Hilderley rated 'highly effective,' working on strategic planning goals

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to say the Tecumseh Public Schools Board of Education is confident Superintendent Rick Hilderley will achieve his goal for 2023, not 2003.

TECUMSEH — Rick Hilderley, superintendent of the Tecumseh Public Schools, has a tough job ahead of him, but the school board is confident that he will achieve his goals for 2023.

In December, Hilderley got his review from the school board and received a “highly effective” rating.

“We think Rick is doing an outstanding job. He was rated highly effective. … So, obviously, we’re very pleased with the progress we’re making. We’re making significant progress in the area of curriculum and we’re working very hard to build a school of excellence,” school board President Tony Rebottaro said.

Last year, the administration and school board initiated a strategic plan, and Hilderley’s goals center around that plan.

“The strategic planning goals have to do with curriculum implementation, our facilities management, human resources, communicating with our families and community. It’s a five-year plan and we’re just coming up on the end of year one. So we want to move on from year one. We’ll have new activities in place by April,” Hilderley said.

The school system has made significant progress in the area of curricula, Rebottaro said.

“We started building courses around career and technical education a year ago. We will continue to add more courses in that area. We hope to continue to strengthen ourselves in the area of doing co-ops and getting kids out into the workforce to get exposure to some of these tech areas as alternatives to college. We certainly understand that college is not for everyone. We have an outstanding curriculum for our college students, but we want to offer options for all of our students,” Rebottaro said.

Tecumseh schools hired a new curriculum director last year to update and improve upon the curricula for students. The board also hired new high school principal Kim Irish, and she has been rebuilding trust in students, parents, the community, the administration and board after Dennis Niles was fired from the position last year due to student complaints, Hilderley said.

Irish has made a lot of changes and things are looking up for the high school, Rebottaro said.

In addition to spending time on strategic planning goals, Hilderley and the board will be working on finding ways to maintain the schools with a limited capital improvement budget after one bond issue for capital improvements failed in May and two others failed in November.

“Certainly, we will be spending a lot of time on the failure of the bond where we will be spending some time this year looking at our capital expenditures and trying to right size the district,” Rebottaro said.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Hilderley 'highly effective,' working on strategic plan goals