By Jacy Nails, Student Reporter Westside Gazette
There are emotions of both excitement and uncertainty when a new superintendent is appointed.
Although change is natural, it’s not always predictable how this change will turn out to play. Given this, I recently received the honor to take a visit to the Kathleen C. Wright Administration Center, to speak with Superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn, the new leader in charge of guiding Broward County Public Schools into a brighter future. Conversing with him in his office allowed me to gain insight into Dr. Hepburn’s current and future goals and projects that will affect Broward County Public Schools educators, students, and the community. It proceeded as follows:
Nails: Greetings! And thank you so much for allowing me to speak with you today. My first question for you is: What is your backstory, and how did you get into the field of education?
Dr. Hepburn: “Well, I grew up in Western Palm Beach County in Belle Glade, Florida. I used to run around cane patches and ditches all the time in my youth with my buddies. I got an academic scholarship to go to UCF, as a Biology major because I wanted to be a field biologist and go out to discover new things. I stayed outside, and to this day I just love doing things as an outdoorsman.
At the tail end of my senior year, I started looking for jobs and I found out that most of the people in the fields of work in which I was interested, stayed in them until they retired, so it wasn’t anything open at the time. A best friend of mine who I went to high school with who was an education major said to me “Hey! Why don’t you come and teach and change your biology major to a science education degree?” So that’s what I did, but I only expected it to be a temporary lifestyle for me. However, I ended up teaching every science under the sun and loving every second of it. Additionally, people began to see a lot of talent in me and appointed me to different roles.
I went from being a Dean, to an Assistant Principal, then a Principal, to a Supervising Principal, and now I am currently the proud Superintendent of Broward County. Growing up in my hometown it took a village, and a lot of people who were invested in me. People who were not educated, wanted to ensure, as we are assuring you students, to make sure that you have opportunities in the future and that we are doing everything that we need to do to make things happen.
With every young person I encounter, I always try to put blessings on them and open doors for them. Somebody else should be a superintendent in the future that looks just like me, and beyond!”
Nails: Nice to hear! As a High School student, myself. I would like to know what your goals are for student achievement for the students of Broward County Public Schools?
Dr. Hepburn: “Great question! I have a couple things in mind for student achievement. First being to expose students to more accelerated opportunities. As I dive into the data of Broward County Public Schools, I see two things: there’s academic gaps and there’s opportunity gaps. Academic gaps are very palpable, as we see the disparities between our Black and Hispanic students vs. our white students. The question is…What’s going on here? Is the quality and instruction the same? Is the quality of resources the same?
In many cases some of these questions are not equitable, so I plan to make sure that I’m developing my central office team to ask the right questions and look for the right things when they’re visiting schools. Providing the right professional development to build a capacity of leaders in the schools and in the teachers is key, so that we can create an equal playing field to make sure every child is getting what they need. One of the things we’ve been talking about is to not just have differentiated instruction, but personalized instruction.
Ultimately making sure that each education for students is tailored to their needs. At the era we can do that, we can leverage the technology to help us accelerate. To address the opportunity gaps, when I dive into the data, I can see what classes students are in, and I know what classes students are in based on demographics… and there’s a disparity.
Many students who have the potential, based on objective academic measures, are not getting the opportunity to be enrolled in accelerated coursework such as AICE, AP, IB, and for middle schoolers, advanced high school courses. A lot of the time, we as educators are not focused on students’ potential in the fact that they can actually get into these classes, so my plan is to close the gap on that.
In fact, I put some things in place last year in what I call a “Master Reflection Process” in which there reveals data about schools that tells a story that they can’t hide from. Ultimately, the goal is to make sure that students have the best opportunities possible, and in doing that, closing academic and opportunity gaps at the same time.”
Nails: Very cool! My final question for you today is: What would you see is the issue with students not feeling engaged in the classroom anymore?
Dr. Hepburn: “So, this is a very simple solution that we tend to make complex. The whole world changed during covid and after covid. People ordered their groceries online, their takeout online, everything became digital… including school and work. Now that it has become controlled, we then reopened schools back to physical learning, and we asked you students to open up another textbook and put you all in a desk, expecting you all to learn in the same way that you did before covid. That is why students are not engaged.
But I guarantee you all are engaged in everything else in the regular world because times are different now. So, it is understandably hard that we are asking you all to come to school and pull a book out, when that’s not how you all learn anymore. I talk about this all the time with my daughter, who is a junior in high school, and she has an attendance problem herself. Why? because she’s learned that while she could go to class and what the teacher is trying to teach her in a traditional way in a week, she can go online and learn the same topic on YouTube in an hour! I am realizing that you all have keys to knowledge everywhere you go, whether it’s on your computer or your cell phone.
What we must do as educators is to give you all opportunities to apply the knowledge that you’re gaining in a way in which best suits students, as well as teaching you all how to differentiate between what is relevant and reliable information, from false information. Overall, we just need to change our modality of instruction to increase classroom engagement. There’s nothing wrong with students, it’s something wrong with the way we are going about engaging students. We must understand and adapt to the new means of teaching, so that we can create a better learning environment as a whole, and that is exactly what I plan to do
Nails: Great to hear from your perspective! Thanks for allowing me to chat with you today!
As a rising high school senior, who is one of the many students who experienced virtual schooling during Covid, I have a personal understanding of how the pandemic altered our ways of learning, from textbooks to eBooks. I also understand how in-person school can be mentally draining and often seem unessential because it is a fact that we can learn what is taught in school from the comfort of our homes. However, it gives me relief that there is an authoritative educator who also understands our perspective of school as students and is willing to use his position of office to adjust the school system to fit the needs of ALL STUDENTS!
A fresh face with a new vision…that is what we can expect from Superintendent Howard Hepburn! Hearing his responses to the questions asked was not only enthralling but also fulfilling, as it is clear that he has bright plans for Broward County Public Schools!
