Q&A: Acting Superintendent Chuck Cuzzetto Part 1

The Peninsula School Board at the March 22 school board meeting. He will succeed Superintendent Terry Bouck, who will . Cuzzetto's term will start on July 1 and will serve for the 2012-2013 school year.

Patch recently sat down with Cuzzetto, 57, to learn more about his vision for the district’s future.

• Lived in Gig Harbor 22 years
• Hired by the Peninsula School District in November 1999. Prior to moving to Gig Harbor, Cuzzetto spent 15 years with the Tacoma School District.
• Served as the 's Director of Human Resources; Director of Human and Financial Resources; Assistant Superintendent of Human and Financial Resources; Superintendent Terry Bouck appointed him as the deputy superintendent in 2006.

What’s your philosophy on education?

I think that the (School Board of Directors) wanting me to be the acting superintendent, as much statement about me, it’s more of a statement about wanting to continue what we’re doing right now. I really do think the Board likes the direction that this district is going.

Jim Coolican was here for 6 or 7 years and built some foundations and got things ready to go, and Terry has really accelerated what we’ve done. So the message that I’m getting is: they want more of the same. We want to continue our school improvement processes, our consistent curriculum and necessary revisions to the curriculum.

Claudia Thompson has done a great job with that. Dan Gregory is our new academic officer with principals. So we’ve got a really good team in place that is functioning really well. Amy Nelson, our assessment director, has done a great job providing buildings with data information. We’re doing a lot of really good things right now.

We have the advantage of our Wednesday Collaboration Time. Teachers are getting together, talking about students, talking about what needs to be done with instruction and talking about changing things to get better. We have to keep doing the same kinds of things while we’re dealing with not a lot more money; while we’re dealing with pretty tough economic times; while we’re dealing with a little bit of changing demographics in our community.

Our free or reduced lunches are higher than they were 6 years ago. We’re seeing some changes and transitory nature of students and those kinds of things. So to keep our momentum going is kind of what I think I need to do.

Accountability is pretty important to the public, and it should be. It’s tax dollars, and we want to spend the money wisely. We want to make sure we educate our kids in full.

How do you plan on addressing budgeting issues for next year?

It’ll be interesting. The state doesn’t have a budget yet so we have seen a lot of their draft budgets so we’re making some assumptions as we move forward. Our enrollment is pretty flat. It’s a little bit down next year from this year, but it’s pretty flat. Not a lot of significant change so it’s status quo—not a lot of new staff, not a lot of new of anything and just trying to maintain things, but trying to put focus and emphasis on where it needs to go within budget dollars.

As we go forward, enrollment will grow, we think, over the future. Then we’ll be dealing with some facility issues and how we deal with budgets for facility issues. So those will be our next challenges.

Some community members and parents at the school board meeting voiced their concerns for the need to restore integrity within the school district. How would you address that issue?

I think Terry has done a great job. The comments about how (Jim Coolican) had credibility in the district, and that’s gone down… I’m not sure I’d agree with that. Terry has done a lot of great things in this school district. Since the day he got here, we’ve done reforms and restructuring. He’s reduced 11 administrative positions. So we’re leaner than we’ve ever been before in administration.

We really cut down on administration and reduced that to try to put dollars in our classrooms. All of our budget reductions until the last couple years have been away from the classroom. We finally did have to increase class sizes the last couple of years, but we’ve looked at the support department, maintenance, transportation and technology. So we’ve done a lot of support side of reviews to try to get better.

Terry is also very visible in the community. He and I did 60-plus presentations for the levy. We did 60-plus presentations for the bond. I wouldn’t say there’s a decrease in credibility. What I would say is that there’s probably an increase in accountability. There’s a demand for accountability because of the visibility of our district and because of the economic times. To address how do I restore that credibility? I don’t think I need to restore that credibility. I think I need to continue the credibility that we have and build on to it even more.

With what Superintendent Bouck has built as the foundation, what do you hope to improve within the district?

Terry has put together a long-range strategic plan so we have some directions. Included in that strategic plan is the emphasis on school improvement and emphasis on instruction. So we’ve got a plan in place that the Board has approved that’s going to move us in that direction. Terry has also put into place a long-range facility plan. We’ve got improvement plans in place for each one of our 15 schools that we look at every year. We’ve got curricular mapping in place so we know what’s going on in every building. So he’s got a lot of systems in place and a lot of organization in place so now it’s time to take advantage of those systems and organization and get even better results. I think we’re beginning to see that already.

This is the first installment of a 2-part interview with Chuck Cuzzetto. Tomorrow, Chuck talks about his hopes of serving as the district's permanent superintendent.