Education
BY ANGELA BONILLA
David Vinson took part in the color run at Cox Intermediate School on Sept. 30.
PHOTOS COURTESY CONROE ISD
Get to know David Vinson, Conroe ISD’s new superintendent David Vinson was named the new superin- tendent of Conroe ISD in a 7-0 vote at its Sept. 18 meeting. He joined the district after former Superintendent Curtis Null left the CISD after 25 years to take the superintendent position in Lake Travis ISD. Vinson has been the superintendent for Wylie ISD since 2011, which has over 19,300 students and 20 campuses. Vinson spoke with Community Impact on Oct. 2 about his goals for CISD. What goals do you have for CISD to help improve student outcomes and teacher retention? In my life, I’ve found a great deal of success in student achievement. I’ve never received less than an A in student performance on the [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] as a district. I don’t talk a lot about assessment, because what I do is try to nd ways to engage people and help them engage in the process of nding students who are going to be hopeful, engaged and have a high sense of well-being. The rst thing is that we’re looking at our curric- ulum, and we’re going to do a complete assessment of all of it.
Then, the second thing that I’ve done is we’ll be asking the trustees, asking principals, asking par- ents—if a kid walks across our stage and we hand them a diploma, what character skills do we want them to possess? They’ll make us proud to call them a graduate of Conroe ISD, and we’re going to focus on those values and those characters built, because we feel like that’s what’s going to make us strong. What skills are you bringing to Conroe ISD that you think will be bene cial? My job is to listen and to learn and be the ambassador from whoever I represent. And ... if you learn that at the very beginning, everything else is going to become so much better. ... You learn what their needs are, how you can best serve them, and then bring the complexity of. ... what is public education in Texas, to solve the problems that they uniquely have. What further measures, if any, would you take to enhance student safety here in Conroe ISD? The most important thing is that parents send their children to us, and they want to know that their babies are safe. What we’re going to look at is making sure that we’re looking through those compliance measures, and processes [and] systems that make reasonable sense, and give measurable processes of safety. And then look at, you know, what the needs assess- ments are. I’ve not seen a need that’s not been met in terms of school safety, that I would change and that we would do di erently.
What are the biggest challenges and issues you think Conroe ISD faces? Part of the process, when I onboarded any school district, I do what they call a sta ng analysis. It’s about e ciency. It’s about comparison to other school districts that compare to us, that not necessarily they’re more or less e cient, but about what they do and how they do it. ... I can give the taxpayer an analysis of where we compare in terms of that, because that’s the biggest funding compo- nent of what we do. What do you look most forward to in CISD? I want for every student, parent, employee, worker ... to think that we’re the best in Texas and feel good about what we’re doing. I want them to know that I care about them and that I have their best interest at heart. Then I want to hear their concerns and nd ways to say that we care about them and that they feel like they’re getting their needs met from whatever situation it is. So I look forward to knowing people and learning what their needs are and increasing their hope, and their hope is that tomorrow’s gonna be better than today, and that we have the power to make that happen.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com.
31
THE WOODLANDS EDITION
Powered by FlippingBook