MIDLAND Having spent 14 years at Midland ISD and with strong ties in the community, Stephanie Howard decided to try for the superintendent’s job.
Howard was superintendent at Crane ISD for about a year and a half. She was deputy superintendent at Ector County ISD and had been superintendent in Plains. Midland is where she became an assistant principal and principal.
“(I) learned so much here and worked with some great people and did some really good things over those 14 years, I think,” Howard said.
She left in the first place to have an opportunity to work in district level administration as superintendent in Plains ISD. That led her to ECISD.
The Midland superintendent’s job had been open three times in the past five years. The time before this, Howard said she would get calls and texts asking if she was coming back or saying they heard she was coming back, but she hadn’t applied.
“You don’t usually get a job you don’t apply for, but this time, it was really unexpected. I had just gotten to Crane and I’d been there a year and a half and really thought that would be my last stop before I retired,” Howard said.
She never expected the MISD job to open up so quickly. The contract says her annual salary is $280,000, plus benefits such as $100 a month for communications like a cell phone.
“When it did, of course, I immediately had people reaching out to me; people I’ve worked with before; parents; community members that I knew. It was a real tough decision because … with Corley (the youngest of her two daughters) in school we had to make sure that was going to be a good transition for her. But the longer we thought about it, the more it seemed like it was the right time to put my name in the hat to see what happened. I felt more compelled this time to come back and try to provide some stable leadership and be here for a while.”
She said there has been a lot of turnover and “that’s hard on adults, but it’s really hard on kids because that all affects them. They may never know it. They usually don’t know who the superintendent is, or what they do. But at the end of the day, when there’s that much transition, it affects them in the long run, so I felt like it was a good time to try to come back and provide that stability and leadership and then move the district in the direction that we need to go.”
Asked if she had any apprehension about going for the job given the number of superintendents MISD has had in the past several years, Howard said she wouldn’t say that was the feeling.
“When you go through the process interviewing with the board, it’s very different than any other experience. … When you’re going through a superintendent search, it’s all about a good fit and feeling like there’s that connection with the board. It was obvious and very evident from the beginning that this is a board that is ready to work together, that’s ready to do the work that we need to move the district forward,” Howard said.
She added that she knew most of the board members in some capacity such as being their child’s principal or a board member who was a teacher.
“I felt like I already knew them; had a relationship (with them), and they knew of my work when I was in that district before, so I feel like there were not a lot of surprises with the group. But I’m the kind of superintendent (that is) going to come in and do what’s right for kids. I’m going to work with the board. I expect that relationship to be really good. That team of eight is critical. We have to all be on the same page and pull in the same direction to move the district forward. I feel like we have a team of eight that’s ready to do that,” Howard said.
She added that she felt good about the hiring process throughout.
“You don’t ever know what’s going to happen until you get to the end of it. I didn’t know about it (the decision to hire her) until I guess it was about 10:30-10:40 at night when I finally got the call. They had finished up all their interview process. It was late and I was excited to get that call and just have the opportunity,” Howard said.
She added that the community and the board were pretty intent on finding someone that had ties to Midland and West Texas and understood the Permian Basin.
Those connections are important when it comes to recruiting teachers. Howard has been in the area for 20-plus years.
“Over the years as a principal, you recruit someone in from the Metroplex, or honestly anywhere else in Texas, and unless they’ve formed some kind of connection here, they’re eventually going to go closer to home. We’ve seen that over and over,” she said.
Two jobs she plans to fill are deputy superintendent and associate superintendent for teaching and learning. Howard said she’ll make those recommendations at the next board meeting.
The associate superintendent of teaching and learning will have teaching and learning for students under them — everything that’s done in the classroom, the instruction, the materials that are used and the resources.
That person will also have the professional learning side, talent development and making sure that what students are able to do, or not able to do, is driving the decisions they make related to professional development.
“Also under that body of work will be the work with our first-year teachers, pathways into the profession, grow our own programs and anything related to supporting teachers and preparing them and providing that professional learning,” Howard said.
She added that she learned a lot from the work done at ECISD under interim Superintendent Jim Nelson and Superintendent Scott Muri.
Howard said she learned to think differently about the challenges in this area such as teacher shortages, the economy and prices.
“Everything is more expensive and that impacts our workforce …,” she said. “Of course, the districts are different and so what worked over there may not work exactly the same here. But there are a lot of things that are pretty fundamental to the work that we do that absolutely will work.”
As of right before the Christmas break, MISD had 27,711 students and 1,545 teachers. The district was rated B in state accountability ratings this year.
Howard has only been on the job since Jan. 3, so she didn’t know exactly how many openings she had. Thirty-nine percent of MISD teachers have five or less years of experience, so the district has to make sure they are “very well supported.”
“It’s just a constant state of hiring,” she said.
She has told principals to start looking to fill openings early and Human Capital will be doing the same.
“Our Human Capital team will be trying to recruit earlier and offer positions knowing that we’re going to fill those. You’ll be able to place those teachers and really trying to get ahead of that. But the bigger piece is the retention piece. We can’t recruit our way out of this teacher shortage, because there’s just not enough people out there, so we’ve got to retain the great people we have, and we have to try to bring back some of the people who maybe left the profession,” Howard said.
She added that all districts are “really struggling” with teacher vacancies, even in places like the Dallas area.
“It tells us how bad the shortage is and how critical it is for the state and the nation,” Howard said.
“We want to be that district people are waiting to work for and every retired person I’ve talked to that I know I’ve asked them if they’re ready to come back to work and most of them laugh and tell me no, but I’m going to keep asking them anyway,” she added.
When recruiting, MISD has to tell people the good things that are happening, she said.
“That’s the role of every employee we have is helping get the good things out that are happening. I told the group at lunch today (Jan. 11), when I spoke (that) with 27,711 students, we’re going to have things happen. Kids are going to misbehave and kids are going to do things that they shouldn’t. Those kinds of things do happen. But a lot of really good things happen every day in our schools … That story doesn’t always get told, so we have to be telling those good stories to make people want to be part of the team,” Howard said.
During the hiring process, the board indicated they wanted someone who wants to be at MISD and wants to stay.
“I’ve been tied to this community for years. I started out here in my fourth year of teaching at Midland High. My husband’s worked for the city of Midland for 27 years. We don’t have any intentions of going off, or trying to relocate somewhere else from a professional standpoint. … I’m kind of tired of moving and ready to finish out my career in one place. This seemed like the … place to do that,” Howard said.
She and her husband, James, have two daughters, Raeley and Corley. Raeley goes to West Texas A&M University in Canyon and Corley is in middle school.
A native of Robert Lee, Howard earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a teaching certification from Angelo State University; her master’s in educational leadership, principal certification and superintendent’s certification from University of Texas Permian Basin; and her doctorate in educational leadership from UT San Antonio.
That was a partnership between UTSA and UTPB.
Muri said he was thrilled that Howard is now superintendent at MISD.
“She has a strong leadership skill set and keeps children at the center of her decisions,” Muri said in an email.
Asked if there were certain things he was looking to partner with MISD on, he said, “From recruiting high quality staff members to improving student achievement, ECISD and MISD face similar challenges. Dr. Howard and I partnered together to successfully tackle these areas in ECISD, and I feel confident that our partnership will continue as we work to improve opportunities for students within our portion of the Permian Basin.”
