Dr. Del Phillips appeared relaxed Tuesday afternoon as he intermittently packed boxes, signed papers, and fielded the plethora of phone calls involved in changing jobs, changing towns, moving out, moving on.
For four years, he has led the Columbus Municipal School District as superintendent, but now he’s headed to Gallatin, Tenn., where he will head the Sumner County School District as director of schools.
The city is the home of Gap Inc. headquarters and a spate of suburbs connecting commuters to nearby Nashville. The county is the home of more than 155,000 people, more than 27,000 public school students and approximately 46 schools.
Phillips has only visited the area a few times. But now, it is his home as well. He begins his first day at his new job on Monday.
‘This is a people business’
When Phillips arrived in Columbus in June 2007, he immediately set about forging community bonds, a practice he plans to continue in Tennessee.
Here, he made his first stop at Columbus Air Force Base, listening to the airmen and their leaders, taking notes, talking about school choice — implemented in the fall of 2005, but still a relatively new concept.
He met with Mayor Robert Smith, with whom he became fast friends. He introduced himself to every potential leader he could find, from politicians to pastors, from media moguls to schoolteachers.
As he reflected on his tenure in Columbus, he leaned back in his chair at his Brandon Central Services office, looking at ease in a yellow button-down shirt, with no tie and no suit coat. He laughed while thinking back on his early days, how he hit the ground running and didn’t slow down.
“It’s just my personality,” Phillips said. “I’m a people person, and I like to meet new folks. This is a people business.”
To be effective, a superintendent has to be invested in the community, he said. Like all leaders, they must value input and be prepared to do a lot of strategic questioning and listening.
As he talked, he kept the pen in his left hand moving steadily across a stack of forms, making the firm, broadly looping signature that is his style.
In truth, he admitted, tasks like this — sitting at his desk, signing approvals for teacher vacations — have been the hardest requirement of the job. While administrative work is a necessary part of his day, he found it hard to stay behind his desk. He preferred to be out in the schools.
“You cannot sit in the office,” Phillips said. “You have to be dedicated to being visible.”
Over the years, friends told him he needed to take care of himself, find a way to slow down and recharge. But “slow down” isn’t part of his vocabulary.
When he needs to recharge, he draws inspiration from books — no fiction, only non-fiction. Things like Gary Marx’s “16 Trends,” which examines the factors shaping educational policy and the future of learning, and “North Toward Home,” by Willie Morris.
“I just like what I do,” Phillips said. “I really, really like the school business as a whole … how it impacts a child’s life forever … how it impacts a community.”
‘If I knew what was wrong, I would have fixed it’
Phillips said overall he’s pleased with the accomplishments that were made during his time in Columbus.
In his resume, posted on his website at www.delrphillips.com, he states that with CMSD, he was “challenged with a district where 75 percent of the students are on the free or reduced lunch program.” His resume further states that he was “hired to turn around a negative image of the district and inspire a cadre of good teachers to embrace innovation, change, and excellence.”
Among his key accomplishments, he lists the implementation of the magnet school program, creating a new vision statement for the district and “successfully generating buy-in from the school board and community,” saving the district $600,000 by refinancing bonds, garnering support for the $22 million bond which financed the building of Columbus Middle School, winning a $1.1 million grant to fund the International Baccalaureate program and a Freshman Academy for at-risk students, and other initiatives.
So is there anything he would have done differently?
He thought for a minute, answering slowly and cautiously, hesitant to criticize what he called “great people, a great community and a phenomenal school board.”
“This has no bearing on the people,” he said. “I think it will come; it just didn’t happen while I was here.”
Around his office were scattered hints of the achievement he couldn’t seem to pull off, no matter how hard he tried: A poster proclaiming “What It Takes to Be Number One.” A football helmet. A sports trophy.
“I love athletics,” confessed the former athletic director at sports powerhouse South Panola. “Anything competitive, I like. It’s how I’m wired. It means a lot to a community to have a winning attitude. Sometimes that is nurtured by school athletics. It’s a source of pride. I think it will happen here, it just didn’t happen like I would have drawn up.”
Why not?
He laughed. “I don’t know,” he said candidly. “If I knew what was wrong, I would have fixed it.”
He went on to say that so many elements make up a tremendously successful athletics program; it was hard to pinpoint what was lacking. It would have been difficult for any sports department to consistently meet his bar, which he admitted was high.
“My expectation was for us to win a state championship in anything we fielded,” he said, “So anything short of that would have been a disappointment to me.”
But in the area of test scores and school accountability, he said though he expected higher scores and is still, five years later, “nowhere near where we wanted to be,” he is pleased with what he sees as “vast gains.”
Though the district as a whole is on academic watch for 2009-2010 according to the state’s Assessment and Accountability Reporting System, Phillips said test scores have “gotten better” since he arrived.
“Sometimes when you look at a short curtain of time, you get it wrong,” he said. “Education is a long process … that sometimes takes years to come to fruition. I feel extremely good about the work. It’s my nature to never be satisfied. I’m proud of the work the team and the community was able to do.”
Leadership and the future of education
Phillips said job changes are good times to assess personal and professional growth. As a man who has spent his career analyzing leadership, he had a few suggestions for what any employer should look for when seeking the next leader.
The right person would be a great communicator, a decision-maker, understand the key concepts of the job, and be invested as a leader in the community.
He said he deliberately kept himself out of the process as the CMSD board of trustees searches for his replacement.
“The schools don’t belong to me,” Phillips said. “Superintendents who start to lead with the misperception that the schools belong to them are a bad thing. They belong to the citizens of Columbus.”
He added that because the board of trustees are representatives of the citizens, the choice is, ultimately, theirs.
Over the next few years, he said he’s looking forward to watching from afar as some of the seeds he planted begin to take root. He is particularly interested in the impact of a Teacher Incentive Fund grant passed a year and a half ago.
The grant, which offers performance-based compensation for teachers, will be implemented at Franklin Academy and Cook elementary schools.
On a nationwide level, he sees a trend in the next decade toward more market-driven education, with parents demanding more enhanced-option schools catering to students’ individual needs.
At a time when consumers can go online and custom-design a pair of tennis shoes, that level of specialization will trickle down, affecting all walks of life, including education.
In addition, he said he already sees a movement toward addressing the entire educational experience. In the past, teachers might
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 45 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 45 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
