An Interview with Dr. Tremayne Clardy, Superintendent of the Verona Area School District: Living the Servant Leadership Model
Dr. Tremayne Clardy believes in a school district structure that focuses the energy and resources on the students of the Verona Area School District.
Part 2 of 2
By Jonathan Gramling
Dr. Tremayne Clardy is in a sweet spot in his career as a school system administrator. Clardy began his duties as the superintendent of the Verona Area School District a little over a year ago. He’s loving it not because he is a superintendent, but because he’s in a position to make a difference.
One of the areas that the Verona Area School District is focusing on is disciplinary literacy. In essence, it focuses on all students learning communication skills and methods that will aid them in their chosen careers.
“Sometimes people hear literacy and they only think about the reading and language art teachers,” Clardy said. “Disciplinary literacy is across everything we are doing now. I think about our mechanics class. In the mechanics class, as the student is demonstrating proficiencies in oil changes or learning how to change a carburetor, when they take a YouTube video and film themselves doing that and then take that YouTube video and send it to a future employer, that is far more powerful than writing down, ‘I know how to change oil’ when the employer can see you step by step doing it on the video. Those are the types of things we’re enhancing.”
On some levels, disciplinary literacy takes into account that the students live in a high-tech, social media world. And by developing literacy in those areas, they can expand the reach of their message.
“If you think about our cooking classes, all the talk shows are putting all of their stuff on TikTok videos now,” Clardy said. “That’s how they are becoming famous. They are teaching themselves how to verbalize what they are doing, but they are also teaching along the way their step-by-step process. And that is how they are becoming more popular. They have those literacy skills to be able to take it in and deliver it.”
And of course, disciplinary literacy skills are need to sift and winnow through innumerable pieces of information that bombard us each day.
“Disciplinary Literacy is an opportunity for me to gain information through reading, but also through the delivery of information through writing and articulation,” Clardy emphasized. “The biggest thing is that in our district, it is our moral obligation, for our educators, that every child in our system has disciplinary literacy. If not, then there is very little chance for our students to thrive in our society. Think about the overall opportunity that we have. We are in a position as educators now to position students into the most diverse global society that has ever existed for mankind. This is the most diverse we have ever been. Without the skill set of disciplinary literacy skills available to take in information and deliver information, you are barely trying to survive much less thrive. We see disciplinary literacy as the key skills so that our students will thrive in our diverse global society and you’re not stuck in the situation where you’re getting the information and you don’t know how to think about it. That’s how a lot of bad information gets around, when you don’t have the skill set to decipher what is real and what is not real. We’ve seen that now more than ever, what is real information versus what is unreal information.”
For the past few years, the Verona Area School District has undergone a growth spurt. That is tapering off for the moment.
“Our infrastructure is really, really good right now,” Clardy said. “We’re going into year two of our brand new high school. Also our other two new locations are Sugar Creek and Badger Ridge. Badger Ridge became the new middle school. Sugar Creek moved into the building right next door to central office. We have another year under our belt with those boundary changes coming to life. Our students are in new spaces. The only change we are looking to do is change the traffic pattern out front of Badger Ridge in terms of traffic flow and being able to get students in and out. The Verona area is growing fast. We want to make sure that we are not interrupting the flow of traffic to workforce sites while also getting our students safely in and out of school. This won’t be a major project. We are probably four years out from having to look at another elementary school building.”
And it is because of the way that the school board financed the infrastructure expansion that the district may be able to meet its operating cost needs without raising taxes.
“Verona is going to have an operations referendum on the ballot for the November election,” Clardy said. “Some of the causes of that are twofold. For a couple of years, there have been no new monies for students from the state. Each year should be a $100-$150 increase per student because of inflation. For a couple of years in a row now, we’ve had zero new monies. Inflation over the past year or so coupled with no new funds have caused some budget concerns across the state of Wisconsin. We’ll likely see the most referendums in one year in the state of Wisconsin. Schools have been forced to go in that direction. Verona is in a very unique situation. Our board of education pre-paid a lot of debt on the new high school. Now that allows us to ask our community for permission to use that savings from the facilities side and move it over to the operations side for staffing needs. Our staff deserve to be compensated fairly. Our referendum question will be neutral. The tax mill rate will not go up whether people mark yes or no on the ballot. So we have a neutral budget question to seek the permission to take the savings from the facilities side and put it on the operations side. It will allow us to keep our teachers compensated to retain the staff that we have and continue to evolve our staff.”
They say that timing is everything and the Verona Area School District is about to embark on a new strategic planning process. Clardy is determined that everyone will have a voice in setting the future direction of the district.
“We are beginning to review our strategic framework, which expires in 2023,” Clardy observed. “We’ve begun the process. We are going to have the voices of families and staff who have not been represented in prior decision-making involved in this strategic framework. My piece of it is that it has to be family-based, student-centered and innovative. I don’t want a traditional strategic framework. I think there is too much innovation and too many reasons to think about the education of the future in the same way. I don’t think the community wants to see the same framework. Those are the things that we will be looking for. We have students on our panels. Students know what they want for their education. And we have to continue to set them to have their voices out there and to see their work come to fruition. The ideas that our students come up with are just phenomenal. I love our students because they know what helps them learn. And they articulate it very well, so the adults need to listen.”
Dr. Tremayne Clardy has hit a sweet spot in his administrative career. By serving, he is leading the Verona Area School District when the community is growing, the district has a solid, relatively new infrastructure, an excellent staff, students who want to learn and the dawn of a new strategic framework that will guide Clardy and the district to new academic heights.