Washoe County School District students return to school August 12th with new Superintendent Joe Ernst leading the district. He sat down with 2 News Nevada for a one-on-one interview ahead of the school year. 

The following is a Q&A with Ernst. Some of his answers are edited for length.

2 News Nevada: Tell us a little bit about your background, and how your experience makes you a good fit for superintendent?

Superintendent Joe Ernst: I have been a lifelong educator. I have worked in multiple roles in our school system, and that started out as a teacher. Taught for 13 years and loved every minute of it. Then became a principal at a couple of other schools, and then worked my way up into central administration in a number of roles there, one of being supervising directly some of our schools. And I think a lot of those experiences have really prepared me for the role of superintendent because I think it’s important to know what our frontlines are feeling, and when I say that, I mean our teachers and our principals.

What did you teach?

I used to teach elementary school, sixth grade and fifth grade and fourth grade. Loved it. Coached at the middle school and at the high school level, and so really I’ve had just a lot of time and experience working with students, and that’s why we all come into this profession.

It’s no secret that the district has had some challenges keeping a superintendent in the role for very long. How long do you see yourself in this job?

I think it’s important to have continuity in the position. I came into this position because I am committed to our community. I have my wife and I and our family, we’ve lived here for over 25 years. And this means a lot to me.

Our school district directly impacts the entirety of our community. As we’re looking going forward, I think it’s important that we are looking at immediate academic gains. And we want to make sure we are taking strong steps forward this school year to improve the academic outcomes for our students.

At the same time, I think it’s important to make sure that we’re looking at long-term sustainability. And we don’t want to sacrifice one of those at the expense of the other. And so when I look at this position, I’m looking to create that over time.

Those are where my commitments are, to that long-term sustainability of Washoe County School District.

 You mention immediate academic gains – how are we doing that?

Through a variety of means. We have a new strategic plan, and the strategic plan offers us a map of what we want to do going forward. And it really starts down in early childhood. With our early childhood education, what we call pre-kindergarten up through third grade, we’re really focusing on the science of reading, and what that means is we’re looking at the explicit phonics instruction, the phonemic instruction, that our students are receiving.

As we kind of work our way up, we’re also looking at more engagement for our students. We feel that that’s really important. We want our students to want to come to school. And so we have increased athletics in the middle school. We have offered additional clubs, after-school activities at the high school because we know when our students are engaged and they want to be there, that we can make the academic outcomes that we desire. 

We’re also really looking at the overall teaching practices on a day-to-day basis, and making sure that our staff has the curricular materials they need to most effectively teach our students.

And then at the highest level, looking at some of those pathways beyond high school. We’re excited that we continue to have approximately 50% of our students are graduating with advanced diplomas. We’re deepening some of that work right now as we look to build partnerships and internships for our students beyond just the school walls. We’re getting them experiences out in the job force so we know when they graduate then they have that many different pathways and opportunities in front of them.

These sound like excellent changes, but I’m sure community members out there are skeptical. They’ve seen high superintendent turnover in the last few years. What would your message be to people who are thinking, ‘here we go again?'

My message is we have to do it together. We all own the education of our students. And it is critical that as a school district, we are working with our families to make sure that our efforts are together and combined.

We talk a bit about chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism, we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, some of the habits that our students have developed. We need to make sure that together our families, our teachers, our community partners, are all leaning into the efforts to make sure we’re getting our students to school each and every day.

We’re excited about the progress that we have made. We have seen one third of our schools make significant improvements in chronic absenteeism. And when we do that, we know that equates to students. When we see it at the high school level, that means 100, 200 more students in school each and every day. So when I look forward, that’s a central part of our work, and I say that we want to do it together because when we do, I know that all things are possible for our students.

You’ve stepped into this role during the summer – so no students in classrooms yet. What have been your first orders of business?

You know, I’ve had an opportunity to do a lot of listening. I’ve met with focus groups, some of our teachers, association representatives, principals, and really worked to gain their insights and their feedback because what is most important to us, is making sure that our teachers have time to teach, and our principals have time to be in their building to support their students, support their teachers, and support families.

I’ve also had a chance to reach out with many community partners, and I get very excited about our community’s desire to lean in and support our school district.

We’ve been working really hard to prepare for the year ahead, and that preparation has been very specific to the implementation and the action steps that we have in our strategic plan.

Planning for the year ahead – what do you think are the greatest challenges going into this next school year?

I think that we must reduce chronic absenteeism. I think it is central to our work. We know that our educators will tell us, when our students are there, I can teach them. So that’s where we have to work together, and so chronic absenteeism is at the front of the list.

We also have to make sure that the instruction that’s being provided day-in and day-out is intentional and focused. And that we look at specific standards while also getting to the larger qualities of a learner, making sure that our students are graduating with abilities to make sure that they’re problem-solving successfully, they’re critical thinkers, strong communicators, understand how to collaborate with others. 

In our previous question, you had also mentioned that part of the key to success is community involvement. We’ve seen public comment get contentious at some school board meetings, especially in the last couple years, How do you plan to navigate the not-so-friendly interfaces between the board, the community, and the district?

I think that so much can be gained by listening. We value feedback. We value community engagement, and I think when we can have that respectful dialogue around things that are important to us, collectively as a community, that that’s an important aspect of the work we do.

Some of these contentious school board meetings have also involved conflicts between trustees themselves. How do you plan to navigate working with our school board?

I think our school board is very much committed to the education of our students. And very much desires us to make immediate academic gains. I think that multiple points of view help strengthen overall thinking. My early interactions and work with our board of trustees has been very positive.

How many job openings does the district currently have, and what’s your message to parents who have seen staffing levels in dire places in the last couple years?

I think we’ve made some tremendous strides over the summer, in terms of a number of recruitment efforts and active outreach in regards to teaching positions. I think we’re in a good place to start the school year, and then going forward, we’re really going to make sure that we’re working to strengthen our organizational culture, making sure that we’re providing the conditions for our staff to be successful, and as we do that, we know we’ll get longer-term retention and higher quality of teaching each and every year.

Following this interview, the Washoe County School District told 2 News Nevada that it currently has 107 job openings, 61 of which are special education positions.