Board to bid fond farewell to interim
Moulton school board members opted to delay their regular monthly meeting in May by however long it might be necessary to best accommodate interim superintendent Mark Pool.
Turns out, he only needed a day. And if giving him a proper send-off meant delaying their typical meeting time 24 hours so he could attend, then so be it.
They owed him that much at least, trustees agreed. He’d given them plenty in return—during both his stays—often when they were most in need.
It was largely his doing, for instance, that the board made a formal job offer to Renee Fairchild in a special called meeting last week, an offer she officially accepted Wednesday, May 4, ending the district’s months-long search for a new superintendent.
She says she’s ready to hit the ground running and make the Moulton community her own.
Yet as encouraging as such energy may be, it’s also somewhat bittersweet. It also means Pool’s time as interim is nearing its end. He's probably the last person they want to see go, mostly because he’s proven himself far beyond what his title might convey.
By very definition, interim is that which is short-lived. Temporary. A stand-in until something better comes along. If Pool’s dropping everything—several months after his commitment to the district was done—just to lend a hand once more didn’t muddy the meaning of words like short-lived or temporary, then it absolutely raised the bar on what “until something better comes along” should look like.
Initially hired as MISD interim in late 2019 when Todd Grandjean left for bigger pastures at Divine ISD, Pool couldn’t have arrived at a more unfamiliar time for education. Within weeks of his arrival in January 2020, COVID-19 shut down every school in the nation.
For months—six of them, minimum, in most cases—schools were forced to completely rethink how education might be offered, at a distance. Teachers were left wondering how to teach a class when there was no class to teach. Quite possibly, forever onward, as best anyone knew then. And most had every bit of a weekend to enact perhaps the most massive shift ever in how education operated.
Pool must have lived on the phone back then, MISD board president Daniel Beyer recalled. He was constantly in a meeting with some state official on how they might proceed next. Yet without fail, too, he would deliver clear and concise reports on all those hours spent, usually with a full list of possible solutions he’d recommend.
Even when the hired search consultant left when the coronavirus first showed in Texas, Pool somehow kept the interview process going so a new hire could occur within a reasonable semblance of the original timeframe.
Whenever, that is, he wasn’t managing a constant flow of architects, contractor bid packages or staff-guided design teams, all hammering out particulars on how the recently approved bond package might take shape in Moulton. He even abided by all the countless demands tossed at them by the state to pull off one of the most normal graduation ceremonies around, which says an awful lot that year. One neighboring school district, for instance, held graduation ceremonies—all day, every day—for the better part of a week because no more than 10 kids were permitted on an entire football field at once, so they wouldn’t have to limit family attendance numbers. Wouldn’t have been so bad, probably, if the graduating class wasn’t some 300 members strong that year.
“I don’t think we would have made it through all that if it wasn’t for Mr. Pool being here,” Beyer told the newspaper not so long ago. “We were fortunate to have him.”
Pool stayed just long enough in that first run to get the school’s new hire started in the right direction. Then he was gone. No one suspected, roughly 1½ years later, that he might be fielding calls from that same school board president as he sat in his deer blind.
Beyer informed him that the man they hired as Grandjean’s replacement, Chris Ulcak, left unexpectedly following a special called board meeting in October 2021.
“We sure could use you back,” Beyer said he remembered saying.
Thankfully, Pool agreed to pick up where Ulcak left off, assuming local oversight of the nearly finished school construction projects by then. At the board’s request, he pored over budgets and salary documents, met with key staff and faculty to address whatever issues arose since his last stint with the district. And when it became painfully clear funds were not available to hire an experienced search consultant, Pool volunteered for the task, at no charge whatsoever to the school.
“He’s been there a few times for us now,” said David Beyer, the board president’s twin, who also sits on the board of trustees. “He managed to do several things now that, frankly, I was sure he’d never pull off. I tell you, he sure made a believer out of me, though. We’ve been blessed to have him. Twice now.”
Although he wouldn’t elaborate, David Beyer said he and the board were putting together a little something special for Pool, a man they hired as interim but truly proved himself so much more.
They make those presentations this evening when the board meets at 6:30 p.m. at the new school cafeteria.
It’s their way to say thanks to a man who never lived up to his title. An interim, after all, is temporary. What Mark Pool did for Moulton, on many occasions now, was meant to last.