The Fox C-6 School District has eliminated the executive director of curriculum and instruction position, which Declan FitzPatrick has held since July 2015.
When the board voted to eliminate the position in May, FitzPatrick was offered a teaching job in the district, but he has since found a job as a curriculum facilitator at the Kirkwood School District and will leave the Fox district at the end of this school year.
“I’m very excited,” said FitzPatrick, who was being paid $132,000 at Fox and will be paid $60,560 at Kirkwood. “I will be the curriculum facilitator for science, art, music and world languages.”
Board of Education president Judy Smith said the executive director position was eliminated because Fox’s Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test scores have been declining, and the move could help streamline how curriculum decisions are made in the district.
Fox School District students’ English and math MAP scores fell the last three years the tests were administered and for the second time since 2018 when the level for students to be considered proficient was raised.
The tests were not taken in 2020 because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fox district students scored a 58.3 in English in 2018, and it scored a 54.3 in 2019.
The district had a 50.2 in math in 2018, and it scored a 47 in 2019.
“We just felt like what we were doing wasn’t working,” Smith said. “Maybe we had too many people involved in curriculum, and maybe it was going through too many hands that we weren’t getting a true feel for what the students needed to improve. We decided to eliminate that position to take a middleman out.”
Smith said assistant superintendents Randy Gilman, who is in charge of elementary education, and Tammy Cardona, who is in charge of secondary education, will now oversee curriculum, communicating goals directly to building principals, who are in direct contact with building teachers.
She said the current setup has principals communicating with the executive director of curriculum and instruction, who then relayed goals to the assistant superintendents.
“It is really eliminating the position just to draw the communication to a straightforward line,” Smith said. “We are hoping that will improve test scores. We are just trying to make our communication about curriculum more efficient.”
Smith also said the decision to eliminate the executive director position had been discussed for at least two years.
She said board members have been in contact with incoming Superintendent Paul Fregeau, who will take over July 1, about their decision to get rid of the executive director job.
Fregeau will replace Superintendent Nisha Patel, who will leave the district to become superintendent at the School District of Clayton.
“Dr. Fregeau may have his own ideas when he comes in,” Smith said. “He wants everything driven by data. He wants to know why you are adding something, and if you are eliminating something, he wants to know the data that led you to eliminate it.
“The data shows our test scores were going down, and we felt like we needed to change what we are doing. He really wants reasons for making changes. If he adds something, he is going to have a reason. If a curriculum is pulled, he is going to have a reason. If a curriculum is added, he is going to have a reason, and it will be because of data.”
FitzPatrick, who began his education career in 1994 as an English teacher at Maine West High School in the Chicago suburbs, considered taking a teaching position at Fox next school year after the board re-assigned him to a job as seventh-grade academic literacy teacher at Fox Middle School, but took the job at Kirkwood instead.
That teaching job at Fox would have paid $78,949, the district reported.
“I’m really excited to continue doing curriculum work and supporting teachers,” FitzPatrick said. “It is what I feel like I do best. There is a lot of exciting work going on at Kirkwood, and this is an opportunity for me to be involved with it.”
Patel said she believes Fregeau and board members will need to discuss the new superintendent’s goals for the district to decide if a new executive director of curriculum and instruction should be hired.
“I have always believed that a solid curriculum department is essential in a district that wants to focus on developing students to be future ready,” Patel said.
Fox changes
FitzPatrick, 50, of St. Louis County arrived while Fox was formulating a five-year comprehensive school improvement plan.
He said one of the main things the district wanted to address in the plan was ensuring students at every school had the same access to educational resources.
“Over the six years I have been here, we have worked very hard to establish the curriculum and materials adoption process that ensures we have the same technology, instructional resources and support for every teacher across the district,” FitzPatrick said.
Patel said FitzPatrick was instrumental in the district’s effort to supply every classroom with a laptop, a laptop docking station, a projector and a screen.
She also said FitzPatrick helped Fox reach the goal of providing all students with a Chromebook.
Patel also said FitzPatrick developed a curriculum model that applies to every grade level and subject area.
“Fox C-6 is losing an individual who is always focused on giving our students every opportunity to be successful by setting a high standard of excellence when it comes to teaching and learning in the classroom,” Patel said. “He is highly respected in the entire region for his knowledge around curriculum, instruction and assessment.”
FitzPatrick said he is proud of the strides Fox made to increase access to technology in classrooms.
He also said the district improved reading selections in elementary school libraries, increased the number of Project Lead the Way and Advance Placement classes available to high school students and better aligned its math curriculum to help middle school students prepare to enter high school.
“Every (elementary school) has a leveled library with multiple levels of books so teachers can make sure every kid has books they can read, want to read and are the appropriate level whether the kid is reading above grade level or is catching up to reading at grade level,” FitzPatrick said.
“We coordinated the math curriculum between middle school and high school. Now students in eighth grade are working on things that line up with what they need for ninth-grade math,” he said.
Patel said FitzPatrick played a vital role when the district added sixth-grade students to the middle schools.
“He was instrumental in facilitating the curriculum process that came with this change which was focused on setting students up for success for the post-secondary world,” Patel said.
Work history
FitzPatrick replaced Kristen Pelster as Fox’s director of curriculum following her departure for a new job after the 2014-2015 school year. He had been the curriculum coordinator for English language arts and social studies for the University City School District since 2008.
Previously, he was a reading specialist for two years with Clayton High School, and before that, he had been a curriculum specialist for English language arts in the Francis Howell School District in St. Charles County.
Four years after starting his career in the Chicago suburbs, FitzPatrick moved to the St. Louis area in 1998, when he took a job as an English teacher at Ladue High School.