Starting off on the first day of his new job July 1 with a failed budget and half the district’s eight towns in various stages of withdrawing from the unit, Sheepscot Valley RSU 12 Superintendent Howard Tuttle has his work cut out for him.
Tuttle, a Bowdoinham resident and most recently the curriculum director for MSAD 11, comes to the RSU with experience in teaching and administrating, with two master’s degrees, and a certificate of advanced studies in educational leadership. He is currently working on his doctorate from Walden University.
Having already been chosen as the new superintendent, Tuttle began working for the district as a consultant in April when interim Superintendent Alan Hawkins had to resign for medical reasons. Though he came into the budget process months late, Tuttle was involved in the process and did not start his new job without exposure to the issues the RSU faces.
The district’s situation has been challenging since it was formed under the threat of looming financial penalties, Tuttle said in an interview July 8. The eight towns, which cover over an “enormous geographic distance,” each want local control and have different priorities while the central office is responsible for seeing resources are used equitably, he said.
“That’s a challenge, and it doesn’t happen overnight,” Tuttle said.
Now that the financial penalties have been repealed and towns are exploring withdrawal, Tuttle says communication and dialogue will be key to resolving the concerns of the district.
A good example of communication at work was the RSU 12 Finance Committee’s proposal to cut technology integrators from the school, Tuttle said. People came out in favor of keeping the positions, and they were put back into the budget.
“People came from their buildings and ‘No, no, this is a critical part to how we do business,’ and we listened,” he said. Taking feedback into account is critical to the district’s success, he said.
“You do what you can to allow people that piece of local decision making,” Tuttle said.
Financially, Tuttle said he is used to thinking creatively about budgets and looking for savings while still providing the best education possible because of his time with MSAD 11.
“They’re the lowest per-pupil spending rate in the area, and we haven’t done that by providing less of an education for students, we’ve done that in, I think, some very clever and creative ways,” he said. “They may be applicable here, they may not be.”
Even though the district’s budget is proposed to go up this year, the budget that voters rejected on June 28 only would have been up 2.25 percent since the district was formed.
“But, because of the funding formulas and changes in the funding formulas, people have seen their taxes go up. So, they’re not happy about it. I get it,” Tuttle said.
The rejected budget did include things asked for by people at the budget meetings, such as retaining the technology integrators and reducing administrative staff, but when people who indicated on their ballot that the budget was too high still voted in favor of it, it is hard to know what they want, Tuttle said.
Furthermore, it is hard to know what the people really want since only a little over 5 percent of the district’s voters showed up and voted, Tuttle said.
“It’s about getting out there, talking to people, listening to people, and trying to find out what their concerns are,” he said.
In regard to local control, Tuttle said he does believe schools should have flexibility – with oversight – in decision making regarding curriculum and instruction. Some flexibility is already in place, and Tuttle says he hopes to improve on it.
Along those lines, schools can try new things and collaborate to determine what works best, Tuttle said. The RSU’s new professional development scheduled on early release Wednesdays for the coming year will help the district disseminate what works, he said.
“The benefit of being in a big district is you can look at the success of other schools, look at their strategies, look at their student data, see how they’re doing and if there’s a school that’s succeeding, you can call up and have a meeting,” he said. “You can find out what they’re doing and share those strategies around the district.”
“It’s much more challenging if you’re sort of out on your own, isolated, not part of a district,” he said.
With those best practices, the district can provide the professional development to share them and improve all the schools, he said.
“One of the reasons I was attracted to this district is because the strategies they have in place as far as education are really good ones, and they’re ones that I’m used to, so I think I can bring a lot as far as how do we refine, how do we tweak, how to we improve strategies that we’re using,” he said.
Schools should use a professional learning community approach where people who teach the same subject have conversations and look at data to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching methods, Tuttle said. Some of the district’s schools already use these communities, but others do not, he said.
“You need to make time for that, and you need to put structures in place so it’s done efficiently and effectively, and that’s the role of the central office and the principals in the building,” Tuttle said.
“What you end up with is the most effective educational environment,” Tuttle said. “It takes time, but that’s how I’m used to operating.”
