'Learned many lessons': Savannah schools superintendent reflects on first year on the job

Savannah-Chatham County Public School System Superintendent (SCCPSS) Denise Watts, Ed.D., took stock of her first year in the top district role at a press conference on Wednesday morning at Woodville-Tompkins High School, 151 Coach Joe Turner St, Garden City.

She began by acknowledging that she has "learned many lessons as a first year superintendent."

Chief among those lessons:

• Balancing the diverse needs across the district and "tailoring our approaches to address them."

• Adapting quickly, especially after experiencing a hurricane as well as the death of a student within her first three months.

• Growing her patience to "temper" her visionary expectations and persistence to "chip away" at obstacles to attain long-term success.

She also shared what she's most of proud of from her first year and what challenges and goals lie ahead. As she said in her opening remarks, this year is but "one year down in what I hope to be many more to come."

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Watts' points of pride

Watts' felt one of her key accomplishments over the last year was cultivating relationships with both the board and SCCPSS staff.

Of her relationship with the board members, she expressed gratitude for their support and guidance. "We have learned to be more unified, we are willing to see each other's perspectives and disagree without being disagreeable," she said.

Concerning staff, she referred to them as "world-class" and said their "dedication is unmatched." She said she has benefited from her team sharing its historical knowledge and evolution. "I think understanding the past helps us to understand the present and will help us define the future," she said.

She later said that she has encountered teachers, mainly on the weekends, working second jobs ― such as driving for rideshare companies or serving in restaurants ― to supplement their income. She said that it "saddens" her but she sees the district's efforts to budget for the employee cost of living adjustment (COLA), which was in addition to the state COLA provided by Governor Brian Kemp, as a "small signal that we have to reform teacher compensation across the district." To address the greater challenge of burnout, she discussed looking at other "value propositions" such as housing incentives, childcare for employees, and exploring effective uses of artificial intelligence (AI).

She noted the revised Way Forward 2026 Strategic Plan as another noteworthy achievement as it was developed "cross-collaboratively with staff." Through the revision of the plan, she felt she has seen "silos beginning to come down, the culture and climate and investment in our district being changed."

She did not expand on what the markers of those changes might be, but she further illuminated the road ahead in responding to questions from local media partners present at the press conference.

Challenges faced, pathways ahead

As Watts moves into her second year, enrollment and staff compensation studies will be forthcoming. She hopes to to expand the school choice program options across the district, citing it as one of the things that "lured me here." She admitted that the transportation issue needed to be solved to make choice sustainable and hinted at innovative ways the district is planning to improve transportation efficiency.

Watts announced that a plan to review all community partners related to literacy, the district's North Star. "I think there are several lanes to how we accomplish proficiency and reading for all of our students," she said. She emphasized the past year's efforts at elevating literacy through selecting the new K-12 literacy curriculum aligned with the state's science of reading requirements as well as hiring a Literacy Effectiveness Officer. Some of the lanes she mentioned were healthcare, legislation advocacy, bilingual student support and early childhood intervention.

This year was also Watts' first developing a district budget as a superintendent. The Fiscal Year 2025 budget process was, as she has stressed many times, iterative. She ultimately presented a rolled-back millage rate of 17.481 to the board on June 20, which it approved. Feedback provided by roughly 25 individuals (hardly a majority of the Chatham County population) at the three public hearings on the millage rate was taken into account, but she said the district examined additional factors, such as tax digests. "So, literally up until the day of the board meeting, I was pouring through data looking at our fund balance, trying to predict the future, which is very hard to do."

SCCPSS Executive Director of Communications Stacy Jennings conferred with Budget Director Paige Cooley to confirm via email on June 25 that the fund balance will be $8,240,195 less than the district had initially proposed prior to June 20.

As far as where the district might decide to make cuts or source funds to make up the difference, Watts said, "Everything under the sun is being considered, not just to achieve the $8 million rollback." She sees that as the first step in a longer-term approach to assessing spending related to the district's expected return on investment.

Joseph Schwartzburt is the education and workforce development reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at JSchwartzburt@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah-Chatham schools superintendent reflects on first year on job