7
“Implementation of the Common
Core Standards and the PARCC
Assessment are the biggest
challenges.
We have been planning for this for over a year and
hope it goes smoothly.”
Tim Buss
Wabash District 348
Wabash Valley Region
“The biggest
challenge I see
for this coming year is not one of the
specific legal or technical issues we face
with increasing regularity, but the
challenge of keeping our school
community focused on the positive
attributes of our educational
system. While we always take a hard look
at areas we need to improve on, and
develop plans for those improvements, I
believe the glass is half full and we need to
be proud of our students, staff and
families.
We are a popular, and too often easy,
target for those that want to blame schools
for anything they are concerned about, and
we need to remind them that we know
what we are doing and that good things
are going on in our schools.
“I plan to address this with consistent
regular communication to our community
in a variety of ways about the good things
happening in our schools.”
Dr. John Correll
Salt Creek 48
Du Page
Region
New school year brings challenges
IASA superintendents offer their views
“Our biggest challenge for this
year is keeping up on all of
the new requirements — Common
Core, new teacher evaluation systems, new reporting
systems from the state, etc. I truly feel like there is not
enough time in the day to do everything that is being
asked of our teachers, schools, and districts. “How to
address it? I can’t create time. I can only work with the
time I have, keep my staff calm, and hope that my
administrators and teachers don’t go crazy in the
process of addressing everything that is being asked of
them. I am starting to see burnout in even my very
youngest teachers, and it is very concerning.”
For this “Back to School” issue of
Leadership Matters,
we posed a two-part question to superintendents
who are serving on the IASA Board of Directors. The questions were:
What do you see as the biggest challenge heading into the new school year? And
How do you plan to address that challenge?
The responses we received covered a variety of topics and are listed below and on the following pages.
“My challenge is to maintain focus on our local goals
and real reform in a time of many distractions.
I remind myself that I was hired to lead. Each day I
give the distractions their due, set them aside, and
then bring myself back to the real work of
concentrating on teaching and learning in our district.
It would be possible to fill my days doing what others say is important. My job is to
concentrate on the work that will best serve our students' needs as we move forward toward our district's
goals.”
Dr. Jonathan Heerboth
West Prairie CU 103
Western Region
Paula Hawley
Pikeland Community
Unit District 10
Two Rivers Region
