Last week Stephen Grimm announced his resignation as Lansing Superintendent of Schools.  Grimm will be moving to a new job as Superintendent the Penfield Central School District.  Grimm sat down with the Lansing Star on Monday to talk about why he is moving and how he views the Lansing district.

Grimm is originally from Henrietta, a southern suburb of Rochester.  Before coming to Lansing he was an assistant principal in the Canandaigua School District and a math and science teacher in the West Irondequoit and Geneseo school districts.

The Penfield Board Of Education appointed Grimm on Tuesday.  His start date there will depend on the Lansing board's success at hiring an Interim superintendent.  Grimm hopes that will be done by the beginning of the school year, when Penfield would like him to start.  On Monday School Board President David Dittman said that a search is already underway, and the Board may be interviewing candidates as early as next week.

"One of the most enjoyable parts of the school year for me is the beginning of the school year," Grimm says.  "As soon as that first day of school hits you get around to the buildings, see the kids, see the teachers, go to the events... it's really a fun time."

Lansing hasn't seen the last of Grimm, however.  His band 'Reporter.' is scheduled to play at this year's Corporate Development Committee's (CDC) auction and dance.

Lansing Star:  You seemed sure for a long time that you wanted a long tenure in Lansing, and you wanted your children to graduate from here.  So why are you leaving?

Stephen Grimm:  I remember after we got the house built, and watching the sun set -- which I do pretty regularly because I think it's one of the best sunsets in the whole world, on top of the hill there, over the school district -- I thought, 'That's it.  Now we can be at Lansing.  No more trying to climb the hill of getting a doctorate, being a principal knowing you want to be a superintendent.  Finally you're a superintendent in a great district.  You've got the house on the hill that overlooks the campus.  The sun sets every night, and you see the next twelve, thirteen years to be positive.'


I don't know what it's like for other people that are away from where their parents are.  It's hard to say you're home, because when you go back it's not what you grew up with.  My parents are in the mid-seventies, and two of my brothers are still in the Rochester area.  We travel to make it to the performances of the cousins and the special events and things like that.  I see my parents pretty regularly.  When I go back for band performances I stay with them.

But I haven't had a sense (in Lansing) of 'this feels like home' home.  I know it takes some time when people are transplanted before it starts to feel like this feels like home instead of the other place you are from.  So I started thinking will it ever feel like home?  And my parents are getting older, and the next ten to fifteen years of their lives will probably be the last ten to fifteen years.  If there is an opportunity at the two or maybe three districts I would even consider going back for in terms of the quality of community and school district that would be worth going to -- and Penfield is one of them.  It happened to pop up.  I hadn't anticipated it becoming available, and I hadn't really been thinking about it until probably this last year.

It's difficult when you're superintendent because your children are going to the schools in your district.  So that's a really short list of where you want to be.  Then you have to have the opportunity present itself at the right time and have the match be appropriate.

Two out of the three were large schools, and Penfield is a large school.  I've always loved small schools.  I had to think that over a lot because now the children would be going to large schools in middle and high school.  Their elementary schools are the same size as ours.  They just have more of them.

That was part of it.  I think that was the main thing.

The other thing is I had a sense that I was being effective here.  It feels good to know that you are doing good things for kids and families and the community.  I know I can do that to a broader audience.  That would also be professionally satisfying.

But the main thing is it would be nice to get back near Mom and Dad and my brothers.  It wasn't something I was actively searching for or sending out applications.

After investigating (Penfield) I thought they are very similar to Lansing in terms of their high academic expectations for kids, but also their emphasis on whole child development and character and responsible citizenship.  It seems like a larger kind of Lansing.  So it passed the first test on that.  I didn't really think I would advance as far as I did, but then to actually get it was even more unbelievable for me.  I'm still a little surprised.


LS:  Do you think the issues Lansing faces are more challenging, less, or about the same as other districts across the state?

SG:  It's much less of a challenge than it was four and a half years ago, because we've been able to build systems and strategic planning and a vision, and put some things in place for teacher leadership and programs.  Things are moving forward and a lot of processes are there.

Having state aid not as high as the surrounding districts... Lansing's 64% state aid ratio is lower than others that are in the 80s and 90s.  So they're more dependent on the state and when the state dropped their revenue they really took a beating.  We took a beating as well, because simultaneously we're dealing with our own loss of revenue from AES Cayuga.

I would say it's similar.  We are middle of the road with average income wealth.  I think we're .9 now where 1.0 is average.  I think we've survived because I think the state revenue is coming back.  It's not going to come back to where it was, and now we have a 2% tax cap.

Our biggest problem makes us different from anybody else.  That is AES Cayuga dropping from providing us with three and a half million dollars in a 20 million dollar budget to providing barely a million dollars out of a 26 million dollar budget.  And knowing that loss is going to go another five hundred thousand dollars over the next two years.  And not knowing whether or not they are going to be viable.  The challenge -- which is out of our control but we can try to be a big piece of it -- is economic development.

If you took out AES Cayuga I'd say the challenges are normal.  The dollars from State Ed are less dollars, but economic stability would be alright.  But AES Cayuga dropping over the next couple of years and possibly not being viable after that is very scary.


LS: I know you have been a member of the Lansing Economic Development Committee, and have been exploring development in the town to make up for AES Cayuga.  That was why, right?

SG:  Yes.  The sewer is one of those pieces, and knowing we have to do something, and possibly working together to get a sewer, which is better for us anyway.  To be able to have that be a part of spurring the economic development we need... we know that the sewer can bring at least 60 million dollars of economic development and there is more potential beyond that.

We've had economic development, which is part of how we've been able to keep the programs we have had.  Every year our economic growth is going up, where in other places it is going down and they're losing state aid.  The only way for us to survive is through that.

The other thing I've seen for the future -- and this would be for the next superintendent and for (Lansing School Business Administrator) Mary June King, too -- some debt has fallen off from our capital projects.  When that debt falls off we've got to figure out how we'll integrate that money into our regular budget.  There's a way that could coalesce with the loss from AES Cayuga.

So it's not a complete disaster if we lose AES.  There's a way to strategically plan for that. One of them is growing economic development.  The other is strategically using debt service that's going to be retiring in a few years.

But you have to think in advance, plan, and re-plan.

LS: Is that going to be the most challenging issue that Lansing schools face in the next half dozen years or so?

SG:  Absolutely.  There are a lot of things happening with common core learning standards, which is the curriculum that we have to teach.  We've got processes in place with our curriculum and teacher leaders where we're right on top of all of those changes.  We're also on top of the new teacher evaluation system.  It's very positive.  It's more work and it takes more time, but it's important work.  We want to make sure that we're giving teachers what they need professionally to be able to improve.

Those are the big changes.  With the assessments we're going to need one to one computing, possibly, where children will be taking tests on computers.  Our technology infrastructure is very good and very advanced, I think.

So we're set up very well to handle all those normal challenges.  The toughest ones are going to be the ones we're not in control of.


LS: What do you think this district's greatest strengths are?  You've had four years to think about that.

SG: Certainly the greatest strength is the community itself.  The population that currently exists, and their traditions of high expectations and aspirations for all of the children in Lansing.  There is an appreciation of the history of the people that have come through the system in the past, and a lot of them still live in the community.  That love of Lansing and inculcation of those high expectations and possibilities for everybody have a direct effect on the children that are here.

When you have a population of children that have parents who expect they will perform, and expect the school district will provide what their children need to perform, that sense of quality is not something you can create on your own.  It occurs over time.  And Lansing has that.

It is also our strength that we are located near Ithaca, near Cornell.  We have all the resources of Ithaca and Cornell, including some of the parents who work there.  We've got some of the smartest parents in the world right here.  It's really great to have that.

Another one is that because we've had really good students and families and high expectations, the high expectations are also on teachers to perform at their best over the years.  So similarly we've got a teaching staff that has high expectations for their own performance.  New teachers that some on board see that.  they say, 'Oh I need to do this, too.'  Not only are they learning from teachers who are already here, but there's a high expectation for how they will perform and how hard they will work.

That is overwhelmingly positive as well, and once you have that it feeds on itself.  And we do have that here.

When we have great kids and great teachers you can do a lot more in the classroom than some other districts.  The challenge there is to really see how far you can go.  We ask 'Why not?  Why can't we do that?'  Do we have the number of AP courses we want to have?  Do we have as many partnerships with colleges that we could have?  Can we do even more, because we do better than most of the districts around.  We're the top one in nearly everything in our performance on state tests.  But is that good enough?

It's not good enough for a lot of people in Lansing.  We have our own standards in Lansing about what is acceptable.  I think the most important thing is that it's small enough that you can care about every child.

Not every child is successful in Lansing, which is also another reminder that there's work to be done.


LS: I think I've told you that when I worked in a large corporation we were asked to turn in our 12 month plan every year.  But we'd get a new vice president in charge of our unit every six months or so with a whole new agenda, and we never got to see our 12 month plans through. 

Swapping school superintendents is similar.  Although four years is a good start for stability of planning, it's not like ten years or twenty years.  You have spent  lot of time working on long term planning, looking five years ahead.  Realistically, how do you see that working?  Will the district be back at square one again?

SG: One of the things that I wanted to do when I first got here -- its not because I had the intention of leaving -- but the best way to plan and have a vision and mission and goals is collaboration involving teachers and administrators and the board and the community in doing that.  The strategic planning process of re-clarifying what the vision of Lansing is, and then building the goals that are adopted by the Board of Education and the strategies that are developed at the operational and tactical level with the principals and their teachers...

They're the ones who will decide how we are going to achieve these goals.  They help develop the goals and then they're the ones who come up with the strategies.  So because it was developed in collaboration, the implementation will be collaborative.  And if it changes then it's because that's what the group has decided.  They're not the goals that I came up with.  You could force feed some of that and accomplish more things, but those might not live very long if they were mine and not the community's.

So you have to have patience in allowing the collaborative process to take place so that the strategies and ideas about what to do can be owned by the people that are there.  And that has happened.

I wanted to take it to the next level this coming year with a kind of re-clarification of the goals and a realignment of some of the strategies, but that was going to take place at the building level, and I think the principals are going to be able to see that through.

But it's important that the planning is collaborative and involves all of the stakeholders.  Then it will survive you.  If it doesn't, then I didn't do the good job I was trying to do.  But it should change.  If I had stayed we probably would tweak some of our goals and change some of our strategies.  We'd examine what we are doing and ask if we are achieving what we want to.  But the idea is that the process is ongoing and it's collaborative.

LS: There are a lot of very talented administrators in Lansing, and with the market for administrators as it is, I expect they receive 'offers that are too good to refuse' from time to time.  But my take is that if there is a good enough reason to stay that there is no offer good enough to make them leave.

SG: Are you asking if we are at risk of losing the leadership team people?

LS: That's not where I was going, but are we?

SG: I don't think so.  I think the conditions for operating, at least the way I set it up,  is that they work with autonomy within a defined set of characteristics.  I don't micro manage at all, really.  I try to work with each of the principals to establish the direction we want to go and they come up with ways to do that collaboratively with their teachers.  The sky's the limit on different kinds of strategies.

That feels good as a principal or a director, or (other administrators) to feel like they can operate within their realm and have good, autonomous leadership.  It might not be in existence somewhere else.

LS: When  Mark Lewis announced his resignation in 2007 I asked him what he thought the district could do to keep people like High School Principal Michelle Stone or others like her that were talented and generally well liked.  And subsequently she left to become Superintendent in Moravia.  What could Lansing have done to keep you here?

SG: That's a difficult question.

I don't think they could have done anything differently.  What my family and I experienced over these four and a half years, and especially the first couple of years of getting settled... the first year we were commuting from Marathon while we were getting the house built.  We felt so welcome.  You would meet people and they would treat you like you had been here for fifteen or twenty years.  We really felt love from neighbors, the church, the Lion's Club... everybody we came across in the community gave us a wonderful feeling of acceptance.  That's why we had such aspirations to stay for a long time.

There's nothing that Lansing could have done differently.  The kind of longing of missing being near family and the feeling of home and waiting for that fulcrum to tip toward Lansing... it's possible that could have happened in a little bit longer time.  It just happened that that one opportunity from one of the very few districts I would consider in Rochester happened to be there, and I happened to be successful the first time.

I really didn't anticipate that.  I thought intuitively that wouldn't happen and eventually the feeling of home would solidify here for the next 15 years.

It was an opportunity, and it was there and followed through. I am just kind of following the tea leaves on that.

LS: What are you most looking forward to in your new position in Penfield?

SG: I'll look forward to meeting new people that have the same educational philosophy.  When i came here I thought, 'Wow, this is really great.  I can do this.  Its like a matchmaker made this match.  What everybody needed here was all the things that I had.'  And all the things I liked and loved.

I'm looking forward to that feeling of arriving there and seeing that the things that they need are the things I have.  That's an exciting time.

And then getting to know the people that work there and the people that live there.  That's what I'm looking forward to the most.

At the same time I'm looking forward to spending more time with my family and extended family.  There are a lot of other professional relationships  that I have in the are, because when you taught and were an administrator there you meet a lot of people professionally.  That will be exciting for me to become re-engaged with that professional network of people.

Then there's a whole other level of personal friendships I had over the years of growing up there and being able to reacquaint myself with them and to enjoy their families and their kids that are getting to be junior high and high school age.  And going to see some of them and having that kind of fabric of personal friendships reestablished, too.

So that's what I'm looking forward to the most, I think, reattaching to those friendship and the excitement of future possibilities.


LS: What are you going to miss the most from Lansing?

SG:  I'm certainly going to miss the personal friendships.  Number one on the list is the Brickyard neighborhood.  They know who they are.  Right above the school there there are some outstanding, wonderful people.  That's a neighborhood we will not be able to recreate.  It will be something that existed.  We were able to be a part of it and we'll never have that again.  The children and parents... it's just wonderful.  That's number one.

The second thing is the size of Lansing, to get to know the parents and the students and the children... I've gotten to know them for four or five years.  They're not just numbers.  You know them.  And you see them change from fourth grade to eighth grade, from sixth to tenth, from eighth to now being seniors, and Kindergartners that are now fourth graders... It's really neat to watch them grow and I'll miss them and the future of wondering how things are going to be for them.  And their parents.  Really, it's the personal relationships I will miss the most.

From a system-wide piece the ability to think of it one day and make it happen the next day.  It's kind of the Walt Disney 'dream and do it'.  Because we're small enough that you can do that and make it happen for other people, too.  You try to get a teacher to think, 'what if we did this?'  And you say 'That's a great idea.  Let's do it.'  'Really?'  'Yeah.'

And the whole possibility of thinking can occur and it's exciting to watch other people do that, too, because we don't need a lot of bureaucracy to make things happen in the classroom.

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