After serving as Magnolia ISD’s deputy superintendent, Jason Bullock was named superintendent in mid-April following the retirement of outgoing Superintendent Todd Stephens.

Bullock said his career in education started in Central Texas as a high school history teacher, where he then became principal at Temple High School. With MISD for 13 years, he served as assistant superintendent until 2020 when he was named deputy superintendent.

What are your short- and long-term priorities for the district?

I think the first thing is to continue to provide the opportunities for academic and extracurricular success that our kids have been provided over the last several years. We want to continue to put great teachers in front of kids from a challenge standpoint. We have growth, which presents opportunities and challenges, so managing growth in a way that still hangs on to the culture of who we are as a district will be one of our focuses this year. ... We have more families with kids choosing Magnolia ISD and moving here. And so our challenge is to continue to provide the high level of service to our community and our kids that we have while welcoming all the growth.

What are the biggest issues facing Magnolia ISD right now?

Our biggest issue is an issue that many districts face, which is the funding issue and how to pay our teachers in a way that keeps up with inflation when the state has not been forthcoming with increasing the basic allotment. It is a challenge for us, especially as a district that wants to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We are running a balanced budget and expect to approve a balanced budget again heading into this next school year, but maintaining a balanced budget and finding ways to pay competitive salaries for teachers is a huge challenge. So exploring funding options going forward so that we can increase teacher pay will be a major focus of the things we look at this year.

How does the district plan to prepare for the expected growth and development coming to the district in the next 10 years?

We have a demographer that works with us to help us understand how quickly more kids are going to arrive in the district. We've worked out good relationships with builders and developers so we understand what their plans are. I think the big thing that we can do there is to just not be surprised by how fast growth gets here. Our community has always been willing to see when growth has gotten here, and it's time to support the building of new schools to accommodate more kids. We were fortunate, just in this last bond election in 2022 [that] our community supported the need for schools because we were able to demonstrate the numbers that showed that it was time for that. It's always better to be a little bit in front of that growth than to fall behind it and play catch-up.

What do you hope to see come out of the next Texas Legislature session, specifically as it relates to education issues such as funding?

What we hope to see is an increase in funding for K through 12 public education here in Texas. We would welcome the Legislature providing some funds for us to help not only our teachers but our ... staff and the employees in our district who take care of our kids, to increase their pay to keep up with inflation. Inflation hits everybody, the people who work in the school district as well, and yet the state has not increased the funding for this since 2019, so that's what we would hope. We would hope that they would change that and would use some of the tax dollars that they have at the state level to support those that work in public education.

What would you say sets MISD apart from other districts?

I think it's our people. We have a community that believes in the schools that are here and supports our schools and our teachers. We've been able to attract great teachers and put them in front of our kids. Our biggest strength is a lot of the stability we've had. We have a school board that has a common purpose for providing the kind of schools that our community expects, and it's what allows us to do the job that we do.