[caption id="attachment_92242" align="alignright" width="220"] Fred Brent celebrated his one-year anniversary as superintendent in June.[/caption] Fred Brent celebrated his first anniversary as superintendent of Georgetown ISD in June. He first became a superintendent in Anderson-Shiro CISD in Grimes County, then served as superintendent in Alvin ISD. Brent has a doctorate in educational leadership from Texas A&M University, and he served as a teacher and a high school baseball coach prior to becoming a superintendent. He said his previous experience in both a smaller district and a fast-growing district helped prepare him for his role leading GISD. Prior to Brent’s arrival, the GISD board of trustees adopted a five-year strategic plan—a report detailing the community’s vision for the students and staff in the district. The plan listed specific action steps and measurable goals to develop a custom design for instruction, desirable qualities of students and a timeline for implementation, which Brent said gave him direction in his new position. “It was very clear to me as a superintendent that this is our plan, this is what our community wants. [They asked,] ‘Now, are you up for this work?’” he said. “And I said, ‘Absolutely.’” Brent said one of the most critical pieces of the strategic plan centers on a new learner profile, which was created by gathering input from parents, students, teachers, business leaders and community members to determine desired skills and characteristics of a GISD graduate. The board of trustees approved the new model during an Aug. 17 board meeting. “Now we are working through the strategic plan, and we’re excited about the direction we see ourselves going,” Brent said.

What is the district’s focus for the 2015-16 school year?

What we’re focusing on this upcoming school year is going back to the teaching and learning process and writing the curriculum management plan that we’ll be designing with our staff. To customize and foster innovation you’ve got to have positive relationships with kids, and you have to design engaging work. It’s important that with our staff we not get caught up in chasing programs, that we focus on knowing who your kids are every day, and shaking their hands at the door. A kid needs to care about what you think, they need to respect you and you need to respect them, and that’s when you can offer the connectivity to get to higher levels of engagement.

How has your first year as superintendent been?

It’s challenging to speak to how much I truly love being in Georgetown because oftentimes people think I’m giving a spiel about how great Georgetown is, but it’s true. It’s hard to put into perspective what the superintendent seat is like and it’s a very challenging position, but it’s the work I love. And I feel like all the work I’ve ever done in my past has led me and prepared me to be in Georgetown. My previous superintendent experiences have been from very small schools to larger fast-growth schools, and Georgetown is dealing with both. Our job is to take care of the needs of that community as it grows. So we need to be what Georgetown needs us to be as a school district. And I’ve just absolutely fallen in love with this place. My children love it. It’s the right place for my family. I jokingly have told people it’s like putting on a comfortable pair of jeans every day you go to work—you just feel good about being here.

What goals have you and district leadership been working toward in the district’s strategic plan?

The strategic plan had specific points in there, so we focused on some of the first things. For example, we did the curriculum assessment, which was critical to discovering where we needed to go and to bring about the specific teaching and learning strategies in the strategic plan. We focused on things like staffing plans and models to refine how we staff and make sure that we’re very targeted with our resources so that we can maximize the budget that we have. The board has created certain positions in the district to focus on advancing teaching and learning. We talk about our mindset of being a learning organization—that’s what we are as a district—and we need to model learning for our kids. … One of my greatest concerns is adult learning, in that we must be focused on being what our kids need us to be, and as their needs change, some of the things that we do in the classroom might need to change to support their needs. Those key areas, making sure we are staffing equitably, that we’re able to give the raises that we need to give, that we did the curriculum assessment, and that we’re focused on professional learning, those were the most critical areas we’ve looked at so far, and they’ve gone very well.

How has the district been utilizing technology in the classroom?

Over the years across the board, obviously, technology is changing everything. One of our greatest challenges in the classroom is how do we make that technology an effective tool for learning. Before you can [put technology in the hands of students], you have to make sure your staff has adequate training and adequate resources. One of the things we worked through in the strategic plan is focusing on and creating a long-range technology plan where we’ve assessed where we are and where we need to go in teaching and learning. I’d say we are doing all we can with what we have, but we also understand that technology must be more robust in Georgetown ISD, whether it’s through the network capacity and the technology infrastructure to teacher learning with technology so that it impacts student learning.