Dr. Michelle Hubbard will take the place of Mike Fulton as the new superintendent of SMSD on July 1. Here’s a Q&A with Dr. Hubbard to get to know her before she is officially in office.
As a female superintendent, how do you hope to impact younger girls?
“I have never been a person that was like, ‘I want this job because I am a female.’ I’m so thankful I can be a strong role model for my own daughters — I have four of them and one boy — and my daughters’ friends. I see it as a huge honor to be able to be a role model for women, especially young ladies and at that high school level where you are able to make decisions about your future.”
“My dad always told me you can be anything you want to be except the President of the United States, because that isn’t going to happen in your lifetime. And I always told him I hope you’re wrong. Many of my years I was raised by a single dad who really pushed me and who was my greatest role model. I think it’s important to push both women and young men to be the best they can be and to not let walls or barriers get in your way.”
How has having two senior girls in the Shawnee Mission School District impacted your decision making within the new position?
“I’m always pushing that we need kids in school, safely that is. Whether it’s band, sports or debate, I think it’s important to be able to live out those passions. I’m not saying we should fill a gym with 2,000 people, but if we can do spring sports safely, we should be doing spring sports safely. And if we can be having a play at the middle and high school level, we should be doing that. It goes back to motivating those remote kids because every kid has a motivator. I see that in my own girls, and I see that in the friends of my girls.”
How do you plan to grow and strengthen your relationships within the Shawnee Mission schools?
“With being intentional with my schedule the most. I want to be clear it’s not just about me. I have a great team of people that sit around me. Our executive leadership team consists of seven people, and the cabinet is even bigger than that, so this is true for that entire team. I want us to be more intentional about being in buildings, being in classrooms and talking to teachers about great things that are happening in classrooms. For example, if you were in a physics class and you were doing some great project and it that was a culminating project, that hopefully we could have the relationship with building principals that they say to me, ‘Hey Michelle can you go out and watch this culminating project?’”
“It’s really easy to get sucked into meetings, so I’m very intentional about putting it out on my calender. I have a personal goal to meet one new person a day in the school district. Over the last six years, you can imagine, we have over 4,000 employees and 28,000 kids, so it’s going to take a long time and they cycle through faster than I can meet them.”
Looking at your overall position, what do you think are key factors that play into the success of your job?
“I think relationships, both strengthening the ones I already have and building and cultivating new ones — internally and externally. I think championing the strategic plan is huge. It’s about people and learning. And ultimately at the end of the day, we want our kids to be successful when they leave us.”
How has dealing and working with the struggles of the pandemic taught you on making decisions that are best for the community?
“Most importantly I continue to learn no matter how hard we work at it we’re never going to make everybody happy. With the decisions made with the pandemic, a lot of people were happy and at the same time half the people were absolutely angry about the decisions. That’s been the hardest part about decision making in the pandemic. Typically in the school system, if and when you make a decision, generally speaking most people can get behind you and run with that and are happy. That hasn’t been true with the pandemic. It’s truly been more of a 50/50 split, or at least it feels that way from where I’m sitting. I always go back to what’s best for kids. And we have to remember that one decision is not a one size fits all, so we have to base it on the majority of kids. So we just have to keep focused on what’s best for most kids and make the best of it, and then provide more support for those who don’t think it’s a good decision. It’s been hard, I’m going to be honest, it’s been really hard.”
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