VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — July 3rd marked Chris Himsel’s first official day as superintendent of Vigo County School Corporation.
“Until you actually begin you forget how many different people there are to meet,” Himsel said. “Whether we’re talking about employees, whether we’re talking about community members, parents, students. It’s just overwhelming to think about all the people you need to sit down and have conversations with.”
After his first week, Himsel said he’s focused on the start of the school year.
“Our focus here in July is making sure that we’re ready for those first couple weeks of August, when school begins. That may frustrate some people who would like me to be working on some other things, but the reality of it is, the kids are coming in early August whether we’re ready for them or not. So, we need to make sure we are doing everything possible to be ready,” Himsel said.
What specific goals does Himsel have as he takes over as Vigo County’s school leader?
“I really think it’s to early to put anything specific to that. Because I do think it’s going to take me sixty to ninety days to meet a broad range of people to get to the point where I can say ‘we need to be working on these things for the next school year and then we need to move onto these things, an so forth.”
Himsel went on to say, “Obviously an immediate thing, that’s pretty obvious, we’re going to need to do something to upgrade some of our buildings, particularly the high schools,” he said. “That’s an issue that I think is pretty well out in the community. We’ve had a referendum, we’ve had our community speak, so therefore one of the things I’m trying to do is understand what our options are. And it’s going to take me some time to do that.”
Himsel said the corporation is working on a first project to try and use some Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds.
“Because the community has stated through that referendum process that they’re not interested in new schools, then we’re looking at how we upgrade the electrical, the HVAC, those core components at the three high schools. So that we set the stage to be able to do other work in the future to be able to make it as good of a learning environment as we can for kids,” he said.
Himsel said as humans we have different strengths and learn in different ways.
“Philosophically, I believe in, we increase the tools in the tool bag, we increase the expertise of all of our professionals and then we also give them freedom to analyze the students they’re trying to help and give them the freedom to do it the best way possible for the group of kids in their classroom.
While Himsel couldn’t point to specific goals at this time he said, “in general, my grandmother always said, ‘you always leave things better than they were when you got there.’ So, as and underlying thing, I want to make sure that I don’t make things worse, I make things better. I didn’t apply because I wanted to accomplish A, B or C. I applied because I wanted to help Vigo County and the Wabash Valley Community move forward.”
Himsel continued by saying that he thinks there a lot of good things happening here (VCSC). He said there are lots of foundational pieces and that he is hopeful that he will become part of increasing and building upon those foundations.
