Get to know Perry Township's new superintendent
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the name of a school in Perry Township. The school is Mary Bryan Elementary.
Perry Township’s new superintendent, Patrick Spray, is coming on as leader of the southside Indianapolis school district but is no stranger to being a superintendent.
Spray started his role in Indianapolis’s third-largest school district earlier this month but before that was the superintendent in the Clark-Pleasant Community School district for the past 10 years.
He also has served as assistant superintendent at Plainfield Community Schools, principal at Mill Creek West Elementary and assistant principal at Chapelwood Elementary in Wayne Township.
Spray's new district is home to a little more than 16,000 students, including the highest percentage of English-language learners out of Marion County’s 11 school districts.
He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Indianapolis, a master's in education administration from Butler University and a doctorate from Indiana State University.
IndyStar spoke with Spray on topics including his goals as superintendent, new elementary school boundaries, the relationship with the Burmese community and school safety. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.
More on Spray: Perry Township schools choose Clark-Pleasant leader for superintendent
Why Spray wanted to come to Perry
Q: Why did you want to leave nearby Clark-Pleasant to be superintendent of Perry Township schools?
A: That "why" goes back to my undergrad at the University of Indianapolis. The Mary Bryan School was one that I spent a little bit of time and some field experience with and just always had a great impression of the quality and the pride that the staff has with the school corporation. I've had experience in rural school districts, suburban, as well as urban school districts. When this position came available, I reflected on my first experiences with Perry Township and each time I've had an opportunity to talk with either parents or administrators or teachers, they've always had really great things to say. Being a larger school corporation, an urban school corporation, had a lot of draw as well.
Q: In what way did it have that draw for you?
A: I've always felt like no matter what school corporation you're in, what kids you're working with, kids are kids and parents always want what's best for their kids. Sometimes the opportunities children have is the variable. What we can do in an urban school corporation to give those experiences is something that really is a passion for me. With kids who may struggle either financially or with the English language or whatever that is, and so working with people who have that same passion is important.
Lessons learned as superintendent
Q: With all of your past experience as superintendent in Clark-Pleasant, what is something you’ve learned during your time there that you hope to carry over?
A: One of the biggest things that I've learned in leadership is, go slow to go fast. Take some time to listen, to understand, to ask a lot of questions and figure out ways that you can best support the educators in the classrooms and that's really kind of what I've been about is that we've got to understand where the important work takes place. Not that any particular group is not important because the school corporation is a big living organism and it takes a lot of systems within that organism to make it work. But certainly the most important thing is that our students learn and the people who are in front of that every single day are the teachers and the instructional staff. We're helpers. I feel like the superintendent is the leader but a lot of my time is kind of that servant leader, and that helper, and making sure we have things in place, whether that's transportation systems food service, that our operations are going well that we have safe learning environments, so that the teachers can do their job and really support the learners and the families.
Q: What are some goals you have for your time here and what do you hope to accomplish as superintendent?
A: One of the biggest things is certainly academic achievement. We want our kids to achieve and to do well in what comes next, whether that's the kindergarten student, wanting them to do well in first grade, or the elementary student, want them to do well in middle school, the high school student, we want them to be able to be prepared for what comes after high school with college and careers.
Post-COVID challenges and Burmese students
Q: What are some of the upcoming challenges you foresee having to handle by taking on this role, or what are the challenges you see now in this “post-COVID” education world, that you would like to tackle?
A: Something that we see in education right now is a pipeline shortage for educators. We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to get as many people into that pipeline, keep them in the field, but also do what we can to kind of help mitigate some of the negativity about public education and celebrate the things that are really going well. Sometimes that means we have to adjust what we're doing. At the high school level, we are constantly trying to adjust to meet the needs of the job market and to meet the needs of student interest, and especially with college and careers.
Q: Perry Township was recently recognized for its work with Burmese refugee students and for helping English language learners here. How do you plan to keep fostering that relationship?
A: From my understanding of the way Perry Township approaches the educational process is really working with all students in meeting the needs of all students. Certainly, the Burmese and Chin population and the immigrant population grew very rapidly in Perry Township and the teachers and the administration had to respond quickly. So we’ve really become a model for how we work with immigrant families, but also with our students who are language learners, English language learners. So at one point in time it might be Chin or Burmese families, it might be students from India or students coming from the Congo, and so it's asking how do we work with those kids as well as our other learners at the same time.
More on Perry Township: Burkhart Elementary school finalist for 'World's Best School' prize
New elementary school boundary changes
Q: This school year your new elementary school boundaries will be in place. How is that implementation going so far?
A: Anytime you start a school year, no matter whether you've had those established boundaries for years and years, the first couple of days, we're all still trying to get used to the school system. We’ll have late buses, every school district has late buses for the first several days and several weeks. A big part of that is the level of care that we put forth to make sure kids are safe and getting to where they're supposed to be. That's one of the big components as we lead up to the school year, is communicating about if we’re running a little bit slow or a little bit late. We want to make sure the elementary kids get on the right bus to get off at the right place. When we get in a hurry in those first few days that can really spell disaster in some different situations.
Q: Has the change in boundaries helped with the transportation and bus route issues you were dealing with in the past?
A: The geographic area that an elementary bus will cover this year is much smaller, so that tightness should help with route time and the amount of time kids are on the bus. You won't have elementary school buses crossing the entire township, so that will cut some of that travel time from over an hour to much less time. Our high school routes and middle school routes are remaining pretty much unchanged though.
Q: Have you seen a lot of families leave the district because of that elementary change?
A: No, we haven’t gotten that sense. Our enrollment numbers, even though they are very preliminary this time of year, haven’t shown a marked difference in those enrollment numbers.
ILEARN results and school safety
Q: Also starting this year high schoolers will see a new AI weapons detection system when they walk in every day. How confident are you that it will be successful in detecting weapons?
A: Yes, I think it will work, and one of the things when you look at these systems is not just what you find. It’s what you deter from coming into the schools. I would also say that school safety is everybody’s responsibility − the parents, the kids, our staff − as well as the technology that we implement. That’s why we say a lot of time with our kids if you see something say something.
Q: The newest ILEARN results were released right before we started this interview and it showed that Perry Township's overall proficiency rate has dropped from last year. What do you want to do to combat that slide?
A: Anytime we look at data, we need to take some time to digest it and see how it aligns to what our goals were last year and how do those goals need to change. Perry Township has been involved with the National Institute of Excellence in Teaching for a number of years and has great processes to support and train teachers with scientifically based instructional models. So it's getting back to those groups of coaches, master teachers and building administrators and really talking specifically about their students and that data, because we do want to make sure we're looking at that data through the lens of individual students.
More on ILEARN 2023 results: Marion County schools' ILEARN scores improve slightly in math, remain steady in English
Q: The I-READ3 results will be released next month and getting schools on track with the science of reading is a big topic now. Are Perry schools all already doing the science of reading?
A: Yes, and I would say that the science of reading is pretty well established in a lot of school districts across the state of Indiana. There's been a lot of work with our professional teachers about what reading instruction is most effective and scientifically based. I will admit that there was a period of time through the reading wars of whole language versus phonics base that schools got off track a bit. But I think there's a lot of really good work taking place.
Contact the reporter at 317-618-5807 or CBeck@gannett.com.
This story is made possible by Report for America and Glick Philanthropies. As part of its work in Marion County, Glick Philanthropies partners with organizations focused on closing access and achievement gaps in education.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: New Perry Township superintendent: Meet Patrick Spray
