He’s been on the job for a week, but he’s back in a familiar building. Prince George’s Co. public schools’ interim superintendent Shawn Joseph said his experience within the school system provides him some of the insight he needs to lead — even without a long-term commitment.
Joseph said his return to the school system came fast — he was named interim superintendent the same week he was first approached by the new county leadership.
“I just feel like the stars are aligned for us to really do some good things,” said Joseph during a sit-down with WTOP. “And so I thought, ‘It’s now or never.’”
There “wasn’t a whole lot of time to think,” he added. “It was just, ‘Are you gonna, or not?’ And, yeah, I mean, I prayed on it and felt like, ‘What do you have to lose?’”
Joseph’s initial priorities include a focus on school safety, staffing, transportation, and of course, academics. In some ways, the school system itself can do things to promote those improvements. But it also involves better and more collaboration with parents, which is also one of his stated goals.
“There’s been research for over 60 years now that talks about the fact that the schools that get results do a couple (of) things,” he said. “They have a safe environment. They’re safe.”
“The principal is clear about the instructional priority, and the staff are clear about the instructional priority,” he added. “And they work toward ensuring students meet standards. They’re schools that get parents actively engaged. We shouldn’t expect parents to teach their kids how to read, but we should expect parents to be able to address their kids if they’re coming in (and) tearing the school up, if they are coming in (and) not doing their homework, if they’re not eating, or are causing problems. We should expect parents to be partners.”
Knowing he’s under contract for one year, Joseph said he plans to search for some early wins to build confidence in the community.
“We’ve got to show this community that we can focus on something, and make it dramatically better and get some quick wins in the short term,” he explained. “We’re going to focus on safety. We’re going to focus on staffing. We’re going to focus on the transportation work. We’re going to focus on truancy. We’ve got to look at our academics.”
“In a year, if people feel like there are things that we can definitely say were better than they were a year ago, I define that as successful,” he added. “Will we get our bus driver (job vacancy) rate to zero, and we have every bus route covered and there’s just no problems in buses and, ‘Oh my God, for the first time, everything is perfect?’ Probably not. But can we measure whether it was better than last year? Yeah, that could be measured. And my goal is to just be clear about where it was last year and make sure we’re better this year.”
At the same time, Joseph believes the school system hasn’t done a good job of dismantling the narrative that things are bad in the county either. In his mind, perception doesn’t meet reality.
“African American students in Prince George’s County do better than most African American students in the nation. I mean, it’s a fact, but it’s a fact that’s a little-known fact,” he said. “We’ve got thousands of kids that go off to some of America’s best universities. We’ve got thousands of kids that go into the military and do great service, or go into the police force or go into some other service job, like becoming a firefighter. But we don’t tell those stories enough.”
Last week Joseph declined to say if he was a candidate for the full-time gig. He’s under contract for just one year, but if it’s hard to believe someone planning to be so aggressive on the job is also indifferent about staying here long-term, he offered more clarification on that too. He compared it to being in the “dating stage” of the job right now, before one would buy an engagement ring.
“I’m definitely a suitor, well-prepared, and I’m being very intentional and strategic about the work,” Joseph explained. “But I think by focusing on the interim superintendent job, and just locking myself in the work, it keeps me from the politics and making political decisions.”
And if he feels like it’s not working out the way he hopes, or that there’s too much working against him here, he said his old job is waiting for him.
“The mission is to make sure the 130,000 children here get quality by design, and if, in doing that, it angers somebody, and playing politics, then I go back to my old job — which is there to go back to,” he said. “We try to teach children and we encourage people that you should be prepared to have multiple opportunities to live out your wildest dreams and do whatever you want to do, but you shouldn’t be all-or-nothing. And so that’s how I live my life.”
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