Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk prioritizes staffing, and math and reading skills

Entering his second year as Knox County Schools superintendent, Jon Rysewyk has stiff challenges ahead to fix some deep-seated problems: chronic student absenteeism, a weak rating from the state, and lots of jobs to fill among teachers and staff.

"I feel like we're just getting started," Rysewyk told Knox News in an exclusive sit-down interview this month. "There's so many opportunities and we continue to challenge ourselves. We want to get comfortable with being uncomfortable."

Rysewyk hasn't required a lot of time to get up to speed on Knox County. He started as a teaching intern at Bearden High School in 1998 and worked there as a science teacher, department head and assistant principal.

He then spent two years as a teacher at an Oliver Springs school, before he was hired in 2004 as the assistant principal at Fulton High School. After four years in that role, he was promoted to the principal, a post he filled for four years.

Rysewyk then spent one year working as the supervisor of secondary education and then another year as the executive director of innovation and school improvement, and left in 2014 to become the founding director of Emerald Academy, Knox County's first and so far, the only charter school, which opened in 2015.

He returned to KCS in 2017 as the assistant superintendent and chief academic officer, and took over the top job in 2022 when Bob Thomas retired.

Rysewyk talked at length with Knox News about how he plans to build on the district's strengths, shore up its weaknesses and press ahead with a reorganization plan that he says will blaze a path to success for students and schools.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Knox County Schools is designated as “in need of improvement” by the state. Achievement grades across the board are low. What immediate actions have you taken to ensure better outcomes, and what are the longer-term plans?

Where we struggled this year was around chronic absenteeism. Compared to Rutherford County, Shelby County, metro Nashville and Hamilton County, we typically rank first or second in most of the math and reading schools.

But, with that said, there's a whole lot we need to do to improve.

What's gotten the most attention this year is the third-grade proficiency levels. Up until third grade, students are learning how to read and so they rely on other people for their their knowledge. Once they get to third grade and learn how to read, they're obtaining knowledge on their own and that's where you see that exponential growth happen.

Knoxville is growing and what we're seeing is five of ten jobs coming forward are in STEM-related fields. To boost student success, we have added tutors with the help of ESSER funds into our elementary grades, especially around reading to try to help in small group settings. We continue to invest in high-quality instructional materials. We're really focusing on pre-K students and we also have a bigger investment in pre-K in this budget cycle.

What schools to you are at the top of your priority list for improvement? Austin-East, Green Magnet, Maynard Elementary and Vine Magnet Middle were on the list last year.

Region Five, which includes some of these schools, has had inconsistent performance over the years. What we believe is that those communities very strongly want strong schools there. They want academic rigor there and they want to keep their students in those schools and be able to have a future for them.

We reorganized the district's schools with a new approach. We were divided by high schools, middle schools and elementary schools, and it became very easy to say, 'Reading is an elementary problem' and 'Graduation is a high school problem.' What we're doing now is we have elementary principals thinking about graduation and high school principals thinking about third-grade reading.

For Region Five, we've been working with the community on a five-year strategic plan and we will have a rollout of that happen sometime in May. I do think that's what's been lacking, as a guy who was a principal in one of those schools, is a longer vision that outlives a current leader. That's what you'll see in this plan.

How do you plan to bridge that staffing gap and have a fully staffed district? And how quickly can the public expect to see that achieved?

One thing we've done this year is we launched a talent acquisition branch of our Human Resources team.

The landscape isn't the same. You can't just rely on going to job fairs at different schools and giving out swag. We're trying to come up with nontraditional ways to recruit. We've seen success with programs like Grow Your Own, which is taking educational assistants who do a great job every day and offering them a path to licensure and becoming a teacher.

We're also looking into tapping in our high school students who show an aptitude for teaching. We’ve launched our own — we’re one of two districts that have an education prep provider program. That's a big deal because only Rutherford County and Knox County offer that.

Long term, we could continue to add onto our ability to certify teachers, especially in special education and math. We don't want to grow too fast. We want to make sure we have the right programming to do that. If there are people who live in Knoxville and care about the school system, and we have a lot of people who do, we want to help build a pathway for them. We think some future teachers may already live here.

We also continue to work on teacher compensation in this budget we're proposing moving forward. We're proposing a 4% raise for teachers in this budget. There's also a 12% increase for other positions.

We are also looking to do a salary study and are close to finalizing a vendor for that. So that process will inform next year's budget.

One of the criticisms we hear is about communication in crisis situations like the intentional gas leak at Hardin Valley Academy. Have you thought about or implemented new ways to convey more information more quickly in those situations, and what would those be?

I think we do try to communicate well. We're always looking for ways to continue improving and to do that better. I think sometimes people are very niched in what they want to hear, what answer they want or when they want that, and we try to be as fair and transparent as we can. That's been very important to us.

Going to a regional structure helps us respond better. We have regional councils set up. We have teacher and family regional councils and they meet four times a year and they talk about topics that are important to that geographic region. We do a weekly video message and do some highlights on that.

With the most recent situation at Hardin Valley, we were out until late that night putting things out. It's important for us that folks trust that we're going to tell them the truth. Sometimes, we're not able to release all the information during open investigations and we understand that frustrates people sometimes. But, we just have to allow the process to play out. Our commitment is to bring transparency as soon as we can so that people have the answers to the questions.

Parents of students with special education needs have felt isolated by the district since long before you took over. What are you doing immediately and long-term to address those concerns raised by an array of parents?

We are looking at our protocols, practices and procedures. We have a special education survey that is out now and we've gotten a lot of responses from that. Our next step for that is that we will hold focus groups by regions to be able to dig a little deeper.

We also recently opened an educator portal where we’re asking teachers two questions. The first one is what ideas do you have to help us get better and then what are current things we're doing that you think we could be better at.

I'll also soon be announcing a task force of seven to ten members that will be made up of families. Our goal is to receive recommendations from families of students who receive special education services, and then we are going to process those and then come with some concrete actionable steps that we can bring to the public.

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What is the district’s biggest challenge this coming year?

We have lots of opportunities, I think, for improvement.

Some of those key areas are third-grade reading and what we need to do there. We're trying to diagnose and understand why students are not performing at third-grade level. We're doing a pilot run with this budget cycle, if the board approves it, wherein we're adding interventionalists for academics and student behavior.

We need to make sure we have the right interventions in and that we’re intervening early to try to get folks back on track so that they can stay in the classroom and learn.

What has been the district’s biggest achievement since you started?

I feel like we're just getting started. There's so many opportunities and we continue to challenge ourselves. We want to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Our priority areas are great educators and algebra and English skills.

Our 865 Academies is a great project that really was born out of assessing if are preparing the next generation of the workforce and the citizens that are going to be here.

865 Academies: All you need to know Knox County Schools freshmen will have a reimagined high school experience. Here's what to expect

It's about preparing students for the next thing when they walk across the stage. I think 865 Academies is going to pay huge dividends for our graduates when they leave. They'll know what they want to do or don't want to do, and both are valuable.

I'm even asking elementary principals to show me how they're starting to expose students to careers.

You announced four priorities for the district last year: Excellence in foundational skills, particularly literacy and math; providing great educators in every school; career empowerment and preparation; success for every student. Have the district's priorities changed since last year?

Our priorities haven't changed and I don't anticipate them changing for a very long time. We cannot do anything without great educators and career empowerment for every student. We're focused on success for every student. Some of our practices may change as we learn more. But, as long as I am here, I don't see our full priorities changing.

More: Knox County Schools offers opportunity and excellence for all students | Opinion

How do you measure success as an educator?

Assessments with ACT, reading and proficiency levels give us good information. Preparedness for jobs, being collaborative, growth mindset, community values and being life-long learners are measures of student success.

Areena Arora, data and investigative reporter for Knox News, can be reached by email at areena.arora@knoxnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @AreenaArora.

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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Superintendent Jon Rysewyk lays out vision for Knox County Schools