earned. Uh and with any relationship, openness and uh honesty is the way you develop that trust. But um I do think we have to educate the public, the commission, uh everyone involved in the school finance in why we want to do things. You know, we can ask for any amount of money, but we got to explain why and uh how we came to that conclusion. You know that I think when you explain that, you know, there were four solutions to this problem. We looked at all of them. this is the one that works

133best and this is why it's easier to get people support on that thing. I mean you have to have people support schools. No, the people are vital. I've been lucky to be in two schools where we had great parental involvement. Uh we cannot be a successful school system without parental involvement. And you can't just say that. I was on the sachs committee one time evaluating school Nashville and every meeting I had their answer was if we had more parental involvement we'd be better well fine what do you want them to do you know you've got to welcome the parents into the school you've got to want their involvement you can't look at it as oh it's a problem they're here again uh they know what's best for their child and we can cut down some

134work for us by listening to them and knowing what's best for their child up front. Uh but you know, I think there's ways to make it a lot more open than we have it at the moment. Uh once again, use of technology. If you look at my school's website, you will actually see vital information on their web pages. You can see what they did in class today. You can see what their homework is. You can see links to support for them. Um every child in this county can use a computer. Every child in America can use a computer. Poor, rich, it doesn't matter. It's it's it's here. Uh we've got to take advantage of those resources and it's not extra work on people. It's not more money. It's not anything. It's using the resources we

135have at the moment to do that. And that's one of the best ways to educate these parents and to show them uh why we're doing the things we're doing. But yes, I do think it's vital to educate everyone involved, uh, commission, school, uh, parents, everyone. >> What are the first three areas you would review when assessing a school district's financial health? >> Uh, well, I mean, you would first I first look at staffing. Uh the greatest expense in any school district is people. In any anywhere, private, public, it doesn't matter. People are your largest line item. Uh and some of that is automatic. At an elementary school, if you have 20 kindergarten students, you have one kindergarten teacher. You have 21 kindergarten students, you have two uh kindergarten teachers. So, some of that is strictly

136numbers based on state law. But you've got to evaluate and see. Oh, let's see. Extra positions might be a good term. Make sure you don't have extra positions, but uh people I don't know what everyone at central office does. You know, I want to meet with them and have them explain to me uh what their position is, what they do on a normal day. Uh some of those may be able to be combined. uh you know even some positions might be able to be eliminated or restructured so that they're more efficient. You definitely want efficiency in every aspect of school. But that's one thing people don't seem to understand. When you talk about cutting a budget or doing something with a budget, people it's going to affect someone directly because people are about the only

137thing you have control over. Buses are normally um the second largest expenditure in a county or in a district. So, you know, I want to look make sure we are very efficient and how our buses run. If there's any tinkering can be done with that, one bus ride is a huge amount of money. uh you wouldn't want to add one or you know keep what we have if it's not right but that's usually your second largest expenditure then there's other ways I'm not a believer in a little bit of savings is not a good thing uh congressman once said a million here a million there pretty soon you're talking about real money well every little bit of money adds up make sure you're efficient in um your utilities make sure you know we're not wasting

138electricity go. We're not uh you know wasting water. We're not wasting anything. We can't afford to waste anything. It's uh money's too important and too tight. Uh we want to make sure that our teachers have what they need. Uh and that we have the money to supply that. But I think that's every aspect of the budget. Uh you know, the tax rates fixed by someone else. The amount coming in is pretty much someone else's decision. Uh but we've got to make sure that we are extremely efficient with what we get. Uh and that it is going the best. There's not enough. You know, every teacher, if teachers made triple what they make today, it wouldn't be enough. I mean, there's no way to pay a teacher what they deserve. Uh we, you know, we have

139but we have to be realistic. We're probably not going to be able to triple a teachers back. uh we probably have a lot more choices to choose from if we could, but uh I don't think that's phys that's feasible, but we do need to make sure that every penny we do spend is getting the most out of it. But, you know, and I do think once again on our I won't say again on our teachers, making them feel respected. I may not be able to triple their pay, but I can make them feel appreciated and respected. uh teacher as long as a teacher doesn't do something illegal, immoral, or um illegal, immoral, or uh any other word. Uh they are um I'm going to have their back, you know, I'm going to make them feel

140appreciated in that way. We sometimes we sometimes we assume the teacher's wrong as a starting point in the discussion and we can't do that. We have professionals in this county and we need to treat them like professionals. Uh we need to make them we need to provide quality training for them so that they feel like they're not wasting their time and their training. Uh almost some little things make a big difference. Uh anyway, >> in the event of a budget shortfall, would you be willing to make staffing cuts if necessary to meet financial obligations or would you try to find new revenue streams to address the gap? >> Well, I mean, you would probably want to try to do a combination of those things. I mean, you have as much money. I've had a family

141for a long time and we have to make hard decisions every year. It's gotten easier since the kids have moved on, but uh seem like we have more money now, but it uh you know, there are tough decisions. I have to make tough decisions in my school. Uh we spend well at the school level, we spend a couple million dollars a year. Uh, and you know, I have to decide. Sounds like a huge amount of money until we spend $180,000 on AP testing. It disappears quickly. You know, we uh it sounds like a lot of money until you start spending it. So, I have no I have no trouble making hard decisions. You know, I've had to cut programs. U fire teachers, fire coaches. Firing a coach is challenging, but it's got to be done

142at times. And I have no problem doing that. But I think anything you do, if you can, if there's a combination of things you can do, it's better. No, I don't like to cut people's jobs. I mean, that's the worst thing in the world. My The worst day of my year probably is when I have to tell non-tenure teachers they're not coming back. Uh, it's horrible and I dread it for weeks. But everything I do is what's best for the child. Every single decision I make is what's best for the students. And sometimes I have to do things I don't want to do. But if it's best for the students, I'm going to do that. And that's I mean that's important to remember about me. I am going to do what's best for the students

143every single time. And if that makes someone mad, you know, I can live with that. Uh it's I've had 5,000 people stand up and test me in front of my family. I coach, so, you know, I don't mind doing things that aren't popular. All right, last question number 10. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for improvement in our school district? I think once again I think it's in pretty good shape at the moment, but uh I'd like to see the value added improved. Uh value added is a very fair thing that Tennessee was one first in the country to do. Um whether you have the highest achieving kids or the lowest achieving kids, they all can grow. And once again, going back to each child, we need to make sure each child is growing

144as much as possible. If your intensity value added is not good, your children aren't growing. That's not That's the other thing I try to enforce to teachers, principles, and everything. It's a numbers thing. It's math. Can't argue with that. It's not personal. It's not anything. It's math. Value added is math. If you've got a high value added, your teacher's being effective. If you have low value added, they're not. And once again, that's not personal. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. doesn't mean I don't like you wouldn't go to lunch with you, but it does mean your kids did not benefit as much as possible from that youth. So, I do think several schools value added could be looked at and we need to first determine what the weakness is and then find out a way

145to address that weakness. Uh, but you know, I do think evaluating the facilities. I not stepped foot in a lot of them in a long time. I want to personally evaluate the facilities with your personal maintenance, make sure that we're getting our bang for our buck there. Uh but I do think um your high achieving kids, more opportunities for them. There's AP access for all. I hope you're taking advantage of that, which is a state program where children can take AP classes online. Uh the schools schools here aren't really large enough to have a huge AP offering. It gets very expensive when you have a teacher for three or four kids. Uh but with AP access for all, you can increase the offerings for the children that need it. Uh we want to make sure

146everything comes back to safety, too. Uh you've got to make sure that at all all times every school is as safe as humanly possible. Uh we live in a strange time, but um you know, I would want to evaluate everything we're doing on safety, make sure it's up and great. It's uh I do think though your high achieving kids could be served a little better. You know, ACT could improve um once again course offerings want to evaluate CTE programs, make sure they are turning out. Kids today are probably going to earn a living in a job that doesn't exist yet. And we have to be able to give them the skills that are transferable to every job. And we need to uh make sure that they think critically, that they think well, that they read

147for comprehension. um you know we've got to instill that in them so that um they have whatever they end up doing. You know, who would have thought web designer was a job when I when I was sitting in Smith High School wondering what I was doing there. Uh web designer, there was no web. I'm old. Uh there was uh you know, couldn't even dreaming of playing for the Cubs or something, but um didn't have the skills to do that. But no uh we do need to look if we're if we are given the skills. We need to make sure the foundation where you bu whether you're building my house or a child is the foundation where you start. We need to make sure we have quality reading programs in the K3. When a child gets

148out of third grade, if they don't have great reading skills, we have a problem. They have a problem for the rest of their lives. We have a problem trying to educate. It's hard to teach US history if a child can't read. You know, it's hard to teach chemistry if a child can't read. Everything goes back to being able to read well. And we've got to make sure in those lower grades that that reading is emphasized and focused and they have what they need. Once again, very few teachers don't want to do their best every day. Uh we want to make sure they have everything they need to do their best. So that would be main focuses I suppose. But uh once again I think SP is in good shape but it can be in great

149shape. We aren't happy with good. Um and you know there's a book called good and the enemy of great is good. And I think sometimes we get too focused on the fact that we're good. Well I don't want to be good. I don't want to be around people that want to be good. If you don't want to be great, that's don't really want to be around you. Uh it's uh it's just the philosophy, I guess. But now that that's got our our 10 questions to ask. Now, guys, we're going to go around the room here and ask our personal questions. And we'll start with Mr. Lewis is on the television screen. He's gonna start us off this way. >> Mr. Rash, uh, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here. I

150remember your father very well, for sure. As a matter of fact, uh, thank my grandfather actually hired your father. >> Yeah. >> Um, I do have just a couple questions for you. I I have one, but uh, I wanted to hear you kind of follow up. You were asked a question about finances and uh you talked a lot about uh not having any difficulty cutting but you didn't really address you know would you seek out different revenues you know what would be your thought process along that just kind of shortly briefly >> well you know of course the public is limited a little bit on revenue streams uh and I don't know what advantage y'all are taking on grants and things like that uh we do quite a bit of grants. Uh we funded things

151like LED lighting for the entire for all every R go is going to LED lighting and most of it's paid for by a federal grant. Uh you know there are a lot of opportunities. There are organizations like Nwarm out of East Tennessee. can't say that but uh you can get grants from him to do anything from build a band room to uh you know major major money coming out of but there are several organizations like that that want to help Gates Foundation uh that want to help school systems be better and uh you know I do think someone should focus on grants. is probably somebody who's already got another job uh that's going to get an additional one. But uh I do think there are other revenue streams that can be tapped into. Um you

152know, you don't want to most once again most of it comes from this the state or taxpayers. Well, I guess it all comes from taxpayers and the state money comes from taxpayers. But uh you know any other source does help that but uh there are many opportunities to increase the revenue stream or diversify the revenue stream. >> And thank you sir. And my final question this one is kind of more uh important to me I guess. Well not not necessarily more important but I think it is significant. Uh along those same lines, can you explain like your feelings towards uh transparency working with county commissioners and things like that? You know, how would you feel towards those things? We have a lot of we place a lot of importance on that. >> Well, uh once

153again, it's not my money. I believe in being open about everything. If you walk into I have parents come in and want to see how we're spending baseball money at Central. It it's their right to know for one thing. Uh we are a public entity. Uh we have you know Tennessee is one of the few states that has almost complete open records. Uh it's their right and you know I'm I will tell you the truth no matter what. If um if you don't want to hear something, don't ask me the question because I'm going to tell you what I think and what I know to be true on anything. Uh everything I do is an open book. I don't hide anything. Uh I'm I do that now and that will not be changing. Uh I'm

154I am what I am, you know. I am who I am. And if I do something, I did it for what I thought was best for the students. I should be able to explain that, you know, why did I do it if I can't explain it? So, no, I believe in I'm completely transparent in everything I do. You know, I'm not going to talk about someone else behind their back, I'm not going to, you know, if I had to if I do have to dismiss someone, there may be issues on that that I can't really talk about. I'm not going to embarrass someone or go into things that I shouldn't, but anything I do or I'm part of is open. So, I completely believe in transparency. >> Thank Thank you, Mr. Ash. We certainly appreciate

155you being with us. Thank you, sir. >> I got a statement question. I just want you to sort of be aware what we're facing possibly 20 in 2024 our general fund had almost 11 and a half bed 25 went to 86 well this year possibly we're going to make around five projected uh so be something a new person we have to deal with of course my question is if elected with your hiring our director. How long did you see yourself being a director speaking show? >> Well, uh I mean I as long as I'm healthy, I don't think I'm ready to sit and watch TV yet. I I do have a few hobbies. I like to fish, but I don't know that I can do it every day. Uh golf is too frustrating for me.

156So, uh I I don't know. I 10 years. I mean, you can't give me but a four-year contract by state law, but uh I will certainly live up to my word if I tell you something. Once again, that's how something dramatically changes. I would always live up to my word. >> Some people sometimes have plans, but they want to retire. >> Oh, well, I mean, I have plans. Yes. Uh, but I don't think I'll ever get to it. But not I do would someday like to retire, but I'm not ready for it yet. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Dash. I got a couple quick questions that be should be quick answers. What year did you graduate? >> High school. >> Yes, sir. >> 1984 >> from >> Smith County High School. My father graduated 1944

157from Gornville High School. >> All right. So, I heard you through the conversation the questions. You sound like you're a disciplinarian. I don't know you. First time I ever laid eyes on you. On a scale of one to 10, how do you rate your disciplinary actions toward a teacher first and then second to be toward a student? >> Well, I'm a big believer. I don't have to prove I'm in charge because I am in charge. Uh I think sometimes people get in trouble going around proving they're in charge. Um my teachers do what I ask them to do. I think I have that trust with them. I I have had to discipline teachers at different times for things. Thankfully nothing illegal, but uh we have had to deal with some things. I expect people to

158do what I ask them to do. I expect children to do what I ask them to do. I'm in Walmart. I expect children to ask them to do what I do. But um I pro I guess I'm pretty strict. I'm sorry. I guess I'm pretty strict. Okay. >> But uh you know I it doesn't I hate to say this, but I'm lucky right now in a school that's a choice school. The children don't have to be there. they can go back to their zone school which makes it a lot easier on us. I realized that upfront. Uh but at Christian Middle, we had a great school that ran very well. Teachers once again did what we asked them to do. Our kids did what we asked them to do. I don't completely understand not expecting

159the child to do. >> Okay. One more question. >> You said you like to be very visible at all functions. This I'm putting you hypothetical question. you're at a sporting event at Gornwood and Carthage. It don't matter what that sport is. A coach, we tend to put coaches without being critical, but we do put them on a >> pedestal. If they're winning, you know, we want to keep them. If they're not winning, we all, you know, I know you know this area as good as being in a small community. But if you was at a game and a coach was acting out of place that you would feel out of place, would you are you able So would you approach the principal about this to approach the coach or are you have a policy you'd

160like to see coach back at your office at another time and talk about because kids. They're begging for discipline. I'm going into a longer thing than I should, but there's a there's a fine line between discipline and >> cruelty. Cruelty. >> So, I think for our students, we need to protect them from that kind of language cruelty, whatever it is. >> So, it'd be hard to politically correct a teacher or coach if they're doing a good job. But I'm going back to this. They're if they're abusing a student in a ver way, what where do you where do you see something like that as if a director? >> First of all, I would rather deal with the principal and let him deal with the coach because princ coach works directly for the principal. I mean,

161everyone's everyone in the county would work for me, but I'm a big believer in chain of command as well. If it was at the at that moment, if it was something beyond pale, I mean, if it was something severe, we would deal with it right that second. But most things I would rather deal with my office. You know, I when I meet with a parent and a teacher, I'm going to support that teacher completely. When the door shuts, I may have to tell the teacher, you know, hey, that's not the way I would want to do that. uh you know I we can't do that anymore or maybe even a little stronger than that. >> But uh you know that's in a perfect world. Coaches coaches mean a lot to kids, >> right? >> You

162know I was lucky I played for some great people. Uh you know I played baseball for Bill Land. I tell people my children who never got to meet him benefit from my interactions with him. you know, he made a difference in my life and and then I won't say who, but I play for some coaches that made a difference in my life, right? >> But it wasn't positive, you know. So, uh, coaches, we remember our teachers, but we remember our coaches even more. Uh, you know, I coach football and I and other sports, but I hope I think my probably got closer to my players coaching than I did teaching them chemistry. Uh it um I hope I made a difference in their life in chemistry too, >> but I know I made a difference

163in coaching, >> right? >> And so we do have higher expectations for our coaches. We do put them on pedest. But when you're up here, people expect more of you, >> right? >> And if they can't do that, I don't Winning is not the ultimate judge of a coach. You know, I'll fire a state championship coach if they're not doing what's best for kids. uh that's you know if they're cheating uh you know we don't want that around our children and so they have to go and parents would be mad they get over it you know I've come to a firm conclusion I f when we first opened I had one of the worst coaches I've ever been around in my life not for treating kids badly just horrible I had to fire I still

164have parents mad over that So, everyone who watched the game knew that coach didn't be there. And believe it or not, it's not hard to get co It's sort of hard to get coaches that want to coach really smart kids. Uh but um I still had parents come in and complain that I had gotten rid of this coach. And it shocked me to be honest that he didn't agree. But we had to do it. We had to do what was best for the students. But yes, I agree completely with you. Coaches coaches. It's different now. I hate I hate sound like that old person. Uh when I was growing up, coaches said things to us that probably would been put in jail today. I'm sure Miss Moore can speak to that. Uh maybe being treated

165unfairly by people >> or cruy. >> Uh she probably still can run lines. Uh but uh anyway uh but no I I'm I firmly believe but yes I'd rather the principal deal with and if a principal consistently can't deal with that may not just be the coach that needs to be replaced with you. >> Oh well everything if anything goes wrong at central it's me. >> Okay. it whether it's if I wasn't at the archery competition or whatever and something goes wrong, it's still me. I take responsibility for everything. Okay? >> Uh you know, I I that's the job. I mean, that's when I coached if we weren't, you know, something went wrong, it still was me. I was the head coach. >> Thank you for your answer. So the question I have is u

166since we adopted the 81 act so how do you build working relationships with our county mayor and our county commissioners that is cooperative but preserves the school systems independence and mission. >> Okay. Well, first I'd want to get to know the commissioners a little bit more. I'd like to meet with them personally uh one at a time. Obviously not sure it'd be legal to do more than that but one at a time. Uh, I'd like to know their philosophies and why why they wanted to be a commissioner. I'd like to meet with each board member and find out why you want to be on the board, what your focus is, what your expectations are for the school system. But I also think once again being open and honest with them develops that trust. But in

167the end, I am going to do what's right for the kids every single time. And if that makes you mad, that's going to make you mad. That's going to make commissioners mad. that's going to make the commissioners mad. But our students are too important. But I do think over time they're going to see I don't know the county mayor, but you know, I'd like to meet with him and find out what he thinks and get his input, that sort of thing. They're taxpayers like everyone else. Um, you know, we need their input on how to do things. But we've got to do what's right for kids and we are the experts on that subject. I've got four college degrees, three of them in uh administration supervision and uh one of them in teaching chemistry, but

168um I am the expert. I got 36 years in education. I've been a principal for 23 years. That's a lot of kids. So, you know, I know what I'm doing. And you know, they've got to respect that, too. I'm I'm a big believer in respecting other people, but I expect them to respect me as well. Dr. Ash, you touched on this a lot in some of your other questions. Over the past many years, National Education Association and many institutions of higher learning have adopted and promoted an agenda that undercuts our nation's traditional American values such as patriotism and lots of others. What actions will you take to protect the traditional and conservative values of our community and its families? >> Well, you know, once again, always got to follow state laws on everything, but um

169yeah, I don't I I don't even really know how to answer that. Uh uh I >> you already have answered in a lot. You're going to do the right thing. >> Yes, sir. I want to know what the right thing is. You're from Smith County. You know what our >> Yes. Well, I mean, I part of it part of what's important is uh demonstrating what the right thing is. You know, I would rather have a teacher that lives morally than teaches morals. Uh kids learn by seeing us. Teachers learn by seeing me. Uh you know, and it's the little things to the big things. If I'm standing during the pledge of allegiance appropriately, they're going to do that. They see it's important. They um you know, there's also things sometimes we cave a little bit

170too quickly to pressure uh from outside groups or from internally. Uh you know, board sets policy. So, you know, as long as y'all set the policy, uh we will enforce the policy y'all set. Uh so I mean that's that's not a problem. I I've never had you know anybody question that. Uh we of course being a Marsboro we have a little different community than in Smith County but uh we still support you know what how I grew up. uh some of the things when I can't be done when I was a child. But uh I I don't I guess I don't fully understand the other side to be honest. Um we will do what's best for every child every single time. Uh you know, I don't want I don't want any child to feel that

171we're not their advocate and uh that we don't care about them. But I'm not real sure y'all have a huge problem up here with that, do you? Um, >> how about curriculum? You know, a lot of times they just infiltrate the curriculum a little bit at a time. Just a little here, a little there. >> Well, uh, your curriculum is set by by the state. Uh, as long as you teach what's in the state curriculum legally, you're okay. and our I don't know that you could be more conservative than our legislature is at the current moment. Uh but the other thing I would encourage is when they're doing the curriculum, they beg for parents, board members, teachers to be on the committees that help set the curriculum. I mean, literally, they beg. They can't get

172enough people that want to do it. Everybody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to give you time to do it. Uh I would encourage the people up here to volunteer for those committees. uh you just sign up online uh we just did I can't remember what subject space uh you know last year uh they will do another one this year and you know that's how you influence the curriculum to be honest uh our I don't think anything is in the official curriculum that would be a problem I don't know how it can get through our state legislature uh our state legislature is extremely conservative at the moment but Um anyway, but no I we we work very hard to have our teachers teach what the state what the state requires not their own. Teachers

173should not be teaching opinion. Uh they uh whether theirs or someone else's. I mean it's uh I taught chemistry. I did not spend a lot of time on politics at all in chemistry. Actually I never spent any time on politics in chemistry. Uh there's no reason for that. You know, if you're teaching math, math is math. It doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat, Republican. Um when you do math, it's math. That's what's beautiful about it. To be honest, we can't disagree. We can disagree on a lot of things. We can't really disagree on math. Uh so, um you know, I feel that way about most of it. If you have a class that's in question, there are certain classes that open itself up to uh wider ranging discussions. Uh you may not want to offer

174that class, but once again, y'all approve the curriculum as well. Another followup still in Lebanon High School students organized a protest against ICE >> and the principal I talked to my granddaughter goes to school there and I said why are you supporting this? And he says well I just got together with them and I told them what they could do and what they couldn't do. I didn't really support it. Well, when he got together with them, that gave them credits >> of their object or their their thought. How would you handle that? >> Well, the first amendment is a little bit misunderstood. Uh, you have a right to protest and we don't really have a right to protest. You have a right to assemble. Uh, you have a right for your opinion to be heard.

175I still you still there are still consequences when you have that opinion. Uh the federal government is not going to arrest you and put put you in jail for your opinion. But if I badmouth my superintendent in the paper he can fire me anytime he wants. That's his right. I have a right to say it. Won't get arrested. I can't say things. Uh they don't have a right to interrupt school. You know, they certainly have a right to their opinion. I will defend with my life their right to their opinion. But they don't have a right to inter interrupt class. And that's what you would deal with. You wouldn't deal with their opinion. You would deal with the fact they interrupted class. They caused a disturbance. They also caused a huge safety concern. You know,

176kids not being supervised is a huge safety concern when they, you know, do these walkouts and things. Bad things can happen quickly and that you know once you agree with them, disagree with them, it doesn't matter. I don't get an opinion as a teacher. I'm neutral on everything. I get to vote. I get outside of school, I get to have my opinion, but in school I'm neutral on all things. And I can't but I can't protect them if they're not doing what I tell them to do. And you know that's probably how I approach it with kids is I can't take care of you. My job as principal is to take care of them. We've not had a walk out at Central. But I mean we might have some kids back. I was disappointed with

177them because what I envisioned happening there going to be students there and then there going to be students on the other side and first thing you know it escalates. Yes. by the fact that he even met with him. He sort of gave his approval. Even if he didn't give his approval on the the outside, I heard heard about this on on the radio said whatever it was. So, I called the principal and he he tried to explain it away best he could without explaining anything. I don't know the principle of that in person, but I hopefully he was meeting with them to help try to help them keep keep them safe, you know, come up with a plan that they wouldn't be put in danger, but he was also allowing I'm sorry you answered it.

178Thank >> one question for me. >> Yes, sir. >> You have children? >> Yes. >> They attend public school, private school, or they home? >> They went to public school. My son missed us by a couple by about a year. He graduated black in high school. He then went to Tennessee Tech, got his PhD in nuclear physics from Michigan State. My daughter went to Tennessee Tech. You're going to hear that a lot. Uh and she graduated Central Magnet School, my second graduating class. Uh she was the first student to go freshman through senior or first group of students go freshman through senior and she got a masters at Middle Tennessee State. She used to go counsel Uh far as that, uh that concludes our interview and uh you're free to leave, you're free to stick

179around, you're fine. >> Make sure you get yourself. >> Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Your mother drove one away. My mother drove one and best >> really do that now. Yeah, Jess, we uh but we had to go. We did half a day of kindergarten at K Elementary. The only place they had it. >> You're right. >> Oh, >> before you start, we would go home. still live right in front of the house. How about that? >> Mention >> I won. Yes. His father Homer the superintendent went home when he got sick. I said here retired. I started uh coach was the coach when I got out of high school and he was a very nice person. He did care about the kids. >> I don't have to do that. >> Yeah, man. Sometimes it's talent.

180>> There's an old saying it's not about Texas. Uh you don't have talent and that's when you judge a coach. They got kids should get better. It should be organized and they should get better as the season goes on. But if they're horrible may not be great. Who's married to me? >> I'm ask my wife. >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. We went to school a long time. >> Her father was principal elementary school. >> My mother was supervisor. Tell the situation >> that was sadly the first basketball game I got to yesterday. Last night watch the boys play. I don't girls are really good on the walls. >> Yeah. I don't most time when I go I get hit. >> It's hard enough. I try to make it a football game. My wife, my my

181son, he played basketball and football in junior high and high school. Play football. My daughter, she cheered junior high and all through high school. So, we went through roughly a eight-year period where I had to go to every junior high football game and every high school football game. I got burnt. I just got burnt. been sports. I'll watch them sometimes if you know if I or listen to them sometime on radio game tonight. Right now tournament time is where I like to sit down. You know what I'm saying? It's really it's it's a fun time of year basketball. I Your daughter got beat up pretty bad last night. They was porking her in the face and I felt sorry for her. >> She was rebounding time had a hold of this arm and she had

182pulling. >> She got I don't know if she made a mark on her or not. She got hit pretty hard on her. >> She keeps her cool pretty well. Some of those kids. She does a good job. >> I'm glad they're doing better. >> Yes. They're fun to walk. >> Are you all right? No, >> probably real. >> No, I was good. I'm good. >> Loud and understand what it takes. >> I didn't know who you were. How many years did you coach? Well, my office is upstairs, so I had some things up there. others filter in. >> We decided that March the 9th, we're going to have we're going to cancel the second round of interviews. We're going to have our board meet to pick the three we're going to take on. March the

18316th, Monday night, 5:00, we're going to interview the final three. And then on March 17th, we'll make announcement of the person we picked for director. Kind of lay in a week and hopefully all get together. >> Okay. Ready? >> And he's got one on Zoom call. >> Yeah, Mr. Will is on Zoom call. He'll chime in there and meet. Okay. All right. And we let Mr. Hess be our spokesman. He's done an excellent job asking asking the question. Okay. >> So, on behalf of the board, we would like to welcome you and thank you for coming. We'll start off with the first question. Tell us a little about yourself and why you want to be our next director of schools. >> Okay. Well, thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it. U about myself. I've been

184in education my entire adult life. Uh I've been in a lot of different positions. I've had a lot of experience and knowledge over the years. U I think uh what I've done here in the county, what I've done before I came here in the county, uh the next logical step for me in my career would be director. Uh been in pretty much every position. I'm uh personally I'm married, got two kids, I live in Realton. I I enjoy Smith County. I enjoy the entire, you know, county, been in every school. I think my relationships with a lot of people in the school systems and a lot of people in the county, it's just a logical step for me. >> Question two, what is your leadership style and what strengths do you bring to this position

185to lead Smith County School successful? Well, I lead by example. I think that if you set a good example, I think if you uh and and people will follow. I think you uh you have high expectations of people. I think you set high expectations of people. Uh I'm consistent. I I don't think I really get too high on things. I don't think I get way too low on things. I think I have a a good approach about decision making. uh and uh and a lot of times I'm a rule follower. So if we got policies in place and things like that and those things need to be followed. I want to encourage people. I want to compliment people. I want to you know do positive things so people react positively. But again if this if

186there's a situation where I have to make a hard decision I'm capable of making that also. So, you know, I just think transparency like communicating with people, you know, directors going to be a 24-hour 24 seven days a week. I think you need, you know, communication with you all is is key. I think respect for you all is key. I think just uh and I think I'm that person that, you know, puts that out there. You know, I treat people like I want to be treated to be honest. And and the leadership part of it is, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can lead and a lot of different ways you may have to lead. Like I said, you know, you may have to make the hard decision. You know, compliments go

187a long way. You know, positivity goes a long way. I think I'm capable making any decision I need to make as far as as being director. >> What would be your three-year strategic vision for Smith County Schools and what measurable indicator would you use to evaluate progress? >> Well, my vision would be I want uh the school system to be the best one ever. And I think um I think along the way of that three years, you know, I think there's a lot of things that can be done, a lot of things that can be improved on. And then what's good, I think we need to take it to the next level. I think that that goes a long way. Um you know, we all we get test scores obviously. I mean, we're we're graded

188by our test scores. I think there's a lot of good things in place. I think we need to make sure that they stay in place and they're expanded upon. I think, you know, we need to look at data and and find out what's working, what's not working, and improve what's not working. But my three-year plan would be, you know, I want I want I want this to be the best system in the upper Cumberland. I want people I don't want a lot of turnover when people come here. I want them to enjoy teaching here. I want them to stay here. I won't, you know, I won't buy into the system and and again, I think, you know, just laying out those plans and those expectations go a long way. How should a district balance preparation

189for postsecary education, workforce readiness, and career technical pathways? I think there's a way for all of that. I think u I think we should offer as many programs as possible to to hit every student as possible whether they're collegebound whether they're uh you know whether they're blue collar bound whether whatever I think we should offer whatever we can offer in reasonable situation for every student to be successful no matter what path they take you We all know every kid's not made for college and we know, you know, a lot of kids, you know, like to get their hands dirty and work and I think we should have something for all of those kids. they uh and you know as director and I think it's my responsibility to see that a lot of that happens as

190far as those opportunities and those programs for each every you know for every student to be successful no matter what they do. How would you improve student performance on state assessments such as Tennessee Ready while maintaining a well-rounded educational experience? >> I think it starts with data. I think you have to I think you have to look at data and look at your strengths and I think you have to look at areas where you're not scoring as well. And then I think you have to look at okay what did this teacher do to score well in math and this teacher in this other school is not scoring well in I'm just making up math you know it's just a subject but what did they do not to score as well. I think we could mirror

191one teacher to another. I think we can we can say okay this worked here. We can go and teach the same curriculum here which we do. And I think we need to learn from each other. I think we got we have data meetings which are really good where all the principles talk and they discuss what's working for them, what's not working for them. I think those are really good meetings. I think you know datadriven information is is key when you're looking at at test scores. You know, demographic, what kid, you know, scored low, what what grade level scored low. you can get into even what class scored on those tests and determine, you know, what might have happened in that class, what you can improve that class on, what, you know, um I think across

192the district, we we offer the same curriculum to everyone and it's set up to be successful on that test. So, we just need to look at what's working, what we can improve on, and and always that should be always first priority, the the success of the students in this county on that test and in during their during their stay in this school system. I think that should be the number one priority of the director to make sure they're successful. You just have to look at everything involved on that. what's involved on why that student is scoring well or not scoring well on the test. They take that data and make make informed decisions. >> How visible should a superintendent be within the schools and how would you structure ongoing engagement with students and staff? >>

193I think they should be visible every day. I I don't think you I don't think you have to visit every school every day, but I think they should be out visible. Um and and you know, I don't want when I walk in everybody to be on pins and needles. I want them to understand I'm there to help. I'm there to see what's going on. I'm there to see good things, you know. I'm not there to go, you know, gotcha or whatever, you know. I want to, you know, um what I've done the last going on nine years, I think has really prepared me for something along these lines because I have uh I'm evaluator and district testing coordinator. So, I have evaluated all the principles, assistant principles, and a lot of the teachers in there.

194So, I have a good relationship with a lot of the faculty here in the county. So, I want to be able to walk in a building and and and them be comfortable around me if something's going on or they think something can be improved or they think, you know, something that needs to be, you know, I want I want to hear from them, the people on the ground doing the doing the work. But visibility, I think, is I think it's it's a responsibility. I think visibility is responsibility. I think uh you know you need to be visible in the community as well as in the schools during school day. I think you need to be available and is that always feasible? You're going to have meetings, you're going to have things that happen, but when

195you can, I think you need to be out in the system. So, how are public schools funded in Tennessee? And do you believe the community should better understand school finance? Why or why not? Yes, I think they should be I think I think we should be more transparent on how we're how the funds are spent u what's allocated, you know, what we're getting. I mean, how the budget is going, you know, you hear all kinds of things on this, you know, talk about the budget and stuff and and who I mean, sometimes you don't even know. I mean, you know, I think uh I think it if you're forward and transparent and and you try to relate what you're doing and how the budget works and stuff, I think it's just a better understanding for

196everyone. I think, you know, I think it eliminates some of the I don't know, chatter, whatever going around or goes around during the budget. It's, you know, obviously it's been the biggest conversation for the last, you know, year and a half that you have here in about the school. So, I think it's it's very important to to know what's going on and let people know what's going on. What are the first three areas that you would review when assessing a school district's financial health? >> Well, first of all, I would probably like I would probably do what you all did when when you were talked about the director's position. I would probably I probably look at restructuring some things. Uh, I would probably look at uh I would look first year in the central office

197to restructure, see where we can put people that would give us the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak. Uh, I think I think then you would probably I would look at the alternative school. I would look at uh how that was has been the last two or three years and what we've done there. I look at maybe restructuring that just budget wise. Um, I would uh I would look at our hiring practices. I I would think I would and and this this takes a while, but I would streamline our hiring practices. I think sometimes we hire and we don't match up what teaching opening we have. Say we're hiring coach. Sometimes we get too many teachers in one subject area where we don't need. And I think that's where we get in trouble

198sometimes with our budget and some of our allocations. I think in a perfect world, if you got a teaching opening and a coaching opening, you want to match those two up. Now, is that always going to happen? Absolutely not. But I think if we streamline that and and we look at that first, I think we, you know, we can we can eliminate some of the the overflow of one subject area where we don't need that many teachers in that subject area. I think I think we need to look inside the system when there's an opening. I think, you know, you you may be at Union Heights and and your enrollments now and and the enrollment goes up at Smith County Middle. I think we need to look at moving that teacher to Smith County. You

199know, that teacher still has a job in the county. But I think to get our bang for our buck. We don't leave that teacher at Union Heights and hire somebody at Smith County out, you know, that's not in the system. I think that's one way of streamlining what we're doing. I mean, if you've got, you know, and the teachers to be able to move around from school to school in the county, I think would help a lot as far as the higher practices go. I think I think in in the long run, I think we need to look at stipens instead of percentages. I think and I'm not saying anybody needs to take a pay cut or anything like that. I'm saying when we give percentages to extracurricular whatever we do we get hit double.

200If if you get a a raise a teacher raise your percentage is based on your teacher salary. So you're getting hit double. You're getting hit with teachers raise and you're getting hit with a raise for your uh percentage that that get paid off percentage. Uh, I think if you do that then you can control you can see exactly how much money you're you're paying for extracurricular things like that. So in your budget, you don't have to go, "Well, maybe because if you get a step raise, if you go from 5 to 10 years and you get a step raise on their pay scale, and that's just an example, you're going to get a raise on your your supplement, whatever you're doing because that cut that's a percentage of your teaching salary." And in a lot

201of districts around, I found out do the same thing and and and you can make it fair, but in a budget situation where, you know, you're trying to to to make things more feasible and be more physical physical responsibility. I think that's one thing we need to look at in the, you know, in the future. Can we uh you know we need to look at do we own property that we don't need I haven't you know are we got things that we don't need we are we got things like that I mean that's something you know we all got to sit down you know if I'm director we sit down and discuss do we do we have those kind of things do we uh non-essential things that we we support do we need some non-essential

202things can we put people in different positions that we get like I say that that can be more beneficial than what they're doing. I mean, just, you know, making sure everything is just, you know, like federal. Can we move more people to federal so less money comes out of law? I mean, can we do things like that? I mean, when you're looking at all that, you got to look at, you know, all different things to do that. And I think I think you know that for me uh those things you know if I'm hired as director that that's some of this I could be getting done you know pretty quick as far as is that kind of stuff like those kind of things as far as somebody coming in new you know have to really

203what's going on what's happening In the event of a budget shortfall, would you be willing to make staffing cuts if necessary to meet financial obligations, or would you try to find new revenue streams to address the gap? >> Well, like I said earlier, my biggest priority is the safety and the well-being and academic success of the students of Smith County, all the schools. Uh, and to answer that question, uh, yes on both, uh, the first thing you would do is try to look to see if you could have new re revenue streams, grants, whatever on that. But if it come down to it, I mean, if you have to, like I said, you know, hard decisions have to be made. I'd be willing to look at, you know, everything as far as if the budget

204is, you know, needs to be a certain point. We ought let's see what's going on. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for improvement in our school district? I think and I think it's coming in the next couple years. I I I think what we've put in place, what we have now, and what we're expanding on, what we're improving on, I think I think our district's going to be a reward district. And I think we're going to be consistently a reward district. I think we need to make sure that still happens. I think there's not a lot of changes that that need to be made as far as, you know, how we're teaching, what we're teaching, uh, you know, how we're, you know, checking on the students benchmarks every so often, you know, and really

205calling in on that kind of thing. I think I think we just need to make sure we don't go backwards. I think we need to whatever we're doing now, I think we need to improve. I think we need to make sure we're we're staying on top of it and not get, you know, get to a certain point and go go, you know, we've made it. You know, they always say the biggest thing is if you get successful, it's harder to stay at that point than this to get there. So I think that you know putting steps in in monitoring and conversations and and walkthroughs and visits to the schools and conversations with the administrators and everything like that is all part of making sure uh you know everything is in line and we improve on

206what we're doing. >> Last question. >> Yeah. U we're going to go around and each board member's got a question they want to ask you. Mr. Story, we're gonna start. Mr. Lewis is on the on the screen up there. You want to go ahead start. >> Hey, Mr. Story, thank you for being with us today and I apologize for not being there personally. I'm having a little issue here that I didn't want to give everybody else. Um let me ask you uh kind of along the lines of the uh visibility and all that with the school director um you know we have other obligations I feel like uh in within the community different organizations and things like that the county commission all that how do you do you plan do you have plans do you

207have thoughts about your visibility and interaction with those things as Yes, I uh I think the director the director's job comes with a responsibility of of being visible in the community, of being part of the community. I think you know um I think a prof a good professional working relationship with the mayor and the county commissioners and the finance people and the budget people that needs to that needs to take place. that needs that needs to be uh growled upon and and realize that everybody that is everybody that from the mayor to the county commissioners to us to the director to everybody, you know, we're responsible for the education of these kids in this county and I think we all need to work together. I think we don't need to be divided or divisive. Now,

208are we going to agree on everything and everybody's going to have different opinions? Absolutely. But I think there's a professionalism where you know I if you tell me you disagree on me, it's not going to be the end of the world. We're going to have a conversation on why you disagree or if I disagree with you all or the mayor or the commissioners or whoever. I think it needs to be a professional working relationship to where we can sit down and have some have some good debates and some and come to the best conclusion that we can have on some of the decisions. But yeah, director needs to be seen in community. He needs he needs to be out. He needs to be, you know, there's there's a standard that the director needs to hold

209too, I think, as far as, you know, when he's in the community. >> Thanks, sir. >> Yes, sir. Thank you. >> Yes. We touched already on some of the financial stuff, so I'm not going to bring that up. If you was elected as the director school system, how long could you see yourself being in that role before you maybe want to retire, whatever? >> Yeah, as long as I would have probably as long as I could I feel like I could do the job. You know, I'm you know, I'm definitely not ready to retire. You know, I think I could in a lot of ways I think I can devote more time to it because my youngest one is senior and she she plays basketball. She's going to be finished me in college. So, you

210know, when they go off to college, I think I have I'll have more time to to put forward with that. I think it's good timing for me to, like I said, to take this next step. And you know, as long as as long as y'all think I'm doing a good job and from that, you know, I haven't set a date or age or a time or whenever, you know, I just, you know, like I said, just as long as you um story, what what year did you graduate high school? >> 1982. >> 82. Do you see do you consider yourself a disciplinary type of individual? I know you play collegiate ball. Yes. >> So I'm sure you you're very disciplined. >> Yeah. Yeah. I consider myself that. I consider myself pretty uh pretty pretty focused

211on you know goals on things that that need to be done that day. uh on, you know, chores and tasks and things that that need, you know, attention that, you know, get it done. Let's get to the next thing. you know, let's let's figure out the best possible solutions to what's in front of you. in my life that was you know >> so one more question may be asked so don't forgive me if I did but what one leadership quality do you think would separate you from of course you didn't hear the other candidates that were being interviewed but if you could tell me in essence what you think is a strong very strong leadership that you have you've been under a director of schools for a couple of years now even comparing that but

212I'm saying, "What makes you different than anybody you feel like in your eyes?" That's um >> Yeah, I think I mentioned it before. I I don't think I get real high, you know, upset about anything. I don't think I get real low or mad, you know. I I I'm not extreme one way or the other. I'm pretty logical. Uh I know there's two sides to every story. I know that things need to be, you know, investigated, talked out and stuff. I'm not I'm not a knee-jerk, let's do this, make this decision kind of person. I think especially if you're the director, you have to have some kind of demeanor about you to where, you know, a lot of things need to be investigated and found out before you start just, you know, decisions. >> Okay.

213Thanks, sir. So the question that I've had so far for we've adopted the 81 act says how do you build working relationships with the mayor and the county commission that is cooperative but preserves the school systems independence and mission. Yeah, I think that like I said, I think there's a professionalism there that you have to have with those, you know, with the mayor and the county commissioner, but also I think my mindset going in is I'm going to fight for what's best for the the school system. Uh I'm going to go in and I think I think they're going to know that, but I think I'm going to be respectful for that. I'm going to treat them as, you know, with respect and as professional as I can. But, you know, they're going to know

214that, you know, what I asked or what my decisions are going to be made is going to be the best for the students and and the system. And, you know, and no personal thing involved, no agendas or anything like that. Just I mean, that's that was what that was that was what drive me every day when I got up. What you know what what's going on today that is going to be the best for our students. Mr. Story, in past many years, National Education Association, many institutions of higher learning have promoted an agenda that undercuts our nation's traditional American values such as patriotism. What actions will you take to protect the traditional conservative values that are held by our community and its families? Well, I would try to make sure that that things they stay

215that way. I would try to make sure that I've that all the legal stuff that I could do to make it stay that way. I I would I would uh you know if something came up and I would definitely make sure that that you know if it's not what you you know conservative traditional values you know it would just be it would be a priority of mine to keep those and I would try to keep those in every way possible. You know, that's the talking miss here to say what can we do legally? Like what what are we restricted to do? I know there's policies everywhere that you got to look at and there's people standing around everywhere wanting to got you. You got to do that, you know, ready to sue the school system

216or make make sure the school system does this or that. But u no I I would definitely make sure that those values would be there if possible and do everything I could to do that. >> I have one more question and I think I know the answer to this but I was going to do it for the people that's watching. Uh I know you got one daughter. I think you got two daughters. Uh were they home school, public school or private school or a little bit of both for combination or whatever? Well, uh, we were in Kentucky. Um, my daughter, my oldest daughter, uh, she went to kindergarten and first grade. And the school in Kentucky was kind of the opposite of what he was talking about. And we just thought it was a family

217value. When we took them out of school, my kids were different. They were they were different. We took them out. Uh, we homeschooled them. We My wife was great doing that and they're successful. My daughter's she's got 380 at Cumberland and ready to be a pharmacist. My oldest one or my youngest one's been accepted to every college she's applied for. So homeschool for us worked. It was because of the situation we were in in Kentucky and and it also made the move here easier really. They weren't losing, you know, curriculum. I mean, we did that. And if if we lived here from the start, maybe we would put them here because I like the school systems that we have with, you know, the K K2 K8 buildings. But it was a situation where we felt

218it was best for us and our girls and our family. It turned out great. Uh well, I think this is going to wrap up our interviews. And I'm going to tell you right now, I don't know how y'all are, but this is going to be a tough decision. We've had four really, really great candidates today. I'm telling you guys, this this is really great. They're impressive. Thank you, Mr. Story. And this is going to conclude concludes this unless y'all got something else say anything. So if that's the case, the interview session is over. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Scott. >> Thank you, >> Scotty. I've got lunch. Grab >> I may grab and go. I'll be fine. >> Thank you. What have you got? One second.