Superintendent: "Keeper of the Vision"

Mary Beth Banios at NuVuX international conference.

Students often believe in this omnipotent education God who controls all aspects of how a high school functions. Students assume that this Titan of Tutelage sits in an office all day long decreeing educational edicts. Even their name connotes an Emperor of Edification: superintendent.

A superintendent’s function is described in Title 16 of Vermont state law: “The superintendent shall be the chief executive officer for the supervisory union board and for each school board within the supervisory union…” An employee of the school board, the superintendent works directly with school administrations in their district to facilitate the policies of their board.

In talking about her communication with the school board, Superintendent Mary Beth Banios explains, “Part of my job is to communicate ‘here are the things that we need to pay attention to when we make a decision around this’, ‘here are the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing’, ‘here’s where it’s backed by research’...so that we can help people to understand.”

The main question a superintendent concerns herself with is, as Banios put it, “How can we move the district forward?”

A superintendent attempts to solve complex problems with multiple stakeholders. Banios explains, “...inevitably, in any kind of job like this, there can be situations that people are frustrated by...problems that are getting more and more complex to solve, so I oftentimes get involved in trying to sort out some of those issues that require...a number of different individuals getting together to try and solve the problem.”

By leveraging the opinions of board members to hear, “the word on the street”, establishing community-outreach nights, and visiting faculty meetings, Banios is able to obtain feedback on her role as a superintendent and the school board’s effectiveness.

Superintendent Banios admits, however, her feedback system is not perfect: “We need to have more student voice…”

“What does it feel like for the people who are the end-users?” With our school attempting to become a “Destination District”, Banios wants to know what our school should do to improve the student experience. “As kids are thinking about the teaching and learning that they’re engaged in, if there are things that people think we can be doing better, I want to hear about it.”

With the high school making big shifts (the biggest of which might be an actual shift of the high school to a new building), Banios is clear in her need for student voice to help guide her decision-making and advisement of the School Board.

Enter: the Student Advisory Council.

The School-Board-approved Strategic Plan (meant to outline the District’s strategy for future improvements to the school) charges the Board to, “Maintain a… Student Advisory Council.” As of now, this “advisory council” is meant to be, in the words of Principal Garon Smail, “a body of students that can regularly come to the Board and really… represent Student Voice enough that the Board can interact with them and think about, ‘How are our policies and decisions landing on kids?’”

Superintendent Banios describes her job as, “...the Keeper of the Vision.”

She guides the school district to follow the visions and policies it has set forth. The Portrait of a Graduate initiative, which outlines the capabilities Woodstock Central Supervisory Union wants its graduates to have, is a contemporary vision. Banios explains, “For me, I picture kids that are working in our district, crossing that graduation stage, and what skills, competencies, and dispositions do they have that they can take out into the world?”

With the myriad of new School Board proposals, strategies, and plans, Superintendent Mary Beth Banios will be leading our district forward.

Sam Powers is involved in the planning of the “Student Advisory Council”.