For five years and counting, Superintendent Dr. Steve Atwater has called the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District his home. Atwater said the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is the perfect compromise to push his students and staff to be the best schools in the country.
There's no other place on earth Atwater would rather be than with the district and its more than 9,000 students.
"It's semi-urban, you can also get out to the outdoors pretty easily," Atwater said.
It's a district that stretches from Hope to Homer that mileage-wise is bigger than the state of West Virginia.
And for the man who came up to Alaska from the east coast to teach in 1981 and later became a superintendent and teacher in Southwest Alaska, Atwater said being versatile here is key.
"I really like to have my fingers in a lot of different places but not necessarily immersed in one specific location," Atwater said.
He added improvement for his schools is always the goal but he wants students and staff to think beyond that. Atwater specified the use of both traditional and nontraditional teaching methods to address education needs.
"We need to address that in a way that starts to undo some of the structure of what we have that is very typical for schooling, so that we can really get at the root cause of why that's the case," Atwater said.
Atwater is glad the new Alaska School Performance Index will acknowledge small steps toward improvement. He said although the waiver replacement for No Child Left Behind is a better gauge of achievement in schools, its doesn't show the whole picture.
"We have a school that ultimately turned out to be a three-star school, but when you look at their academic growth they are a five-star school," Atwater said. "But their attendance was a two-star school so they got drawn down to that three star status."
For the superintendent, he's determined to show how each of his schools are growing and how to push them to be better.
Because the ultimate goal for his students is to turn them from good to great, "it's always to improve our performance, we want our students to do better every year," Atwater said.
Atwater was named the 2013 Alaska Superintendent of the year. He said he will continue the conversations with students, staff, and the Kenai Peninsula community to push its schools to be the best.
Contact Corey Allen-Young