What is your motivation for serving as superintendent?

What are your views on leadership?

What can we expect of you and what do you expect of staff?

What do you want the APS community to know about you?

What is your plan for filling the upcoming Assistant Superintendent of Instruction vacancy?

I’ve known for a long time that I would devote my life to education after I retired from the Air Force.   I have a passion for all children learning—and I mean ALL children.  I also have a passion for public education.  I attended elementary and high school in the Bronx, and my children attended public school throughout the U.S.  After attending the Broad Academy for Superintendents, I knew I wanted to be part of a community so that we could make a positive difference for children.  I look forward to doing this in APS.

Good leaders inspire people. If you are going to be successful in any organization, you have to inspire people to move.

Success breeds success and leading is about creating excitement.

I believe in making decisions based on collaboration, consensus and coalition building.

What is your first priority?

We’ll continue in the road we’re on, but we will get better and do all we can to accelerate student achievement.  I will be meeting with a lot of people and listening to your views on APS.  I want to hear the good news and the bad news.  Today—and on my first official day on the job--and every day that I’m in APS--our focus will be on making sure that all children can learn.

I will begin and end every conversation with this question:  “What are we doing to increase academic achievement?”

What can we expect of you and what do you expect of staff?

Just like we grade our students, I expect to be graded.  My hope is that you will say that I have helped make APS better than I found it.  And that is what I will ask of all teachers and staff in the district. Everyone can leave it better than when they started.

Of course everyone’s capacity will differ on what they can do.  But there is no job that is too small when we are impacting children.  We must never underestimate the effect that one individual can have on a child’s life.  This is where the teacher’s role will be vitally important, because the child you are working with today could become a teacher, a doctor or even President of the United States tomorrow.

I expect that each and every one of us does what is best for children and their academic achievement.

The Aurora Achievement Initiative is a good plan to start with, but we need to get to the next level.  We know that we have to accelerate academic achievement.

In my first 90 days, I will go to the entire community—to key stakeholders, parents, students, teachers, classified staff, administrators, business leaders, community members, elected officials and media representatives—to identify what the concerns are for APS.

We will listen to the good and the bad.  At the end of the 90 days, we will have a solid plan for our community—a strategic plan that builds on what has been done and gets us ready for the next three to five years.

I’m going to ask teachers what we can do to better support them.  I’m going to ask principals what they need to be top educational leaders.  I’m going to ask parents how we can get them more involved.

What do you want the APS community to know about you?

Student achievement is my top priority.  I will begin every conversation and end every conversation with this question:  What is it doing for academic achievement?

I will work with staff, parents and our entire community to ensure that we provide students the education, values and insights that will enable them to be productive, inspirational citizens.

What is your plan for filling the upcoming Assistant Superintendent of Instruction vacancy?

We have actively begun this process and I hope to have someone named by the beginning of July.  We are involving division of instruction staff, principals, union leadership and the board in the process to ensure that we learn what characteristics they’d like to see in the next assistant superintendent of instruction.

We have posted the position on the APS and CASE Web sites.  A committee that includes principals, APS leadership team members, the AEA president and representatives from the Divisions of Instruction and Human Resources will interview candidates.

Together we will support staff, students, parents and our community and we will do what is best for students and their academic success.