New Superintendent Joins SMUHSD

The San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) welcomes Associate Superintendent of Instruction Andy Parsons for the 2011-2012 school year. Parsons will be replacing Matt Bigger and is looking to empower the faculty of SMUHSD through cooperation and communication.

Parsons was hired in early July after finishing his ninth year as principal of Heritage High School in Brentwood. Before his career in education, he worked in the restaurant business until he realized his love of history and decided to pursue a career as an educator.

For Parsons, the transition to the district office entails a slight adjustment from the school site setting. Each day consists of meetings with the superintendent and other administrative heads. “I’m not a desk person,” he says, “I need to get out and see what people need. It’s also a change that I don’t have to do everything.”

He is also adjusting to the district itself which is composed of six schools instead of the three in the Liberty Union High School District. The populations of the two school districts are relatively equal, but Parsons comes from a high school with 2200 students.

After hearing about the budget cuts, Parsons was pleasantly surprised when he first visited the district. He says, “Just look outside at the construction. The superintendent and the board have done a great job keeping the cuts away from the classroom.”

Parsons says, “My primary goal is to support the principals and the administration in developing teacher leaders.” He believes this will translate to the classrooms by encouraging students to stay engaged.

Superintendent Scott Laurence also agrees and shares the philosophy that empowering and training teachers will be important in the future. He says, “You can’t just hand someone a SMART Board. You have to explain. However, we are giving them the tools and time for professional development that are critical to helping long term student performance.”

Parsons also wants to focus on underrepresented students, students with disabilities, and English learners. This is reasonable due to the fact that the API scores for Aragon English Learners dropped 67 points last year.

While Parsons has not seen much of the schools yet, he feels that communication between school sites could be improved. “We’re all educators, and we need to ‘steal’ as many ideas as we can from each other,” he says.

Parsons and Laurence are investigating the use of technology for classroom use. The district has SMART Boards and projectors, but Parsons is looking to further that initiative. He says, “Technology will play a key role in education. The only issue is how to structure its parameters.”

At Heritage, Parsons introduced a successful service called Qwizdom which is an audience response system that can be operated with the use of a cell phone or clicker. Parsons says, “It’s a kind of formative assessment that’s great because now it’s not just the same four kids raising their hands.”

He says, “The technology creates equity for asking questions anonymously while engaging students at the same time. This way, the shy kid that doesn’t like answering questions can become involved.”

Parsons believes that in order to effect change, it cannot go “top down.” He says, “You have to teach other people first to be leaders. I can sit here all I want sending emails, but if they don’t know why or if they don’t feel empowered, the change won’t be lasting.”

Parsons was officially dubbed “Papa” Parsons for his close relationships with the students and faculty of Heritage High School. He says, “This is a very good district, but in order to be a great district, we need all students to be successful.” The emphasis on “all” students will be a major part of Parsons future goals in the district as he looks to empower both students and faculty.