Dr. Randy Shaver - Superintendent

I can't tell you how excited I am to be here leading the Tupelo Public School District. My wife and I come to Mississippi from North Carolina on the recommendation of a lot of professional educators, and we're just thrilled to be a part of this thriving community. You know community support is what has led Tupelo Public Schools to its position of excellence not only in the state of Mississippi, but also throughout the United States. Still, there are things that we can do to improve the school district because we never stop learning.

Under my leadership, we want to emphasize Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships. I also think that if we emphasize those three things we certainly can anticipate that fourth R - Results.

We'll increase Rigor by taking a good hard look at how we structure lesson plans every day and how students learn. We want to focus on student learning as opposed to simply instructing.

We'll work on Relationships because that's a vital part of what we do every day, and we want to make sure that all members of our community are included in the educational process. Parents, students, teachers, all support personnel - we're all a part of the same team, and we need to work together to do that. Relationships are key.

And then there is Relevance. We need to make sure that every child in every classroom every day of the school year understands exactly what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how it's going to benefit them in the long-term future as well as the very next day in class.

Finally, we need to strengthen our focus on the dropout problem. We know that it's a problem that is not unique to the Tupelo Public School District. We simply have to own that as a problem and address it in the proper ways. One of the ways we are going to do that is to make technology a teaching and learning tool. Currently, we teach students who live and learn in the 21st century. We need to use the technology that they use in their everyday lives to instruct them. That will be a cornerstone of what we do as we approach making this not only an excellent school district for Mississippi, but the most excellent school district in the United States.

Again, I'm excited to be here.