TPS Superintendent Romules Durant has some Big Ideas.
Mind you, this is a man perfectly fit for the job. So perfect, in fact, that it’s a wonder the TPS School Board ever landed him in the first place. He was born and bred in Toledo, went to TPS schools. He walked on to the UT football team and won a scholly to complete his studies. He now has a PhD, having done research into minority student achievement gaps in urban settings.
He’s been a TPS student, teacher, and school principal. He knows the data, and how it can be used to drive curricular improvement. But he’s not just a numbers nerd. He’s passionate, focused, and a whirlwind of boundless energy. He seems to be everywhere at once, rallying every segment of the community behind the public school system.
He wears well-tailored suits and matches them with shirts emblazoned with “TPS” on the collars and cuffs. He truly believes in the potential of every TPS student, no matter how challenging their personal situations. Prior to rising to the Superintendency, he started student groups that have morphed into the current Young Men and Young Women of Excellence, providing young folks with a place to belong as an alternative to gangs on the streets.
He has faith in the possibility that the public schools provide opportunity to every child that walks through their doors. Opportunity to rise above the barriers, opportunity to become whatever young people can dream of being.
Sound a bit too idealistic in this jaded, cynical age? Perhaps. But we have every confidence that if anyone can pull it off, if only through the sheer force of individual will, it’s Dr. Durant.
Open window
Now come the Big Ideas. See, it’s tough being the face of the franchise, when your team is underfunded and too often under-appreciated. The average tenure of an urban Superintendent is around three and a half years, and if that seems short, you should know it is up from under two and a half just fifteen years ago.
A new Supe is a breath of fresh air, a renewal of hope. But the shine comes off the berry pretty quickly if the scores don’t go up, if discipline doesn’t improve, if things don’t turn around overnight. It’s a short honeymoon, a brief window where anything the Supe proposes gets support. The window will close soon enough, and the vultures will begin to circle if it looks like more of the same ol’ results.
Think back to the late Nineties, when Supe Merrill Grant left town after burning multiple bridges. The new Superintendent then was Dr. Eugene Sanders, a BGSU prof with a background in research focused on urban school achievement. He rolled out his big ideas in short order. Single-gendered elementary academies. School uniforms. District-wide magnet schools for specialized academic programs. A specialized high school in collaboration with UT to allow students to begin the transition to the world of college education.
The rest of his tenure consisted of building on those models. He raised the District’s state report card ranking and graduation rates, and improved the standing of the school system in the larger community.
Here we are again, leaving the holding pattern tenure of Jerome Pecko with a new Superintendent. Dr. Durant has a few months to roll out the big plans. And here they are.
Single-gendered high schools. Revive a centralized vocational high school, a la the former Macomber, to allow students to begin the transition to the world of work.
Frankly this sounds like Sanders 2.0. As in, the next steps that Sanders might have taken if he hadn’t rushed off to a fat pay raise by taking over the Cleveland schools.
Building for success
Only this time around there are some Big Problems in the way of the Big Ideas. TPS just finished its Building for Success program, rebuilding or refurbishing all the District’s assets while demolishing most of those deemed surplus. That means TPS doesn’t own Macomber anymore. TPS also doesn’t own any obvious replacement locations, given the need for large shop equipment in large shop spaces. Plus the vocational programs have been farmed out across the District in so-called Skill Centers. Plus the rebuilding of such a program in one spot would likely cost millions of dollars the District probably doesn’t have.
A similar problem faces the single-gender high school idea. Would existing buildings be converted? That’s how Sanders started Stewart and Lincoln (now King) academies. But converting any existing high school would probably draw howls of protest.
TPS definitely has excess space. Scott High School was renovated at a cost of over $40 million, and now is at something like one fifth capacity. TPS also owns the former Riverside Hospital, riddled with asbestos and falling apart. Will these spots get some loving repurposing?
T-Town is used to Big Ideas. We have lots of lovely artist’s renderings. What we need are Big Results. The devil, as they say, is always in the details.
We’re rootin’ fer ya, Dr. Durant. But we’re waiting to see the meat on those Big Idea bones. The clock is ticking.
