Reflections, advice, and what he won’t miss

For more than 30 years, Bill Miller has been working in the realm of education

as a teacher, basketball coach, principal and superintendent in the Polk County School system. He’s commanded the Polk County Schools ship since 2004 and will retire this month. Miller has had a pivotal role in the growth of the school system during the last 12 years, keeping the mantra that is painted in cursive letters behind his desk, “Let us put our minds together and do what is right for every child,” as a guiding principle.

In his final months as the Polk County Schools superintendent, Miller reflected on his tenure and talked about the challenges and highlights of his career. He will hand the reigns over to incoming superintendent Aaron Greene, who has also been a teacher and a principal at Polk County High School, beginning with the 2016-2017 school year.

Q: What have been the most fun aspects of your career? Additionally, what challenges have you faced here?

Answer: Well, you know, every role is very different and so each comes with its challenges and fun. I really enjoyed all of my years and really never set out to be a superintendent. I thought I would teach and coach my whole career when I started. I really liked the coaching part and it was by far the best thing when it comes to the coach’s relationships with the students. Coaches, band directors, teachers are the ones who have tremendously close relationships with their students. They are such intense, time consuming, emotional type activities so there’s a lot to be excited about. Being a principal is similar, but not as close with the students but with many other people. As superintendent, your relationships tend to be [close], but I have gone to events with students, more with teachers, principals and the community than with the students. The challenges I have faced have to do with the challenges America is facing with education and the challenges families are facing as well.

Q: Why is the mantra ‘Let us put our minds together and do what is right for every child,’ so important to you here in the school system?

Answer: It’s important to me because it’s the only thing that matters. You have to have a culture where all of the adults, the community and the structures within the organization have students be the main focus. It doesn’t always mean you will be doing what will make students happy, but the driving force behind what you’re doing is that. I believe if you have relationships with the students as a coach, teacher or principal, whatever it may be, you have the ability to influence and push them in the right direction. That’s an important piece of this formula. We have a lot of things and forces pulling at us from laws to policies to regulations and if you’re not careful, that can become the focus and you can lose track of why you have a job and the reason you’re here, which is always the students.

Q: What are your plans for retirement?

Answer: I’m going to stay busy and I don’t want to stay at home, sit and do nothing. That’s not my personality. I’ll be president of the Rotary here locally and I’ll go to work part-time and do some work with schools in North Carolina and do some consulting work with a group of friends that I have and, you know, I’ll be working with some groups across the state. I won’t be working 60 to 70 hours a week but I am going to do some things to stay involved in education and the community. I’m not leaving the community.

Q: Who has had the most influence on you in these last 30 years?

Answer: Geoffrey Tennant, our school board chair, has certainly made an impact on me in that he’s been able to steer me in the right direction and not necessarily tell me what to do. My father, as well, has always told me that it is my responsibility to get along with people and that it’s not the responsibility of others to like me. It’s on me to figure out how to get along with them and that has had so much influence on me because it’s helped me as a coach, teacher and a superintendent. I have that approach now.

Q: When Mr. Greene steps up in your role come August, what words of advice will you give him?

Answer: The first thing would be to keep students at the center of the focus, which he has no problem doing since he is that way so that’s not advice at all. He’s got to follow his heart and be his own person. He’s got to do what he thinks is right, and in this role it can be very lonely because you have principals, teachers, commissioners, the community and the higher-ups all telling you what they want you to do and it falls on you to make that choice. They have all their interests and perspectives. You’re sitting at the nexus of the wants and wishes of all of these people. He has great instincts and knows what is right for these kids. Communication with people is going to be a challenge in our state, in America and our community. There’s so much misinformation out there. He will have a real challenge with that, too, in bridging that communication gap.

Q: I know you’ve received a lot of flak for this in the past. Will you miss having to make the call for closing schools because of snow?

Answer: Oh, absolutely not (with a laugh.) I doubt I’ll miss that at all. I remember this one time I was up really early and I was checking in on all of our local weather stations to make the decision of whether to close and eventually decided to close the schools. Well, later I was at the gas station and someone came up to the pump next to me and was talking to me about my decision to close schools, saying, “Man, that superintendent is a dumbass for closing schools,” and I smiled and said, “He sure is.” There wasn’t any snow that day. Some people are going to be happy, some people are always going to be mad but you have to be concerned about safety and I know it’s an inconvenience to parents to find out at 6 or 6:30 in the morning that school is going to start a half hour later. There’s no really great answer to it, but you just try to do the best you can.