Consultant tells Snyder trustees that an effort needs to be made to get out of IR status
As Tuesday night’s Snyder ISD board of trustees’ training session was winding down, consultant Bob Griggs asked the board if the community knew how serious the situation the district is facing with three campuses and the school district being tagged as improvement required (IR) by the Texas Education Agency (TEA).
Board members shook their heads. No.
Griggs and Interim Superintendent Jim Kirkland said Marlin ISD has been ordered closed on July 1, 2016 due to its schools not meeting TEA standards.
Griggs said he tried to emphasize to the board how serious the designation is.
“Snyder ISD is right on the brink,” he said. “There has to be a real effort to get out of this.”
Griggs, whose firm will be leading the superintendent search, told the board that the district would have to have a strong leader to get the campuses — Snyder Primary School, Snyder Intermediate School and Snyder Junior High School — above IR status. The primary school was listed as IR in 2015 because it is a feeder school for the intermediate school.
Griggs said the pain will come when “long standing citizens” of the district will have to be replaced, meaning ineffective teachers.
Griggs challenged the board to become one of the top school boards in the state, and said one of those steps would be to let the new superintendent be the superintendent — “the CEO of the district.”
“A school board is charged by statute to set the tax rate, adopt the budget, buy property, adopt policies and hire a superintendent. This is where your responsibility ends,” Griggs said. “Give the superintendent everything else.”
Griggs said if the new superintendent doesn’t take care of school business, “Fire him.”
He also warned the board about having “rabbit ears.”
“The community will discover if you have rabbit ears and that will be to the detriment of the district,” he said.
Griggs said if a board member gets a call about a particular teacher, the board member should refer the caller to the particular teacher to start solving the problem.
“You should tell the person that you are a board member and have no power outside the board room,” said Griggs, adding that the process should follow a chain of command, from the teacher to the principal and if the problem is still not solved, to the superintendent.
“The starting point is where the problem should be resolved,” he said.
He also told trustees that they have the right to visit campuses, but added, “Remember, you will be disrupting the educational process.”
Midway through the meeting, Griggs divided the board into three groups to discuss short- and long-term goals for the district.
Among the short-term goals were hiring a leader who would get the district out of IR, the community buying into the new superintendent and getting former students to come back to Snyder ISD from other schools.
Long-term goals included the district having the greatest turnaround in the state for student achievement, financial stability, changes on campuses to promote student growth, 100 percent exemplary campuses, the district making national news for student achievement, 100 percent passing rate on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness tests on all levels and having all high school students earn a diploma and an associates’ degree or technical school certification.
Griggs said that a fast-track timeline to hire a superintendent before the end of this year is out the door.
“The board needs to take my advice to take it very slowly, and methodically and thoughtfully,” he said. “This (hiring a new superintendent) won’t happen overnight. It will take some hard work to find the individual the board described.”