ECS leadership plans for the future

“Developing a clear vision that we all believe in,” is the current focus of the Enterprise City Schools new leadership team.

Two new assistant superintendents, who were approved by the Enterprise Board of Education at a meeting April 25, join ECS Superintendent Greg Faught.

ECS Coordinator of Student Services Zel Thomas and ECS Director of Human Resources Dr. Patrick Cain were named assistant superintendents. Both men will retain the scope of their current responsibilities with duties added, Faught said.

“We’ve all taken on just a little bit more responsibility,” Faught said. “I think we can handle it,” he added with a smile.

“Over the last three years, we’ve had a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, a host of directors and coordinators,” Faught said. “There is a big difference, in a central office, between running lean and efficiently and running on fumes. I’ve been involved in both scenarios.

“It is arguable that we have, at some points, been running fat,” Faught said. “We’ve got some positions we have reworked, some positions are going to be dissolved to allow us to run a little bit leaner, from a financial standpoint, within the central office.

“This does not just involve central office consolidation but across the board administratively,” Faught said. “In all, we’re looking at a saving of salaries and benefits to be a little north of $300,000 a year.

“I feel like we’re running lean but we’re hitting on all eight cylinders and we’re able to cover all of our bases,” Faught said, adding that Thomas and Cain were clear choices to serve the school system as assistant superintendents. “These two guys have stood out to me over the last several years as being leaders and worthy of the title assistant superintendent,” Faught said. “They both bring something unique to the table that helps compliment our overall team.

“We’re spending some time developing a clear vision that we all believe in so that we can be rowing the boat in the same direction,” Faught said. “With a new staff, that can get blurred sometimes but we’re leading that charge.”

Thomas has served since July 2014 as the ECS Coordinator of Student Services. He served from July 2009 until July 2014 as the ECS Elementary Supervisor.

Prior to that Thomas was a principal at Pinedale Elementary School in Enterprise and Abbeville High School in Abbeville and an assistant principal at Daleville High School and Windham Elementary School, both in Daleville.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to continue to work with these two guys,” Thomas said about Faught and Cain. “We work well together, we’ve worked well together for the past several years.

“Collectively we all have the same goals. We want to provide the best educational opportunities for our children while they are under our care,” Thomas said. “And that is to keep them safe, make sure they are well educated and prepared to move on to the future.”

Cain has served as ECS Director of Human Resources since 2015, a position he assumed after serving as ECS Director of Secondary Instruction since 2014.

Cain served previously as principal at both Dale County High School in Midland City and Capital Heights Middle School in Montgomery and as assistant principal at Stanhope Elmore High School in Millbrook.

“People are in different roles,” Cain said about the numerous personnel changes that have occurred in the ECS Central Office since November 2016. “With change comes some uncertainty so we have to work on building and refocusing some of those relationships.

“Mr. Faught has made it his mission that what drives this ship is what is going on in the (school) buildings because that is really where it starts,” Cain said. “So they are the ones that are telling us what they need not only to be successful as professional or support staff, but to make sure that their students are successful.

“One thing we talked about in our meeting, that Mr. Faught shared, were his ‘Eight Principles’ and the first one of those is relationships,” Cain said.

That is true, Faught agreed. “We have talked with the school administrators about eight expectations of administrators within our schools, the things we will focus on as administrators,” he said. “No. 1 is to be there. Our students deserve the best.

“A lot of people talk about test scores and I feel that too many leaders jump straight to that without having built the relationships upon foundations of trust and making sure the environment is right in the schools,” Faught said. “Many times when you jump right to a focus on test scores, individuals end up failing.

“You've got to make sure you can crawl before you can walk,” Faught said. “So we feel like that's foundational and to skip one of those steps is not going to help us get to where it is we want to go.

“Invest in others. Respect the dignity of the individual. Students deserve our best. Prepare for opportunity. Do the right thing. Those are core principles we’re all going to have next to our desks,” Faught said. “And we’re going to be evaluating ourselves each day and reflecting and measuring ourselves up against those eight principles.

“We feel like it will help us be more effective in doing our job,” Faught said. “We have to make sure we are building relationship foundations upon trust.