According to superintendent Nicholas Wahl, the 2013-2014 will serve as a year to become accustomed to the Carmel Clay community as well as to observe, evaluate and reassess current established academic programs.

“First year it’s very important to get to know people in the community, principals, teachers, parents, community leaders, and start to build relationships. It’s also important to get things done,” Wahl said.

Wahl cited the importance of both short term goals and long term goals, with the latter focusing more on the evaluation and improvement of current academic programs through district-wide collaboration.

“My style is to do things with people, not to them. That seems very simplistic but that’s important, because if you really want to collaborate with people you have to give them a voice and work with people and give them an opportunity to be heard and to see if those ideas can become realities,” Wahl said.

One such way Wahl plans to listen to students specifically centers around the creation of a superintendent advisory committee.

“One of the things I talked to Mr. Williams about is to have a student advisory board to discuss potential new initiatives for me to listen to. I’m going to defer to the building to give me a cross-section of students to meet with on a regular basis,” Wahl said. “The thing I will be doing this year is listening to determine what the needs are. Many times in my role as a superintendent I become the conduit for information coming in, and I then determine what to do with that information.

According to senior Samuel Pickett, he, along with other students, would like to see new changes implemented in regards to the teacher evaluation system.

Pickett said, “I think having that our teacher analysis system needs to stay away from having students grades determine them. I’d also like to see him encourage a decrease in the ‘teaching to the test’ method and get back to what education is really about: learning.”

Wahl said that before making any changes to any standing programs they would need to be assessed.

Wahl said, “We’ll evaluate any existing programs, see the effectiveness of it and work with administration and teachers to see if it’s measuring growth the way that it should. We won’t know if it is effective until we see it put into practice.”

Overall Wahl hopes to use his experience to benefit the Carmel Clay district.

“I’m familiar and accustomed to a community with high expectations because I have very high expectations myself for me my administrators and for the schools,” Wahl said. “I think that is great preparation for Carmel Clay schools because there’s a rich tradition of excellence here that I want to continue and hope to enhance.”