Changing the culture part of incoming Bibb superintendent Curtis Jones' goal

When Curtis L. Jones addressed the Griffin-Spalding County school system for the first time as superintendent in 2009, he talked about “Star Trek.”

Jones had recently seen the big-screen reboot of the classic sci-fi TV series, and one of the film’s key scenes had inspired him. He didn’t want to talk about test scores, school buses or teacher furloughs. He wanted to talk about what he had learned from the movie.

“I dare you to do better,” he said in his first speech, quoting a memorable line from the film. The movie’s protagonist had been challenged by an ally to exceed his father’s legacy. Now, Jones was challenging the school system’s employees.

“I said, ‘For each of you teachers, I dare you to make this a better year than it was for the students last year. I dare you to make this year a better year for the parent that did not have a great year. Principals, I dare you to make this a better year for your teachers than it was last year,’” Jones recalled during a wide-ranging interview in his office earlier this month.

The 59-year-old doesn’t believe a school district needs a new theme or slogan every year. His focus is simply on “doing better.”

And it’s clear, based on his track record, that Jones knows a thing or two about doing better.

HOME COURT ADVANTAGE

Jones was a product of Griffin High School. He played football, ran track and was student body president.

His high school track coach said Jones was the type of person, with both brains and brawn, who excelled at everything.

Johnny Goodrum, 83, has known Jones for 40 years. Jones was his best sprinter and long jumper, he recalled.

Even after long practice runs should have exhausted the limits of his patience, Goodrum remembers how receptive Jones was at taking direction. Jones’ dedication, he said, was absolute.

“If you wanted something done, if Curtis told you he was going to do it, you could take it to the bank,” Goodrum said. “It was just that simple.”

After graduating from Griffin High, Jones attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, which launched his 20-year career as an Army officer.

The retired lieutenant colonel has been stationed at posts both stateside and overseas, including a three-year stint at the Pentagon.

Jones returned home in 1997 and began his career in education as the Griffin-Spalding school system’s first black JROTC instructor. He was later promoted to Griffin High School’s principal in 2001, then assistant superintendent in 2005 and superintendent in 2009.

His time as an educator was marked by leading an initiative that helped increase student SAT scores within one year.

During his tenure as superintendent, he helped put in place a plan -- a one page “strategy map” -- that helped increase Griffin-Spalding’s graduation rate from 58.2 percent in 2011 to 66.63 percent in 2013.

“At the very base, (the strategy map) said we want to have people that are willing to learn and grow,” Jones said. His goal was to increase the graduation rate to 80 percent by 2020.

Griffin-Spalding schools were also an early adopter of the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports system, a state program that just launched in Bibb. After implementing the program in 2009, Jones said, the number of office disciplinary referrals dropped from about 13,000 to fewer than 6,000.

The program “is our way of saying, ‘Look, we’re going to teach you the behavior that we expect, and therefore you’re not going to get punished if we haven’t taught it to you,’ ’’ Jones said. “So, you give them the routines, you lay it out. Students want to do what’s right. We just have to be able to get them to understand this is what is acceptable.”

But the Bibb County school district is more than twice the size of Griffin-Spalding. A hard question is whether Jones will be as successful in Macon with his current philosophy and leadership style. He could begin his new job in April.

One thing that will work to Jones’ advantage will be his familiarity with federal school improvement grants such as Race to the Top.

“I need to do an assessment of what’s there and what’s not,” he said. “One of the items was Race to the Top. We were a Race to the Top system and so was Bibb. I believe that one key for improving is growing from evaluation. Evaluation shouldn’t be an ‘I gotcha’ system. It should be a process of ‘let me figure out what I can do to help you get better.’

“So, teacher keys -- which is part of what Race to the Top help put in place -- as well as leader keys is important. You have to implement it with fidelity. The number of requirements to go in and observe people is important so you can give them the feedback that they need. I know that’s something I want to see how well it’s being implemented.”

PERSONAL VALUES

It’s no secret that the education profession likes its acronyms (SAT, ACT, AYP, CRCT), but the military gives education a run for its vowels and consonants.

Jones’ leadership skills he gained from the military, which help inform his decisions as a superintendent, come from the Army’s core values. The core values take the form of an acronym called “LDRSHIP” (pronounced “leadership”), which stands for: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.

“I believe those personal values are what drive individuals,” he said. “Now, those are the ones I’ve adopted because that’s my military background. You may have your own. I’m not going to say you have to adopt my personal values, but you need to live up to your values. We need to understand how our values come together so that we now have a system value because those values drive what we do, what we find that’s acceptable.”

In Griffin-Spalding, the school district adopted “COLDR” (pronounced “colonel doc”) as its value system. It stands for: competency, open communication, loyalty, defined autonomy and respect.

When interviewing teachers, he said, “We look for those values to see if that’s in their background.”

After Jones dared teachers in Griffin-Spalding to do better that day, he tried to shake each one of their hands. As the teachers came through the line, Jones said, many of them told him, “And I dare you to do better.”

Jones makes the effort to add the personal touch to everything he does as superintendent, such as trying to sign each teacher contract by hand.

As far as his leadership style is concerned, “I see colonel more than doctor,” Griffin High School Principal Keith Simmons said.

Simmons, a former assistant principal at Bibb’s Westside High School, said he started calling Jones “colonel” from the moment he met him.

Jones “helped me to understand leadership as a whole,” Simmons said, not just as a principal, but as a “leader of people.”

Simmons said he was disappointed to learn that Jones was leaving for Bibb County because he considers him a valued mentor, one who will always be at the top of his speed dial.

“I don’t call him expecting a yes or a no,” he said. “I call him expecting the truth. It makes the yes or no a lot easier to manage.”

Decisions that Jones made in Griffin-Spalding weren’t always accepted by everyone, but Jones would always articulate the reasoning behind his choices, Simmons noted.

“Not everyone is going to understand decisions that need to be made,” Simmons said. “Not everyone is going to agree with decisions that need to be made. But everyone needs to be informed about why those decisions are being made. I believe that’s probably what I’ll miss the most about being able to work with him.”

EARLY CHALLENGES

Jones will have a full plate when he gets to Bibb County. After spending more than $20,000 on two years of searching, the school board will be looking to Jones to help usher in a new era of improvement for the district.

Compared to Griffin-Spalding, the demographic makeup of the Bibb County school district is similar, but more than twice the size.

Bibb’s schools are plagued with poverty and discipline issues, as well as low test scores and graduation rates.

And then there are the roiling issues involving former Superintendent Romain Dallemand.

Dallemand, whose contract was bought out in February 2013, has resurfaced in recent months. The state’s Professional Standards Commission revoked his certification. After that, he filed a $10 million claim against the school system with the American Arbitration Association, contending violations of his severance agreement with the district.

Bibb’s board members responded with a $7.5 million counterclaim, alleging in part that Dallemand procured his severance agreement through means of fraud, thus rendering it void and unenforceable.

But setting the Dallemand conflict aside, Jones seems ready to tackle the pressing matters on Bibb schools’ to-do lists.

“From what I saw, the board members are all good people trying to do the right thing,” Jones said. “I think they hired Dr. Dallemand with the best of intentions, and this is just where they are.”

He added that if he wasn’t comfortable, he wouldn’t have decided to come to Bibb County.

Other points of priority or issues on the horizon for Bibb include navigating the waters of governance issues with the AdvancED accreditation agency, choosing a new operational system and working on the fiscal 2016 budget.

‘MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION’

While there are no obvious chinks in Jones’ armor, finding someone in his hometown with a less-than-glowing outlook on his tenure and personality is like trying to find Waldo in the children’s picture book.

One such person, though, is Michael Kendall, a Griffin-Spalding school board member. Kendall said he did not agree with Jones’ educational philosophy, specifically his “top down” management style.

A particular point of friction between Jones and Kendall came when one of the schools in Griffin-Spalding wanted to become a charter school years ago.

The board initially wanted to convert the school, Kendall said, but members changed their minds when Jones disagreed with the idea.

“(Board members) just nixed everything,” Kendall said. “They just didn’t want to entertain any of our ideas and that, to me, was sort of indicative of how this thing runs. They want everything to be controlled from the top.”

Kendall believes the school board should be in charge of telling the superintendent what to do, but he said it works the opposite way for most school districts in Georgia.

Even though Griffin-Spalding showed improvement during Jones’ tenure, Kendall isn’t sure Jones is the one to help right Bibb County’s ship.

“I think his situation in Bibb County is quite different from his situation here in Spalding County. ... He moved up from being the assistant superintendent to the superintendent and inherited an infrastructure that was already basically in place,” Kendall said.

Jones was “sort of boxed in” by the plan already in place and didn’t have many options as far as blazing his own trail as superintendent, Kendall added.

He questioned how Jones would perform in Bibb County with so many battle fronts.

“I don’t know if his tenure here in Spalding County is a fair predictor of what he may do down there just because of the expectation levels, his familiarity with everybody here and the circumstances that he found,” he said. “Nobody here, when he took over, was clamoring for a huge change in direction.”

In his defense, Jones said, “In a large way, I would agree with Mr. Kendall. It’s really not about me, because I’m not the one doing all the work. It’s what teachers do, it’s what principals do, it’s how they have responded to the changes that we’ve put in place. Any idea, if it’s not implemented well, is not going to get you the result.”

Jones pointed to programs that he helped initiate, related to performance matters, teacher and leader keys, PBIS and a focus on more effective communication and feedback. He added that performance matters “helped transform the way we look at data,” which led to a major change in what his current school district has been able to accomplish.

What’s more, Jones said he helped develop the district’s strategic plan and fit it into a one-page document. “I’ve had principals and central office staff tell me that that one document has changed the way they’re able to plan, monitor and implement activities,” he said.

Kendall thinks moving to a bigger school district might hamper Jones’ ability to be an effective superintendent.

“They got twice as many students and twice as many schools,” Kendall said. “They probably have twice as many headaches as we have here in Griffin. Whether or not he’s going to be successful at it and he can be their turnaround artist, that’s a million-dollar question right there.”

Noting a governance dysfunction that an accreditation review pointed out in 2013, Kendall wondered how that would affect Jones’ administration.

He added, “If you have a board that’s out of whack, I don’t think any of us could make anything happen down there in Bibb County.”

RACE RELATIONS

After the Telegraph reported that Jones was the system’s sole finalist for the Bibb superintendency, an elderly woman called the newsroom to complain.

She was upset that the school board was going to hire another black person as superintendent. She pointed to Dallemand’s tumultuous tenure as a reason not to do that again.

As a black student in public schools during the integration struggles of the 1970s, Jones is no stranger to racial tension.

“I was the first African-American to be named ROTC instructor in Griffin, and that was a big deal for some,” Jones said. “The first African-American to be principal at Griffin High School and now the first to be superintendent in our system. So, people put trust in me and confidence, and I’ve tried to live up to that by doing what I think is best for students.

“Have I made everybody happy? No. Has it been difficult? Yes, but I think most of the decisions we’ve made have been the right ones. I’m not going to say all, but I think most have been and we’ve been able to move forward. I think as people look at the results, they see that we tried to do what was best for students and children.”

He said he doesn’t see anything wrong with seeing race initially, but it’s where your mental process takes you after that first thought that counts.

“Once you get to know people, race really doesn’t become an issue,” Jones said. “Race becomes an issue when you don’t know and you have to start filling in gaps, in my view.”

He added, “I believe that people are going to do the very best they can and that they are willing to see you for what it is you can do.”

‘ALL ABOUT CULTURE’

The Bibb County school board appointed Jones as superintendent in a 6-1 vote, with board member Ella Carter abstaining.

Tom Hudson voted against the appointment, saying the search process had been “compromised,” but he would not elaborate. Carter abstained for the same reason.

Both Carter and Hudson said they will support Jones as their superintendent, though.

The specifics of Jones’ contract and salary are still unknown, but Goodrum thinks Jones is going to Bibb for the opportunity to do good things. Jones will not embarrass a school system, he said.

“Something about that job in Bibb County is a challenge for him,” Goodrum said. “I don’t believe he would go for a few more dollars.”

Judging by Jones’ demeanor, he seems ready for the challenge.

In a hand-written explanation outlining his educational philosophy from his initial 2013 application, Jones wrote that cultivating a culture that supports everyone -- from school board members to the district’s employees -- is a crucial element to prosperous schools, but that the student is the “ultimate element” of a successful school system.

“At the end of the day, it is all about culture,” he wrote. “Programs come and go; so do people. The culture, however, will remain the same until we purposely change it for the better.”

This story was originally published March 14, 2015 at 8:52 PM with the headline "Changing the culture part of incoming Bibb superintendent Curtis Jones' goal."