BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
In a recent interview, incumbent Superintendent Will Hartley addressed various criticisms levied by his election opponent, Alan Bhajan, as the race for school district leadership continues to Election Day.
Hartley received more than 70% of the vote in the Republican primary and plans to maintain his focus on the ongoing work within the school district.
School closures and financial decisions
Hartley strongly defended the controversial decision to close certain schools, including the potential closure of the middle school, which Bhajan has criticized. Hartley emphasized that his opponent lacks an understanding of the financial realities facing the district.
“We have overwhelmingly more facilities than comparable districts, which has caused excessive overhead and wasted taxpayer money,” Hartley explained. It has restricted the district’s ability to offer competitive teacher salaries.
He added that the proposed combination of a junior-senior high school adjacent to the technical college is not only a financially prudent decision but also one that provides students with better access to educational resources.
Academic performance and turnaround claims
In response to Bhajan’s claim that the middle school was at risk of entering a turnaround due to poor academic performance, Hartley dismissed these concerns, highlighting the school’s improved grades and trajectory towards a “B” rating. “The middle school is not in jeopardy of being in turnaround,” Hartley stated, adding that recent performance data shows promising trends continuing this year.
Hartley also addressed Bhajan’s assertion that his own teaching had averted a decline in the school’s science performance. Hartley refuted this, revealing that due to concerns over student performance in Bhajan’s class, the district had reassigned students to other teachers mid-year.
“We had to completely change the way science was taught because of the issues in his class,” Hartley said.
While not specifically addressing Bhajan’s job loss, he said, “We don’t typically get rid of teachers that are high performing.”
Safety and school environment
Addressing concerns raised by Bhajan about the safety of younger students in a combined junior-senior high school, particularly regarding bullying and potential risks for younger girls, Hartley dismissed these as misconceptions or political tactics. He clarified that any new facility would be designed to keep younger and older students separate, ensuring their safety. He pointed to Bradford Elementary as an example, where the fourth-grade through sixth-grade students are segregated from the younger students.
Leadership style and district challenges
Hartley rejected Bhajan’s characterization of his leadership style as “laissez-faire” and “hands-off,” pointing to his active involvement in district operations. “I have people who have worked in other districts tell me they’ve never seen a superintendent as involved as I am,” Hartley said, suggesting that the recent positive results across the district speak to the effectiveness of his leadership.
Finally, Hartley addressed Bhajan’s claims that issues like bullying and truancy are driving students out of the district. Hartley acknowledged that while bullying is a serious issue, it is often over-simplified in political discourse.
He noted that the district handles all reported cases in strict accordance with the code of conduct, but emphasized that some claims of bullying do not meet the state’s definition, being instead isolated incidents.
When the district knows, it takes action, but sometimes student’s don’t know how to advocate for themselves. Hartley said many times schools see problems first through social media.
He also said that, contrary to Bhajan’s claims that parents are pulling their students into alternative programs, district enrollment has actually increased.
As the election approaches, Hartley remains confident that his track record and ongoing initiatives will resonate with voters.
Will Hartley in his own words
On election success
“I would be lying if I didn’t say I was extremely confident. I mean, really moving forward, we’ll do the things we’ve been doing. We’ll keep our signs out and keep spreading the word and that type of stuff. But as far as anything beyond what we did in the primary, we’re really just going to be business as usual and continue to do the work at the school, which I think is really the most important.
“I mean, I continue to believe that the person in my position pretty much wins or loses in the four years you’re there. So I think we just keep doing what we’re doing, and I think everything will be fine.”
School consolidation
“Well, one thing that I can say is He obviously doesn’t understand the financial side of anything, especially talking about closures. One of the things that I immediately found out when I got into the position was comparing us to like-size districts, we have overwhelmingly more facilities than most do, which is what has caused a lot of overhead and a lot of, in my opinion, wasted taxpayer money. And at the end of the day, it’s why in our district, we haven’t been able to pay teachers as much as some of the surrounding smaller districts like us.
“So, it’s just moving forward and having a combination junior-senior high school, especially having it right there with the technical college, it’s not only in the best interest financially for the district, but it also solves a ton of problems that we’ve had in the past of busing kids back and forth to the tech college, and it gives all of our students, middle school and high school, just the best access to everything that’s happening there at the tech college. So for a lot of reasons, I believe it’s the best decision, and the people at the Department of Education also agree with us on that.”
On academics
“I don’t know if he looked at this year’s school grades, but they’re not in danger of turnaround. In fact, they’re, they’re actually moving towards a B, and I would expect that to continue. Actually, I know a lot of our PM1 data is showing increases from last year’s PM1 data, so we continue to build on that and have some of the same growth that we had last year. We should continue to move forward, but the middle school is definitely not in jeopardy of being in turnaround.
About the science performance
“I guess this is where I can be extremely honest. He can claim whatever scores he wants to claim, but the people at the middle school will 100% agree and back me on this. Halfway through the year, we saw what was happening with the performance of the students in his class, and we actually moved other teachers into science, and we took a lot of his students away from him that were at jeopardy of not being, proficient. We moved them into other teachers’ classes. So he can claim whatever he wants to claim, but we had to completely change the way science was taught at the middle school the second half of the year because of his class.”
“The thing about the eighth-grade science test is a big majority of the standards that are taught are seventh grade standards. So it should be that, especially given the second half of the year, it should be that they’re going back in sixth- and seventh-grade standards and reviewing all of that.”
Consolidation and student safety
“It doesn’t concern me at all, honestly, because if you look at the construction of the new Bradford Elementary, you see how the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders are completely away from the younger students on that campus. And building a junior,-senior high school, that would be the vision — that you have one large campus, but within that large campus there’s separation of those younger kids and older kids.”
“It would never, it would never be the intention to have them all right there in one building together, of course. I mean, I think that that’s a misconception and maybe just kind of a political ploy that he would like to play, I guess, or maybe it’s just a lack of understanding, I’m not sure, but I would have no concerns with that, because, I mean, in my mind, I understand the vision of how we would want a facility like that constructed, and it would never be To combine the younger students with the older ones.”
Leadership style
“Well, I don’t think you would find any one that would honestly say that I’m hands off. In fact, I have people that work for me, that have worked for other districts, that will tell me that they’ve never seen a superintendent do as much as I do, or be on campus as much as I am. And as far as saying that the principals are not equipped, I don’t know, I would just have to say, look back at the results that have happened over the last couple of years. And I think that speaks for itself.”
Bullying
“So our enrollment is up this year, and it’s just, it just continues to be one of the things — I think we saw it in the primary election also. When you don’t really have something to run on and you can’t come up with your own platform, people tend to always gravitate towards ESE and bullying, because you could go to any district in the country, and people could say that those are issues.”
“The reality is something like bullying when we’re aware of those issues, we treat them straight by the code of conduct, but a lot of times it’s lack of student advocacy for themselves and not knowing about things until after the fact. A lot of times we see things for the first time on Facebook. And so when things are addressed properly and going through the proper chain of command, we always handle those things. It’s the ones that you know you don’t even know about happening. And sometimes it’s true bullying, and sometimes it’s really not by the definition the state’s given. It’s a one-time event that’s happened one time between the student and other students, but it’s easy today to say it’s bullying. So we take all of that so serious. It’s just a matter, I think, of not only working with parents to understand when things happen, we need to know, but also that every single situation is not truly bullying, but we handle them all seriously nonetheless.”
On the negativity
“It seems to be very, very much like the primary. If you’re not going to have your own platform where you have specific solutions to problems, it’s very easy to try to just throw out negative connotations and have people grab hold of them and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s happening,’ or whatever. But I think much like the primary, that’s not going to be enough to work.”
Election Day
“I think number one is just to realize that come November, my name will be on the on the ballot again, and it’ll be time to vote again, but number two, that we’ll continue to do the same things that we’ve done over the last four years, which is to make decisions in the best interest of our students. Every single time, that won’t be something that we all agree on, but they can always know that in the end, that’s why I make the decisions that I do, and we’ll just continue to do that same thing moving forward.”
