The Carbon School District announced one year ago this month that they would begin the process of seeking a new superintendent. It was not until the end of July that a selection was made and the school board introduced Lance T. Hatch to the community as the new Carbon School District Superintendent.
As Hatch looks back on the last ten months he starts with acknowledging the educators, “It’s been a great year. It’s been fun to get to know the amazing educators. I’ve been amazed at their dedication, the time and the effort that they put into what they do. Really Carbon School District is and Carbon County is blessed to have amazing people in their ranks.”
He is no stranger to the Castle Country area as he went to school here receiving his Associates Degree from what was formerly known as College of Eastern Utah, his wife was born and raised in Price, as was her mother. It was a perfect fit for this small-town guy that would bring with him the knowledge and experience needed in all aspects of education.
When he arrived, his main focus was to implement collaboration within the district. This led to numerous training and working with the district’s individual collaboration teams at grade levels and departments. “As a result of what we learned this year we’re bringing in a consultant group called Ed Direction for a big three-day training right after school gets out and they are the best in the business,” stated Hatch. One of the benefits of working with the consultation group is they will return periodically throughout the school year to help educators narrow their focus to the evidence-based instructional strategies to achieve lasting transformation and improve student outcomes.
The next item on his agenda was what could the district do to efficiently recruit new teachers and strengthening retention as it can be problematic in rural Utah to find teachers. A task group was organized and lead by Personnel Director, Robert Cox. The group of educators took time to design a survey for current teachers within the district to take. The results were used for the district to really look at ideas that they could implement to improve recruitment and retention. “What came out of that was a lot of positive efforts, one of those that we’re excited about is the Para-professional to Teacher Program, USU-Eastern has been a great partner. We held a meeting with 25 of our current Para-professionals, our aids and we’re trying to encourage them to pursue teaching,” said Hatch. The benefit of this is that these individuals are living here and tied to the community. The school district will start a scholarship to assist with educational costs for eligible individuals who are taking the step to start their education towards a teaching degree.
Another idea that has been designed for recruitment is to start a High School Pathway for Teaching. This would give high school students exposure to what being a teacher entails and get them in concurrent enrollment classes to start towards their teaching degree.
As for the 2018-2019 school year, the district is going to focus on implementing a reading program. “One area we are really looking at is when the middle school tell us many of the students who come into our middle school are struggling with reading and that’s on elementary schools and we own that. So, we’re making a huge investment of upwards of $150,000.00 just to get level books in the hands of students which we will be receiving this summer,” said Hatch. Research has shown that students who read at their independent level, which is comfortable for them and given an enormous amount of text can accelerate improvement in their reading. Along with the purchase of books, there will be training and support for educators to know how to use the level books.
Superintendent Hatch is happy with the outcome of his first school year and looks forward to improving education for the students of Carbon School District.