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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. We've done several shows recently about Springfield Public Schools. In fact, we've done more shows about that district than any other, and with good reason. There has been an outsized number of challenges and controversies swirling around Springfield schools. Well, today we bring you one more story, and this is an introduction of sorts to the individual who will try to calm the waters at the beleaguered district. His name is Dr. Shawn Stover, and he is decidedly an outsider, having run districts in other communities around the nation. His first job as interim superintendent is to restore trust among staff, students and parents while working with a board that some describe as dysfunctional. It's a tough job, but if he succeeds, it might set the district on a course toward much smoother sailing. Dr. Shawn Stover, the new interim superintendent for Springfield Public Schools. Dr. Stover, thanks so much for coming in.
Shawn Stover: Michael, thank you so much for having me.
Dunne: Yeah, why don't you give our audience a brief overview of where you're from and what you've done?
Stover: Gosh, I'm from everywhere and I've done lots of things. I first came into teaching in 1990. I was with the Charter Corps of Teach For America. I wasn't sold on the idea that you shouldn't go into education as a professional, that there was really no future in it. Through a series of events, I opened up my college newspaper and saw an ad asking, “Who will teach for America?” I thought, “Maybe I will.” So I did an interview. I was a swim instructor, so I did a practice teaching session on elementary backstroke movements, and I was placed in Los Angeles. That's where I was going to be, and I was also the first transfer in the history of Teach For America because I missed my girlfriend, who's now my wife of 35 years. Rural North Carolina was one of the places they were placing teachers, so I started my career there. I taught for six years, was teacher of the year for my district after my third year, and then went on to be an assistant principal and principal across North Carolina. I actually went back to work for Teach For America in teacher support and development, working with corps members during their two-year commitment to provide training and development. Then I became superintendent of a charter school district in Texas for three years, and then moved to D.C. Public Schools, where I was an area superintendent. After an NPR investigation in D.C., I became chief of secondary schools.
Dunne: What was it like transitioning from being a teacher to moving into administration?
Stover: Gosh, no one has ever asked me that question. There are a lot of similarities. Your class is just different: Instead of having a class of students, your class becomes the teachers. I believe schools should be learning organizations, since that's primarily our business, so we should be constantly learning from and teaching each other. As a principal moving into administration, that's how I focused on things: How can we get better together? That's what I wanted for my students. I considered my class a community, and we always wanted to improve. I wanted to make sure that when they left me, they felt loved, challenged and prepared. It's the same thing I want for the staff I work with. I want them to feel loved, challenged and prepared, because that will translate down to our students.
Dunne: You're walking into a challenging situation, and I imagine you're going in with your eyes wide open. What attracted you to this particular job, especially in light of what's been happening at Springfield Public Schools over the last couple of years?
Stover: Well, the challenge is one of the things that attracted me. I always do my research when I'm thinking about moving into a different position. My cousin, who works in 4J, is actually the person who notified me about the Springfield opportunity. So I looked into it, and what I saw was a problem, but a solvable one, and the core of it is teachers. At the end of the day, the No. 1 determinant of a student's success is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. My research showed that Springfield was a district on the rise, but we were focused on our differences, and I think those differences amount to maybe 10 to 15%. There's much more that we have in common. I'm hoping to use my voice as superintendent, and by listening to everyone, bring people together to focus on what we have in common and then move forward. Certainly, we're going to address the conflicts, but let's think about what we have in common so we can provide an amazing educational experience for our students.
Dunne: What is it about your leadership style that you think positions you to bring out the best in this situation?
Stover: This is a tough question for me, because the person I've been married to for 35 years keeps me very humble, so I'm not one to talk about myself. I'll have to make sure she doesn't listen to this. But I've really thought about this over the course of my career, and I think I make it safe for people to take risks, which I believe is one of the most important things a superintendent can do. I'm not doing a whole lot of the work myself. I'm creating the conditions in which the work gets done. We're in such an uncertain time, especially for our kids, so we're going to have to take some chances without knowing what the outcome will be. But if we don't take those chances, we're not going to provide the future for our kids that I think we need to. So people feel comfortable working around me. They know I'm going to take responsibility for things, that I'm going to listen and learn from them, and that I'm going to make decisions based on what I hear, not on what I've done in the past.
Dunne: I imagine a board looking to hire a superintendent can go one of two ways: bring in someone from the community, or bring in someone with an outsider's perspective. You're in that latter category. As someone who's worked in far-flung districts across the country, what do you think you can bring to what Springfield needs right now?
Stover: To me, it's more of a habit. What I bring is a willingness to learn and listen, and then use what I hear to form an opinion in partnership with the community. There is no “Shawn Stover way” of education. My way is to deeply learn what's happening on the ground. Think about the contrast in my career: I was in D.C., where the community's values are very different from the community I just left in Rockingham County, where 70 percent of the population voted for President Trump. I'm good at finding the commonalities we have, and then bringing people together to focus on that and less on our differences.
Dunne: I would also imagine that one of the key things you're going to need to do, because of what happened before you got here, is earn back trust with both staff and parents. Talk a little about that and how you see it going.
Stover: I love that you brought that up, Michael, because it's the foundation of what we do. One of my sayings is that trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. I think somewhere along the way, superintendents got told they need a 90-day entry plan, but I'm not sure you can learn a district, especially coming from the outside, in 90 days. My plan, which I'll present to the board at our August meeting, is really a year-long plan. For the first 90 to 100 days, I'm going to listen and learn with a sense of awe and wonder, without preconceived notions about what I want to hear. Then I'll present a report to the board on what I heard and what I think we need to focus on, and I'll listen and learn some more around those priorities. The goal is that by around February or March, I'll have a good sense of where we need to go as a district. I'll work with the board and staff to start creating our strategic plan from December to May, and the goal is that in May we'll present a plan to the public that will help guide the district for at least the next year, and hopefully for years after.
Dunne: I've talked to a lot of educators and superintendents at both the K-12 and college levels about the enrollment cliff that a lot of people talk about. I want to get your read on it, since you've worked in different districts. It's something I think the community is still trying to wrap its head around, that we just don't have as many kids as we used to. Talk about that as a challenge for what you need to do.
Stover: We all think it's local, but it's really happening across the country. It's a combination of factors. First, there's a declining birth rate and an aging population, but there's also the fact that people are now used to being able to choose their own path and get what they want when they want it. As a public education system, we only have pockets where we're able to offer that, which is why it's so important to listen to our community. One of the things I heard when I was in North Carolina was that the focus on everyone going to college wasn't the right approach, so we created the state's first early college CTE high school. It was an early college program focused on career and technical education, because I listened. In D.C., we did something entirely different, because we listened to what that community wanted, and we were able to stem the enrollment loss there. We still lost kids because of the aging population, but because of what we did, especially that CTE high school, we actually brought in students who had been homeschooled or attending charter or private schools. North Carolina is one of the states with a voucher program, so families can use a voucher to go wherever they want. In education, we have to remember that we're there to listen to and serve the community. One of the things I started saying, both in D.C. and in North Carolina, is that enrollment is a hustle. We have to earn it in order to do the transformative work we're actually good at. If you look at the statistics, public schools do the best job of educating all kids. First, we have to make sure our community understands what we're doing in terms they understand, without a lot of education jargon, and then make sure what we're doing fits the values and norms of that community.
Dunne: I imagine when you're listening to staff and parents, they're going to bring up the midyear layoffs and concerns about how that's going to impact education, especially next year. I know you've just gotten the job, so you're still learning where everything is. But in terms of allaying fears about what the layoffs might do to the quality of education, what are some things you'll tell them after you've listened?
Stover: I'm going to say we have to revere our educators, and we have to make sure our actions match that. The No. 1 determinant of student success is the quality of the teacher in the classroom, and the core belief I carry with me wherever I go is that the job of central office, of central services, is to support our schools and our teachers. If we can't clearly show how and why we're doing that, then we're not really doing our jobs. Our educators have an incredibly tough job. We have kids at all levels in our classrooms, and we ask so much more of them now than I was asked to do as a teacher in 1990. We have to revere them and celebrate all they do just to get a child ready to learn. So I want to make sure that whatever we do, we're focused on that support.
Dunne: I'm glad you brought up your experience as an educator, because things have changed a lot since you were writing on the chalkboard. Talk about that as someone who's now the boss looking at a school district facing social media pressure and other modern challenges. How do you lead so that teaching excellence can come to the fore?
Stover: It's interesting. The school I taught in was built in 1928, and my big technological advance was using colored chalk. What it was like to teach in a classroom in 1990 is very different from teaching in a classroom in 2026, and I know that. I'm never going to get that experience as long as I'm superintendent, but I can try to come as close to it as possible. So one of the things I'm going to do in my entry plan, which I've done in previous jobs, is actually shadow students. I'll spend a whole day on a student's schedule, and I'll ask a lot of our administrators to do the same. I'll team-teach with some of our teachers. If I'm going to support our staff and students, I have to understand, at some level, the experience and environment in which they're working. Will I ever have the same level of appreciation or experience that they have? No, but I'll gain some insight so I can support them better. I have to approach the job with a huge spirit of humility. I started in this profession right before No Child Left Behind, and I've seen all the iterations since. It's very different now. I don't know what it's like to teach in a COVID-era or post-COVID-era classroom, and I don't know what it's like to feel the pressure of huge expectations, to be everything to everyone when it comes to our students, to the extent some of our teachers do. But what I do know is what good teaching is and what good teachers do. Good teachers understand their students. They wrap their arms around them with love and support, and they create a program that meets that student's unique needs. If I can create that kind of environment for our staff, then I'm doing my job.
Dunne: What help would you like to see, both for you and for the district, from the community, from parents, from the state? Obviously, budgets are really tight right now. What are some things that would help you do the best job you can?
Stover: First of all, be honest. Tell me what you really feel, and don't assume I'm here just to check boxes or that I've already figured out what I want to do, because I honestly haven't. From the state level, I'd say trust the educators who work in the schools and in the system. Trust that we know what we're doing and that we have kids' best interests in mind, and give us some flexibility. One trend I see in education, and I don't want to make this Oregon-centric because I only have a little knowledge of the state, is that we sometimes manage to the least common denominator. Something happens, so we create a lot of rules to keep that thing from happening again, even though, almost invariably, that thing should never have happened in the first place. That's one small example in the whole landscape of education: Address that one specific issue, but don't make it a rule that has unintended consequences for all of our educators. I like to know what the rules are and what the goals are, and then I'm very confident in my ability to work with the team to achieve those goals. But the more people tell us how to get there, the more problematic it is, because all of our kids are different. You might be going along as a teacher with a wonderful class, feeling like you've got it all figured out, and then one student coming in or leaving changes that dynamic dramatically. We've got to give our professionals the freedom and flexibility to look at what's in front of them, to listen and learn, and to respond to the situation. It's really a microcosm of what I'm trying to do on a broader level: Understand, and then create a program that meets the needs of that unique situation.
Dunne: My last question has to do with your title, and the fact that “interim” comes in front of it. I'm not sure I understand all the machinations behind what the board did, but do you want to stay longer? Are you content being superintendent for the next year, or does the “interim” title give you more flexibility to take risks? Do with that question what you will.
Stover: It's an important question. I came into this with the understanding, one of the questions I was asked, of whether I'd be willing to stay if it worked out, and absolutely, I would. As I said, my cousin is the one who let me know about this job, and my grandfather was from Medford, Oregon. I already love this area, but what I know is that it has to be a good match, so I'm looking to see if my skills match what's needed in the district. But to me, as a superintendent, you're always interim. It just means I have a couple more letters in my title, but I never act as though I'm interim. I understand that as a superintendent, every year is almost an interim year. I'm really interested in bringing this community together, listening and learning, and creating an environment where our kids feel loved, challenged and prepared, and where our educators feel like the work they do matters, and that they matter, and that they're revered not only by those they work with, but by the community as well. I think we have a lot of the essential foundations in place to do that, and I'm excited to take this journey with the people I work with and the community, and to help create the best education system in Oregon.
Dunne: He's Dr. Shawn Stover, interim superintendent for Springfield Public Schools. Dr. Stover, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
Stover: Michael, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of “Oregon on the Record” are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear from the Associated Student President at the University of Oregon, who delivered a very controversial speech during commencement and drew the ire of the Board of Trustees. I'm Michael Dunne, host of “Oregon on the Record.” Thanks for listening.
