School Administrator Wants Repeat ‘Miracle’ Ryan Kerby Hopes To Carry His Success To The State Level

He’s the New Plymouth miracle.

When Ryan Kerby took over as superintendent, the southwestern Idaho school district was running a deficit, a bond issue had gone down to bitter defeat and new textbooks hadn’t been purchased in five years.

“There was no money for professional development and very little for supplies,” Kerby said. “And we did not have K-12 curriculum - it was every school and every man for himself.”

Who was Kerby to fix any of this? He was just a teacher. He’d never even been a principal.

“So many people said it could not be done,” he said. “But I haven’t found it to be that difficult.”

The math teacher and basketball coach became superintendent - and he ended the deficits, got a bond passed and built a middle school. The new textbooks are in, and Kerby enlisted teachers to start writing curriculum. There’s money for professional development, and parents are more involved.

Joe Levanger, who served on the school board for six years, said before Kerby took over, “There was a lot of distrust in the administration and the board. The image has turned around 180 degrees.”

Now Kerby is running for state superintendent of public instruction, hoping for the same kind of miracle.

“The state is almost like our district was,” he said. “People are mad. People who are doing a good job aren’t getting credit for it.”

There are four main things Kerby wants to accomplish: Create a clearinghouse to share successful programs between school districts; raise reading and math scores; lower the dropout rate; and increase parental involvement.

Sharing successes between districts just makes sense, he said. “At New Plymouth we steal ideas from schools as fast as we can go.”

When he wanted to increase parental involvement, he found that the best parental involvement programs in the state all had parent volunteer coordinators.

“So we hired a part-time parent volunteer coordinator. This has been a very successful program.”

Raising test scores ties into lowering dropout rates, Kerby said. “If you can get kids up to grade level in reading and math by first and second grade…the dropout rate will go down. Once a youngster gets behind, they tend to start spiraling down.”

To bring scores up, Kerby would take the same approach he did as a math teacher. First, he said, “Emphasize fundamentals to give the students confidence.”

Then, “Show them real-world applications for everything we do.”

“I believe we can get students to work harder if the student sees the long-range value in what they’re learning.”

When he started in New Plymouth, only five or six kids took the lone advanced math class, college algebra. Now, 25 are taking college algebra and 15 are in calculus.

“In my last six years, we won the American High School Math Exam state championship for Idaho.”

He also supports a “well-rounded, balanced approach to reading, including of course phonics, vocabulary building, decoding skills.” Kids with reading problems need special help, and a motivational reading program adds the final piece.

“Our students, we estimate, are reading five to six times as many books as they were before in our middle school,” Kerby said.

That’s something he can relate to. When Kerby was growing up on a dairy farm in Nez Perce County, “the highlight during the summer was the day the bookmobile came each week. I read all summer, read all winter.”

He went to Biola University on a basketball scholarship, and earned a math degree. Athletics and other extracurricular activities are good for kids, he said.

“They get leadership skills, they learn how to work as team members, they get collaborative skills, they get to work under pressure and learn how to perform at a high level under stress.”

Kerby taught math and Bible classes in Christian schools in the Los Angeles area for eight years before returning to Idaho.

With that experience and as an active church member, Kerby believes he can bridge the gap between the Christian right and public schools.

“I think before the split gets too serious, someone needs to come in and get the groups working together, and I can do that.”

He said politicians and groups seeking tuition tax credits have helped give public schools a bad rap.

Discipline, curriculum, instructional practices and textbooks aren’t out of control in Idaho’s schools, he said. And the federal government isn’t running local classrooms.

Private interests seeking tuition tax credits can benefit from criticizing public schools, he said, because then they can pick up some of the schools’ money. And politicians exaggerate problems for political gain.

“I think we need to blow the smoke away and get down to working on the real issues.”

IN THIS SERIES Appearing today is the third in a series of profiles of the six candidates for Idaho state schools superintendent. This is a change from previously published schedules. We apologize for any inconvenience. Complete resumes and letters of application from each candidate appeared May 3, and also are posted on The Idaho Spokesman-Review’s Internet site at www.spokane.net. Sunday: Republican incumbent Anne Fox. Monday: Republican Ron Black. Today: Republican Ryan Kerby. Wednesday: Republican Tom Morley. Thursday: Democrat Wally Hedrick. Friday: Democrat Marilyn Howard.