Retiring Superintendent Enjoyed District That's 'Always Looking to Improve'

Superintendent of Schools Michael Schilder will be retiring at the end of the month after being head of the school district for more than six years.

Bridgewater-Raritan is the largest in Somerset County and one of the largest suburban school districts in New Jersey. In the 2012-13 school year, the district had approximately 8,800 students attending seven primary (K-4) schools, two intermediate (5-6) schools, one middle school and one high school. The annual budget is more than $130 million.

Running a district that large and complex is a daunting task with its mix of micro and macro issues, but Schilder was always up to the challenge.

Rare among public officials has been Schilder’s responsiveness to questions and requests for information. He has always been prompt, polite and comprehensive in answering queries; however, he was a little quirky because he preferred receiving questions by email and responding by email. There are advantages to this practice — writers could cut and paste his answers and the superintendent had a record of his replies so the chances of being misquoted were rare.

That’s why Bridgewater Patch, in asking him for an exit interview, sent him 20 questions. “If I answer all 20 questions, you’ll have them no later than January of 2014,” the superintendent wrote back.

Bridgewater Patch could not wait that long, so we settled on a cooperative agreement to focus on what may be the most important questions. What follows are the questions and the superintendent’s answers:

Patch: What are your favorite memories of your time at Bridgewater-Raritan?

Schilder: My 6 ½ years at Bridgewater-Raritan Regional School District have been challenging, stimulating, and fulfilling.

I am so fortunate to have been surrounded by dedicated board members, outstanding administrators, and talented teachers to help me do this job – together we have made substantial progress.

This district is unique in that it never rests on its laurels and is always looking to improve – this is one reason why Bridgewater-Raritan Regional School District continues to enjoy an excellent reputation in the state and continues to attract the best and brightest who wish to work here.


Patch: What are the most difficult challenges facing school superintendents? Going into the future, what are going to be the most difficult challenges?

Looking ahead, the most difficult challenge facing New Jersey administrators and teachers will be maintaining a balanced and common sense approach to teacher evaluation, student assessment and classroom instruction.

I worry that if test performance continues to dominate the educational landscape and the implementation of a so-called corporate system continues to be imposed on public education, what will be sacrificed is the art of teaching, and along with it, creativity in the classroom and personal/mentoring connections made between teacher and student.  It could change the profession, but not necessarily for the better.

If teachers’ jobs depend on the test scores of their students, it’s only natural that classroom instruction will focus exclusively on test preparation at the expense of everything else we know makes up good teaching.

Furthermore, the new teacher evaluation model from the N.J. Department of Education is so complicated, so cumbersome, and so time consuming, it is only natural that administrators will need to make compromises in the performance of their every-day duties just to complete the state-mandated work.

Education is notorious for pendulum approaches – instead of taking the best from current practice, we tend to move 180 degrees away from what we know works.  More than likely, these new initiatives will come full circle in about five years, and I’m not sure that much will really have changed in the way of improving instruction. 

What would have truly changed the educational landscape would have been the removal of tenure.  This would have dramatically increased the ability to remove mediocre teachers from the classroom without the added burden of implementing a clumsy evaluation process. 

The move today towards “data-driven everything” could be another pendulum mistake and if we’re not careful, we will lose both students and teachers, without making any real impact on student achievement and teacher performance.

Patch: What will you miss most, if anything, about being school superintendent?

What I will miss most is being around students – it  was always the highlight of my day when I would visit a classroom, have a conversation with a child, and make a connection.

For that reason, I do plan on continuing to work in education in some capacity, but look forward to a re-energizing break this summer.