School superintendent candidate says Boston just too good an opportunity to pass up

Barely a year ago, Dana Bedden signed a contract with Richmond, VA to become its school superintendent through June, 2017. But next Tuesday, the Boston School Committee could vote to recommend Mayor Walsh hire him to lead Boston schools.

At an interview today, School Committee member Meg Campbell was blunt: How do we know that Bedden wouldn't turn around and do the same thing to Boston if, say, the Ford Foundation offered him a job?

Bedden said Boston is different - and worth the difficult conversations he said he's had with his mayor and even governor - because of its role in helping set the national educational agenda.

"I don't think there's anything better" than the chance to lead Boston schools, he said. "It's a rare opportunity to be a part of innovation, not only just within Boston, but also on a national scale. What happens in Boston has the ability to influence what happens in the nation." Bedden said if he were chosen in Boston and came here, he'd look to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Payzant and Carol Johnson, both of whom served far longer here than the 3.2-year national average for school superintendents.

He said that when he explained that to the mayor and governor, "they said they get it," because Boston is "a tier-one opportunity."

Bedden is the third of four candidates the committee and other panels are interviewing this week.

Bedden said one of his first goals in Boston would be to dive into BPS's $1 billion budget to see where savings could be made - to be applied to critical educational goals. He cited transportation, food services and facilities as particular issues in Boston and said he would want to be held accountable for how well he managed that budget - by both school leaders and by taxpayers, because "everyone is paying that bill."

He added that while he would also work to set an overall educational goal for BPS, he would also seek to recast central administration as one of serving the needs of individual schools. "We don't exist without schools. Or studentsm, he continued, adding his goal is to treat students as customers and to create "a customer-first mentality."

He gave an example from his career in Irving, Texas, where he served as superintendent before Richmond: When he looked at how to increase the number of students taking the SAT, he realized the traditional Saturday exam dates were keeping back students who could not get to the tests because they had work commitments or even just transportation issues on a weekend day. Changing the exam dates to a regular school date all by itself helped increase the rate of SAT takers, he said.

Another example, he gave: Changing the school system's reliance on traditional e-mail and Web pages to alert parents and collect information to a system that works better on smart phones, because while many parents still don't have computers at home, they do have phones.

Bedden said he recognizes the need for innovation at individual schools, but said, "innovation has to have a defined definition we all agree on," and that even with Boston's range of pilot and in-district charter schools, there needs to be a common set of metrics on which success can be judged.

Although Virginia is a "right to work" state with weak unions, he said he would be ready to work collaboratively with the Boston Teachers Union and other school unions, in part based on his background in Philadelphia and Washington, DC, which, like Boston, have strong school unions.

He said his experience in Philadelphia as the parent of a special-needs student also helped him prepare for the challenges of helping students with different experiences better succeed. He said his daughter's teachers were "wonderful" but they just didn't have the resources and training they needed.

And, he continued, "Don't tell [the students] to try harder; they arealdy are trying hard." Their parents, he said, have to be assured their children can succeed, by providing the sort of alternative education that proves "my son or daughter can get there they may just get there in a different pathway."

Also see:
Bedden's Boston application.
School superintendent candidate saddened by what he sees in Boston.
Superintendent candidate would decentralize Boston schools.
Superintendent candidate knows Boston challenges first hand.