The new school year is fast approaching, and kindergartners aren’t the only ones who will be adjusting to the Thompson School District.
Bret Heller, newly hired superintendent, began work the first of this month, and is in the midst of familiarizing himself with the district before students arrive for their first classes next month.
Heller took over the role from Marc Schaffer, the previous superintendent who had held the position since 2017. He said his main goal, something that he’s worked to achieve at his prior school districts, was to ensure that TSD was “a school system, not a system of schools,” emphasizing cohesion across the district while still respecting the individual solutions of each campus.
Sitting in his office Wednesday, already decorated with a charming mix of nerdy memorabilia like a Tardis, the phone booth used to travel through time in Doctor Who, and miniature football helmets, along with plenty of books on education, Heller said that his first two weeks have largely involved meeting staff, visiting schools and hearing from principals about the issues they face, and otherwise familiarizing himself with the day-to-day operations of the district.
“Lots of people wonder ‘what’s your vision, what are your goals?’” he said of those initial meetings. “And, fair! But it’s really early. Part of that is that I need to listen, I need to learn, I need to build connections and relationships and trust. A change at the superintendent level is a big change, and it can impact so many people. So a lot of folks are wondering what this means for them.”
One of the most consequential elements of TSD that he’s reckoning with is its size.
Heller’s last school district, The School Town of Munster in Indiana, had around 4,000 students across five schools. The one before that, West Ada School District in Idaho, was the largest in the state, serving 40,000 students across 57 schools.
TSD, serving around 15,000 students, was right in the middle of the two, he said.
“The challenges of a really big system is that it can be hard to build those connections,” he said. “I felt like over my career, I had been there long enough that I knew so many people across so many job categories, et cetera. Whereas in Munster, I knew everybody, right? It’s a tiny town, one school district that fed the entire town. I knew lots of students by name. There’s those two extremes. So I’m trying here in Thompson to find how to make the most out of the size that we have.”
It’s an exciting middle ground, he said. On the one hand, the connections that he described are easier to make in a district like TSD compared to West Ada, and on the other, scalability and efficiency are easier to accomplish in a district larger than his prior district in Indiana.
“I want connections to be at the core of what I do, what we do in the district, but also we can take advantage of our size for economies of scale, making sure we’re efficient in how we do business.”
Heller is still listening, but he is beginning to develop a vision for the district.
“The direction I see us needing to move, and this was the case in Munster, Indiana, and it was the case in the West Ada School District, is how do we both honor the individuality of the school campus, the culture and values of who they are, but also build these systems, so no matter which school your child attends, they’re getting a high quality education? You know what to expect, and you know that there are systems in place to make sure your child doesn’t fall through the cracks.”
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