What is Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk focusing on in his third year?
In Superintendent Jon Rysewyk's three years leading Knox County Schools, the district improved its academic ranking, implemented historic raises and worked to unify its messaging.
He says the work is a focus on foundational skills and investing in people.
Rysewyk, 51, has been an educator since he started his career as a teaching intern at Bearden High School in 1998. He has taught biology, ecology and physical sciences. He has experience in administrative positions, as the principal of Fulton High School and as the director of the district's first charter school, Emerald Academy.
The challenges are significant in a district with deep-seated inequities built up over decades, and he is tackling them one by one.
Knox County Schools' chronic student absenteeism rate - defined as students who miss 10% or more of school days in a given year - shrunk by 6% since last year. The local rate is 21% and well below the national rate.
Rysewyk is in the midst of making changes to the district's most economically challenged schools in Region 5. His team developed a roadmap for improvement and consistently informs parents about improvements and areas that are stuck in the status quo.
Working alongside the elected school board, Rysewyk has directed his staff to fix problems in special education. He hired an administrator to work as an improvement officer and enacted a "student-first" mindset among staffers after many parents united to say their kids weren't getting the education they deserved.
Rysewyk talked exclusively with Knox News about his plans for the coming year as he continues to be guided by his four established priorities: excellence in foundational skills, great educators in each school, career empowerment and preparation, and success for every student.
"Success for every student," especially, is his north star.
This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Knox County Schools improved its state designation from 'in need of improvement' to 'satisfactory.' On top of that improvement, 24 schools were listed in the reward schools category. What helped the district improve its standing?
I'll start with our people. That's where it all begins, with the leadership at each school. We've really tried to hone down into what impacts student outcomes and it always gets back to the four priorities. There's a lot of things you could do in kindergarten through fifth grade, but you've got to focus on foundational skills. That's where you teach students how to read. That's where we embrace the science of reading. That's where we do interventions and where we have high quality instructional materials.
We have regional teams and principals trained to look into proper implementation of the curriculum. You could purchase curriculum that's high quality and it can just sit in a box or you could use it and really spend time helping teachers unpack that. We have professional learning communities where they get together and plan.
At the end of the school year, we look at students' foundational skill gaps and then we decide what intervention and tutoring supports are needed to catch students in time and close those gaps.
Middle school math is one area where we haven't made as big gains yet so that's a big focus area. We've landed on the right curriculum now, and now we have to ensure it is being used right and teachers have the support systems in place. We're focused on the right things.
School began last year with hundreds of staff vacancies. What concrete steps will you take this summer schools will be better staffed in August?
Vacancies are not unique to Knox County Schools. It's not unique to the education industry. We see lots of places right now where there's gaps in employment. It is a complex issue that probably is going to have multiple solutions to it.
There was a time when we had hundreds of candidates for every elementary school job. That's not the reality anymore. Job markets have shifted in the country and we're now looking at innovative new ways to fix that.
We're working on improving our response time. When someone shows interest we want to give them a path to the classroom. We want to cast a broader net, expanding our reach to folks who were in the military or retirees in other fields.
We have great relationships with colleges and universities. So we're looking at nontraditional ways and we're also focusing on retention of our current talent and the pay increase is part of that.
We want to capitalize on the benefits Knox County has to offer when we recruit from outside the county. We continue to have these conversations. We know we have a shortage of educational assistants and we've contracted for that. We continue to hire our own but we also have contracts to fill in immediate gaps.
I think everything is on the table to make sure we have people in front of our students because it does impact them.
The district recently released some student discipline data and you vowed to close racial gaps in punishment. How will you achieve that?
It's a complex issue. Our vow is not a new vow, it's a vow renewal. It's work that we have been doing for the past 10 years.
What we do know from the data that is economic disadvantage causes the biggest discrepancy when you look at achievement for students and discipline. There are challenges for students who live in transitionary homes, and poverty is a big piece, too.
We have everything from Title I to how we do staffing ratios differently for schools that have a higher at-risk population. We have a school culture department that monitors daily data and provides training. Our restorative practices are important, too. We can't assume every student just knows how to behave, so we spend time communicating our expectations clearly with families.
But we also don't shy away from the fact that there are consequences. That's a part of the process. We don't know when in this journey the light bulb goes on for kids. Sometimes it's just enough to say here's what we expect and they do great and some students will test those boundaries for different reasons. For all of our students, we believe in grace. How do we restore them back? Because our ultimate goal is to get them to graduate. There isn't one try, two tries or three tries; there are unlimited tries because we have to raise the next generation.
There's no new things to announce in that space. We're just going to keep on doing what we're doing.
Note: Black students, students with disabilities and students from families with lower incomes have been suspended at nearly twice the rate or higher in every year since 2018 compared to Knox County Schools students as a whole, according to data released by the district in March, following community demands.
What are your thoughts on committing to more transparency on discipline data?
Our goal is to release data every semester.
What do you think of disparities in the district's public schools created as a result of private fundraising efforts? Is there a more equitable way to distribute resources?
Public schools are primarily funded by tax dollars. Parents being part of that process is a part of it. People try to support schools where they can. Every school that I'm aware of has means by which they try to offset that. Some may get federal dollars like Title I. Other dollars come from foundations or fundraisers.
The important thing for me is that we don't restrict students of those opportunities to play a sport, or to be in a band or in a drama team.
Knoxville is a very generous community. There's a lot of organizations in the nonprofit area that their primary focus is supporting our center city schools.
Is the way we get there for every student the same? I would say no, but are all the layers there for that. I would say Knoxville does a pretty good job of trying to take care of students.
Last year, the district launched two major initiatives: the Region 5 improvement plan and a special education overhaul. What progress has been made in those areas?
The philosophy behind all our initiatives remains the same. Everything will revolve around the four philosophies for as long as I'm here.
We look at it this way: Everyone is working hard, but are we doing the right work? That's what drove our budget development process, too, this year.
In special education, building partnerships and creating awareness. We continue to have the special education council. We have the private practitioners policy in place, too. It's not done, and it's not easy. It's not been without bumps and bruises.
I think our biggest advantage has been that we're willing to put some things on the table - not to appease people who have made noise or to work around the law - because it's the right thing for the student.
This past year has been a good year to put a system in place to look at whatever challenges are there. There's a request for proposal out right now for us to have a third party to do an analysis and then come out with a plan. We want a third party to come in and assess our weaknesses.
Same with Region 5. We looked at our weaknesses and Teach Knox came out of that. Right now we're doing a literacy deep dive into all elementary schools. We have a lot of focused energy behind a multidecade problem with Region 5 schools.
We discovered intervention time wasn't getting fully utilized in all of those schools. So we picked up a lot of hours by going back and working on master schedules. We continue to look at retention of teachers. We got some feedback from some of our schools on things that weren't helpful this year so we're asking them what would be the best move forward. There'll be some changes with how they use the extended contract times this year.
We did exploratory trips to Fairfax, Virginia, where there's an International Baccalaureate school that resembles demographics of what we see in our center city, so we're looking to see if that fits our schools' needs here.
For next year, principals in Region 5 will have a performance contract that clearly lays out expectations for what they need to meet for year two. It's not saying they're not doing the job now, but it's just a clear agreement between me and them.
Note: Some of the district's most challenged schools are grouped in Region 5, and last year administrators announced a new five-year plan to build success for students there. Similarly, administrators committed to forging change and supporting special education students.
International Baccalaureate is a globally recognized curriculum for students, in the vein of Advanced Placement courses.
Recently, the district has heard from groups concerned with books on gender, sex and race-related issues. How do you ensure school libraries have balance?
How do we look at our process and keep a continuous improvement mindset? The process that's in place has served the district and it's not a new one. The process was pretty balanced to start with and it included teachers, librarians, administrators, parents and student voice where appropriate. It served us well.
Even with that, we looked at where are we vulnerable, and two places that we came up with were purchases on the front-side and are there books that we can proactively look at.
How do we have a process prepurchase? We looked at a model to make sure books are screened prepurchasing so we can have multiple people agreeing on them. This would allow us to have deeper conversations and have multiple people agreeing on what's best.
Book challenges are not going away. It's been around for decades. It's just on a fever pitch right now. But we looked at - are there books that are hitting multiple lists to proactively review books that could have sensitive material in them. And what I like is that these school-level teams will have recommendations from a group of librarians from each region.
There are multiple avenues now. There's never going to be a single answer, but I applaud Knox County Schools' Academic Resources Supervisor Sarah Searles for her initiative.
What do you most need from the following stakeholders?
Students:
Their best effort. Ultimately what we see, being a dad myself, is that they're all similar. When you get to middle school, we need you to work with your teachers. We need you to have pride in your school.
In high school, be open. Be open to the guest speakers that come, be open to challenging yourself to things and be open to the job experiences and the visit to campuses.
Learn from the models that are in your school building, the custodians, the teachers and the principal. They care about you.
Teachers:
I would parallel them to a parent in some ways. Your job is to make sure that you're prepared and ready and you know your craft right, and we're blessed that we have a lot of teachers that do that.
You've also got to know your students and push them and get them comfortable with being uncomfortable. Recognize when your students need support.
If you're a teacher, you're not out there alone. We're a big family together of 9,000 people.
Local leaders:
Be involved and embrace what we're doing. We have a lot of business and political leaders locally who are involved. Our students are excited to learn from the business community and we have great partnerships with those groups. Engage with what's going on in the school.
We're all called to do the same thing and that's raising the next generation.
Parents:
Engage. You're welcome to be in here with us. Come along and be involved. We don't want to replace you at all as parents. We want there to be a continuation when the students leave the school. We want us all rowing our boats in the same direction.
What question would you ask yourself if you were conducting this interview?
I would probably ask what's next. If our administration only creates a new normal, then we're no different from those who have come before us.
We need to continue to innovate. Our greatness is not going to be in our expertise. It's going to be in our ability to move 95% of people in that.
So I can tell you what are some new things we're working on. We'll continue to try to develop leaders. This year we launched an executive leadership series and had professionals in the area including Bill Haslam give talks to our leaders in a Ted Talk format.
I want to look at middle schools. We've got a good grasp on high schools with 865 Academies and there's a big literacy push for elementary schools, but we haven't really defined the middle school space yet.
Is it an extension of elementary school or is it pre-high school? We need to make sure we have structures in place for middle schools.
I want to look at our alternative programming, too. We know traditional school works for most of our students, but not all of them. I want to look at our alternative and virtual schools to see what our best practices need to be in those places. Those are just some ideas I have.
What's the district's biggest challenge?
I will continue to say in an organization our size, we talk a lot about taking complex issues and simplifying things for every layer. For instance, when new laws are passed, what does it mean for our principals in schools?
We're trying to get everything we do from literacy to what we expect in 865 Academies in a way that simplifies things down to the very last layer.
We always have to be evolving. We always have to be looking for our blind spots.
What schools are at the top of your priority list for improvement?
All 91 are on my priority list. It goes back to a continuous improvement mindset.
You can look at schools that have historically performed well and schools that aren't performing as high. It's the same formula.
There's not one I worry about, but it's about getting consistency across all the schools in the district.
Before and after Superintendent Jon Rysewyk: Knox County Schools' progress in numbers
Here's a look at data points from before Rysewyk took over versus now to examine how the county's public schools are changing. All data is from the Tennessee Department of Education. Data from the 2020-2021 school year has intentionally been excluded to not skew numbers as a result of the pandemic.
District demographics
2019-2020 school year
Total students: 59,880
Percentage of economically disadvantaged students: 26%
Percentage of Students with limited English language proficiency: 7.8%
Percentage of Students with disabilities: 13.5%
Percentage of Black students: 16.7%
Percentage of Hispanic students: 10.7%
Percentage of white students: 68.9%
2022-2023 school year
Total students: 58,879
Percentage of economically disadvantaged students: 21%
Percentage of students with limited English language proficiency: 8%
Percentage of students with disabilities: 16%
Percentage of Black students: 17%
Percentage of Hispanic students: 13%
Percentage of white students: 66%
Chronic absenteeism
Measured by the number of students absent for 10% or more of instructional days in a school year. For the 2019-2020 school year, absenteeism was calculated up to March 20, 2020, when the pandemic started in the United States. The data below is for all students across all grade levels.
2019-2020 school year: 16.1%
2022-2023 school year: 21%
In-school suspensions
2019-2020 school year: 1,234
2022-2023 school year: Fewer than 10 students
Out of school suspensions
Measured as the number of students who are not allowed to attend school for fewer than 10 days and who remains on the school roll.
2019-2020 school year: 3,031
2022-2023 school year: 4,119
Total students expelled
Number of students not allowed to attend for more than 10 days and removed from the school roll during expulsion period.
2019-2020 school year: Fewer than 10
2022-2023 school year: Fewer than 10
Administrators and teachers' race and ethnicity
Administrators
2019-2020 school year:
Black: 12.1%
Hispanic: 0.4%
Two or more: 0.4%
Unidentified: 3.9%
White: 83.3%
2022-2023 school year:
Black: 13.7%
Hispanic: 0.7%
Two or more: 0.7%
Unidentified: 5.7%
White: 79.2%
Teachers
2019-2020 school year:
Black: 3.1%
Hispanic: 1.3%
Two or more: 0.7%
Unidentified: 1.8%
White: 92.5%
2022-2023 school year:
Black: 2.4%
Hispanic: 1.8%
Two or more: 10.6%
Unidentified: 2.3%
White: 82.4%
Graduation rate
This is the number of students who earned a regular high school diploma as a percentage of the total number of students in the cohort.
2019-2020 school year:
All students: 91%
Black students: 85.4%
Hispanic students: 81.3%
White students: 93.3%
Economically disadvantaged students: 81.4%
Students with disabilities: 73.4%
2022-2023 school year:
All students: 91.9%
Black students: 90.1%
Hispanic students: 84.9%
White students: 93.2%
Economically disadvantaged students: 83.7%
Students with disabilities: 75.8%
Teacher retention
Percentage of teachers retained from the year prior for all schools in the district.
2019-2020 school year: 88.7%
2022-2023 school year: 88.7%
Areena Arora, data and investigative reporter for Knox News, can be reached by email at areena.arora@knoxnews.com. Follow her on X @AreenaArora.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk on steady improvements
