New Trinity superintendent meets with community

Newly hired Trinity Superintendent Paul Kasunich agrees with a consultant’s recommended changes to improve the district.
Kasunich, who will start as superintendent on April 5, spoke after consultant James Manley gave a report called “A Journey Towards High Performance,” which detailed what Trinity does well and how the district can improve.
Kasunich and Manley spoke during a special meeting that several hundred people attended Thursday.
Manley’s report describes the ideal school district in five areas: leadership and governance; curriculum, instruction and achievement; learning climates and culture; accountability for teachers and students; and systems thinking, which includes special education.
“We’re pretty much on the same page,” Kasunich said of Manley’s recommendations.
Kasunich said the district needs to have a clear academic focus. It also needs to have “The Four R’s,” – rigor, relevancy, relationships and reflection, he said.
Trinity needs to have data-driven decision-making, which means making sure that teachers have data so they can change instruction as necessary, he said.
The district needs to use best instructional practices and to make sure that there’s a real-world connection for students, he said.
He said the district needs to have kindergarten through 12th-grade system thinking, which means that teachers at different grade levels need to know what other grade levels are responsible for teaching.
“You can’t have isolation in the buildings,” he said, adding that it needs to be cohesive and coherent.
Kasunich said he wants Trinity to be innovative.
“I don’t want us to be in the middle,” he said. “I want us to be in the front.”
Kasunich, who has a background in business and education, also shared his core beliefs with the audience.
He said the organization can’t stand still, it has to be constantly improving. That’s why he will encourage people to act – and act quickly.
Kasunich said he will also encourage dialogue and feedback.
“I will encourage it because I don’t know all the answers,” he said.
He said he will let actions speak for him, just as he will for everyone else. Every district employee is a role model for children, he said.
He wants to create a performance-based culture and said he will give people the benefit of the doubt. Kasunich said he’d rather have Trinity try new ideas and find out they don’t work exactly as planned than to not try anything new at all.
“The only way you get better is to try to broaden your horizons,” he said. “We are going to do that at Trinity.”
Read Manley’s report at www.observer-reporter.com/OR/sourcedoc/.

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