“We purchased a little cottage right next door to where my daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law live in Orange Village, Ohio, where I was superintendent,” said Al Roberts in a recent interview with Wednesday Journal.
On Jan. 6, Roberts announced his decision to retire as District 97 superintendent, citing his family as the main motivator. He will stay on until the end of this academic year. According to school board member Peter Traczyk, the board wasn’t surprised.
“He had given us some indication that he was considering it,” Traczyk said. “But until a formal announcement was made, he can’t act on it.”
Roberts said he was due to retire in June 2016, but sometime in 2014 he went to the board and asked that he be released earlier so he could spend more time with his family.
Traczyk said there will be a fuller discussion of next steps, such as searching for Roberts’ replacement and solidifying a timeline for the hiring process, in the days ahead.
Neither Roberts nor Traczyk gave any hints that the superintendent’s decision to retire was influenced by factors other than his family.
In September 2013, the board offered him a three-year contract extension, along with a 2 percent raise. Roberts will retire with another year left on that contract.
Pondering his legacy
When asked what he wanted people to remember most about his five-year tenure at D97, the outgoing administrator offered a litany of achievements, but began by praising his supporting influences.
“No man is an island,” Roberts said. “No one person can successfully lead a school district in this day and age. I saw [the district’s] successes as being our success, not mine. We have a school board that is absolutely committed to student success. I maintained a central office made up of sensitive, caring leaders. “
“And we get good kids to start with. This is a community that has parents and guardians who demand excellence and are willing to get involved. When those ingredients come together, how can you go wrong?”
Among those team wins, Roberts counted the district’s implementation of an International Baccalaureate (IB) program at the middle schools. He said he expects the IB program to be fully authorized by spring of this year.
“IB is the gold standard nowadays,” he said.
But it was not always smooth sailing, Roberts acknowledged. One of the biggest challenges at the beginning of his tenure entailed centralizing district resources and, in turn, helping to equalize the quality of education throughout the district.
“When I arrived, the district had a strong history of being a site-based district,” Roberts said, noting that each school was something of an island in terms of resources.
“I thought we needed to pull together and that standards needed to be the same,” he said. “That way, a student going to any school in the district would receive a similar education.”
“The challenge is always how to increase student achievement for all kids, not just some kids,” Roberts said. “That was probably the biggest challenge overall — trying to help us become a school system rather than a system of schools.”
In addition to centralizing the district, Roberts said he has some other policies he’d like to see maintained well after he settles into his cottage in Ohio.
“We’ve done a lot with more meaningful staff development,” he said. “The board has been both a mover and a supporter of finding ways to use data to direct instruction, not just inform us. I’ve also worked hard with my administrative team to ensure that the focus is on kids first. One thing I think is important as a strategic focus is that each person considers her own contribution to student success — whether custodial, clerical, administrative, teaching, all of the jobs we do in District 97 should focus on how we’re contributing to the success of students.
“In addition, I’d like to see the relationships maintained,” Roberts said. “When I arrived, we were being sued by District 200. Since then, Supt. [Steve] Isoye and District 90 Supt. [Edward] Condon have forged a good relationship. We hope the new superintendent will have the same good relationship with his or her fellow superintendents.”