Temple ISD Today: A Conversation with Superintendent Dr. Bobby Ott

Well, let's talk about Temple ISD now just to kind of – I know that's your favorite topic, right? Yeah, that

puts a smile

on my face.

Yeah.

So what's the big difference between a school district's reputation in the community and what's happening inside the schools? Where do you think that can kind of get lost in translation?

Well, I think parents are probably the biggest truth slayers out of all of it because they know – what their kids' performance is.

They know how their kids are doing.

They talk to their kids about it.

You know, I think you could have bias in both places.

I do think that our reputation has really grown in a very, very good direction, I'd say, in the last five or six years.

I have, when I first was hired as superintendent, there was a lot of local comparisons.

And I think what I tried to do, and I made this very clear with our different departments and board members and so forth, it's like, we're not going to compete locally.

If you compete at the state level, local takes care of itself.

And so we want to be the best at the state.

So our communications department, I want us cleaning up at Teespring.

That's the conference for the public relations association.

We had 14 awards last year.

I mean, it's huge.

I think it's double what most anybody got around here.

In finance, we want to win state and national awards, and we have for the last seven years.

You know, in construction, we want to win architectural awards.

So, you know, our school board, board of the year, honor board of the year twice in the last six years.

Wow.

That's phenomenal.

That is phenomenal.