School superintendent Jason Wysong talks about his priorities in Manatee County

Jason Wysong was sworn in as the new superintendent of the School District of Manatee County July 3. 

With that job comes questions of where the district and its more than 50,000 students and 6,000 staff members will go from here. 

The East County Observer talked with Wysong to discuss his vision as he takes the helm. 

What is your overall vision for the School District of Manatee County?

My work has centered around this concept of a meaningful diploma. In Florida, you earn a high school diploma when you obtain 24 credits, and the required test scores. But what does that mean? 

To me, a diploma is meaningful when on graduation day, that student has met all the requirements but they’re also able to say, “I know what I want to do next and here’s what I want to do and here’s why.” 

One of the things you’ll hear me talk about over time is that when we talk about high school diplomas, we’re talking about the culmination of 14 years of work, pre-K through 12. Successful reading in the early years of elementary is the most important step to the eventual high school diploma. 

When we talk about that diploma, it’s as much about what a student experiences in elementary and middle school as it is in high school because if you have a great elementary and middle school experience in Manatee County, you’re going to be successful in high school. 

It’s what we do as a whole system, as a community together, to make sure all students are having success. 

That starts, of course, with reading and math, but then it should quickly spiral into ungraded enrichment, things that students find interesting, that motivate them to do things other than just go to class. 

Another area is the relationship between each family and their school. 

The reality is parents have more choices than ever before. I want every family in Manatee to choose their public school because it’s the best choice for their students. 

To do that, we have to have the best product, the best services, and that includes how our schools, how our staff engage with families, how they listen, how they interact, how they provide support to meet each student’s needs. 

What do you hope to accomplish in the first 100 days?

As an outsider, there’s a lot to learn. There’s the history of the district, the communities and then down to how individual families have experienced the district, how our employees are feeling about their careers and what they hope to accomplish. 

I’m a person who likes to go back and process and reflect. I will make a quick decision when the urgency requires it, but I like to take the time to synthesize all the information and then come back and share with the board what I’ve learned, what I’ve seen and then where I see us moving forward. 

The board is elected to represent and reflect the community, so the board will provide that strategic direction and certainly identify their priorities. My job and the job of the staff is to make that happen. 

It’s about some of the things that I see, but it’s also very much about where the board as a reflection of the community wants us to go together.

Photo by Liz Ramos

What are your three priorities you’d like to tackle?

I want to continue to prioritize career and technical education. That includes exposing students early to concepts and subjects that might sound complex but you can get them down to age-appropriate activities. 

There’s already some great STEM initiatives happening in elementary schools. You want students to discover interests in those areas as early as possible. 

Academic performance in both reading and math would be a focus area, and in particular, how we can build upon past successes and move forward. 

The true measure of a successful school district is how students in the lowest quartile, the bottom 25% of test scores, are making consistent progress. It’s the biggest challenge the district faces. I think longterm, high performing districts find ways to show progress there. 

That’s going to be an area that I’m interested in, particularly learning what’s already in place and then what our educators and parents think they need more of so their students can be successful.

The third area is what we need to do to ensure we’re retaining the highest quality workforce.

The education profession is changing quickly. There’s been a lot of attention on recruitment, which is certainly important, but if you can retain people, then you don’t have to recruit as many. It’s simple math.

I worry, as an educator, that we are losing particularly mid-career teachers who are choosing to go and do other things. That group is vital to the success of early-career teachers. An early-career teacher, you’re going to look up to the people who are more experienced and innovative. 

If you lose too many of those mid-career folks, it affects the success of your early-career folks. 

I think we have to talk about what more we can do to make sure our teachers feel the support of the community and want to keep going with their work.

A big part of the 1-mill property tax referendum coming up again for renewal in 2024 is that employee salaries are tied to the referendum. What are your thoughts on the referendum and what would you want to spend that money toward?

I’m always a proponent of confirming priorities and then making sure that your resources are aligned to the priorities. 

School district budgets are complex. I think you have to go through the process of making sure that whatever the priorities are, that’s what’s resourced. 

I think sometimes in public education, we want to do it all, we want to say yes to everything, and sometimes, you have to say no to one thing to stay focused on what your priority is. 

I’m looking forward to diving into the current budget and how it’s been historically approached and then having all these conversations and sitting down and synthesizing all of it and drawing my own conclusions. Then I’ll share those findings with the board so we can find a way forward. 

Anytime a community votes to increase its own financial responsibility, I take that very seriously as a leader. I think we have an obligation to not only be transparent about it but also to continue to assess what our priorities are and how we pay for them.

I haven’t drawn any conclusions, but I will say that coming into a community that clearly values education and is willing to resource it is very exciting. 

What are going to be some of the biggest challenges you’ll face as you go into your first year as superintendent?

Retention and recruitment of an outstanding workforce is always at the top of the list. 

I think retention is a conversation at all levels of the organization, so it’s bus drivers and teachers but also maintenance personnel and principals. Principals are an incredibly important driver of academic outcomes and parental and community satisfaction. We have to take care of that group of leaders, too. 

It’s retention at all levels of the organization, which is what are we doing for groups of employees, but it’s also about individual conversations with people about what they want for their careers, why they do what they do, what they love about it and what we can do to support them to either keep doing it or to grow to their next step. 

Another challenge and priority is helping people to separate, I guess, what you might call fact from fiction in a school district.

I have the luxury of going to schools any time I want, to go in and see what’s happening. I think we have to find ways to be transparent about the great work that teachers do every day and to answer community questions about things they hear. 

Maybe there’s something that happens in another district somewhere else that wouldn’t happen here, but we have to communicate that. So how do we? How do we communicate the good work that’s happening in schools and answer questions that people might have based on things they hear or read about?

Photo by Liz Ramos

What do you think are the district’s biggest strengths and weaknesses?

A clear strength is innovative programming and the balance between what all students receive and what is unique about each school. You always want to have that balance.

There is academic and fiscal stability. That is not the case in other districts, so we have a solid foundation to build on.

We always want to improve reading scores. If I were leading the No. 1 district in the state on reading scores, I would say, “We have to do better with reading scores.” Literacy is the centerpiece of opportunity for children. 

I know a lot of good work is well underway and there are schools that have demonstrated that trajectory. What I want to work on is making sure that there are systems and structures in place so that we support each student who is behind grade level with a systemic process and way to do that.

I want to confirm that all of our practices are grounded in research and evidence because our students and families deserve to know that we’re not working randomly, that there’s a process to things.

I’m looking forward to jumping in and learning how all of that works here and seeing whether there are opportunities to build upon what’s already in place.

How do you plan to address the growth we constantly have?

Growth is so interesting because some people love it. It’s a sign that people want to be where you are and that the community is healthy. Then other people don’t like growth because of congestion and density and how it changes the feel. 

I think from the perspective of leading a school district, the growth is coming regardless of how we feel about it. We want to make sure we have access to all the latest data, that we’re listening to a lot of different perspectives because no one has a crystal ball on this. 

There are a lot of different ways to kind of slice and dice the data. 

At the end of the day, we want to make decisions about new schools and enrollment patterns and attendance boundaries that consider all of the different kinds of risks and possibilities. 

We have to do that transparently. There is nothing more emotional for parents than attendance boundary changes. 

As a school district leader, you would prefer not to do it if you didn’t have to. I’ve been through those processes before, and nobody is jumping up and down excited when you have to do it. 

When those tough decisions come up, you have to take in a lot of input, you have to be transparent and you have to communicate the why. 

At the end of the day, you might have to agree to disagree with some people but you’re trying to make the best decision you can for 50,000 plus students. 

A strong relationship with county government is important because they have expertise and insight that is important. Ideally, we’re planning together so we’re ready to make adjustments based on future community plans. 

School construction costs are rising. We have to be very responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. We also have to understand that some things are not in our control, like the cost of construction, cost of materials. We just have to keep adjusting the budget for those things and keep those risks in mind as we plan out five, 10 and 15 years. 

You have a background in innovation at Seminole. Are there any programs you’re hoping to bring to Manatee County?

There are lots of neat initiatives both in Seminole and Manatee. I am not coming to Seminolize Manatee. I want to build on the strengths here. 

A passion of mine is taking subjects and disciplines that students encounter in high school and might be intimidated by and expose students to them early. In Seminole, I was able to do that with things like physics and computer science. 

I’m always going to look for opportunities to take those interdisciplinary study areas and find ways to expose students to those earlier so they can make informed choices. Exactly what those will be will depend on what I learn about what’s already here and what the business community’s needs are in terms of a successful future workforce. I think all of those things will kind of inform what other new programs might come in. 

That decision is also informed by making sure we can sustain what’s already here. I think a big mistake that leaders and schools can make with innovation is you announce a really big program and then it’s gone in five years because you couldn’t afford it to begin with. 

That’s kind of part of laying out the whole educational landscape in Manatee County. What are our priorities? How do we sustain them? What else is there room for? So we’ll see.