Joshua Starr says he’s been hearing from people that he’s a carbon copy of Jerry Weast, the retiring Montgomery County public schools superintendent whom he is expected to replace July 1.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said in a phone interview. “I hope people judge me on my merits.”
In naming Starr last Monday as the new superintendent pending contract negotiations, the Montgomery County Board of Education said it wasn’t looking for someone to be a change agent, but rather to continue the reform efforts undertaken by Weast.
As the superintendent of the highly diverse Stamford, Conn., public schools, Starr has tackled many of the same issues that Weast has dealt with in MCPS, another highly diverse district that’s nearly 10 times larger.
Still, those who aren’t Weast’s biggest fans wonder if Starr is too much like his predecessor. One MCPS high school administrator wondered privately whether the board chose Starr because he seemed a younger, possibly more malleable version of Weast. “Nobody pushed around Jerry Weast,” he said.
Starr dismisses the idea.
“I think Jerry has done some really great things, and I hope to build on that, and pretty soon people will see that I’m my own man,” Starr says.
Starr, 41, and his leadership team have studied the work done by Weast and his team, including listening to Weast speak at conferences and reading the book, Leading for Equity, The Pursuit of Excellence in the Montgomery County Public Schools, published in 2009.
Starr knows he’ll have a steep learning curve once he arrives, but expects that he’ll get up to speed with the help of MCPS staff, whom he described as “outstanding.”
“It’s not like I’m going from one field of work to another field of work. The implementation of good instruction in Montgomery County is more complex when you have 200 schools than when you have 20,” he said. “But the strategy is not much different. It’s not a situation where I’m going to be overhauling something.”
One of the challenges he’ll face when he takes over is dealing with the fallout from the current budget crisis. MCPS officials are facing what they say is an $82 million cut in funding and the possible loss of millions more in state aid if the County Council doesn’t agree to fully fund the $2.2 billion budget requested by Weast for fiscal 2012. Council members have said they won’t do so.
But Starr said he is up to the task, noting that he has survived some tough budget battles and political fights in his six years as Stamford superintendent. During his tenure, he dealt with 23 school board members.
“We worked very hard to put structures and processes in place. “It’s not always easy,” he said. “There are multiple elected officials who have a hand in determining the school district budget and that creates a whole other set of politics.”
Still, he realizes that challenges lie ahead for MCPS.
“When times get tough, how do you continue to improve? Improvement doesn’t mean radical change, but everybody wants to get better at what they are doing,” Starr said. “What Montgomery County has going for it is structures and policies around collaboration. We’re going to be well prepared to address those issues.”
