Today marks the first day of the Todd Guice era as Superintendent of the Ouachita Parish School System, but his vision for this district started long before July hit.
He has always had a pulse on education from an early age with his father serving as the Superintendent of Catahoula Parish and his mother as an educator herself. Guice started his own education career in 1989 as a teacher and a coach at Ouachita Junior High, spending 11 years in the classroom.
He made the move to administration in 1997 and served as an administrative assistant and assistant principal. He was named principal in 2002 and spent 2 years at the junior high before moving to Ouachita Parish High School as principal for the next 11 years.
“I’ve taught and been an administrator in everything except the elementary level. That’s helpful,” Guice said. “I’ve been middle school assistant principal, middle school principal, high school principal, personnel director, and assistant superintendent. I’ve kind of had the opportunity to see it all, so I think that’s beneficial too.”
Guice was named personnel director in 2015 and added assistant superintendent to his title in 2021. He spent the past 8 years working closely with former superintendent Dr. Don Coker, whose retirement became official on July 3.
Guice was named Coker’s successor this past February, and he quickly got to work.
“I’ve met with lots of our teachers and intend to do that more in those first 100 days, going out and listening to them,” Guice said. “I don’t think we’ve done a good job with that in the past. Those are the folks on the front line, so just seeing how we can make their jobs better.”
From these conversations, along with his own experiences in the classroom and administrative office, Guice created a priority list with some early goals including safety, communication, academic performance, and employee support.
His Top 5 goals are laid out in his introductory video here, but Guice provided more detail on each one.
- Create and maintain a safe, positive, and supportive culture.
“Our first priority has always been to make sure our employees and students are safe. I don’t think we can ever waiver on that at all. I want to enhance that.”
At the June Board Meeting, the Ouachita Parish School Board members voted unanimously to seek bids on placing cameras in every classroom. This is strictly for the safety of our students and employees and will be guided by strict guidelines over access to these cameras. Guice is also hiring two retired law enforcement officers to be safety monitors for the district.
“Sometimes I think we are more reactive by nature. I have never been that way. You want to think things out. You’re not going to think of everything, obviously, but we want to be proactive and make sure there’s something we can do better, whether it be curriculum or construction, and doing it now and not waiting for something to happen negatively and think, ‘We better address it.’”
- Continue to work on improving our district and school performance through an aligned instruction system where the needs of each student are met.
“That would be following our approved state curriculum, following our adopted curriculums in K-12 and making sure we are following that curriculum and teaching it with fidelity. Our kids aren’t getting evaluated on what (teachers) taught 20 years ago. What we are teaching in third grade now, for example, we probably weren’t teaching until sixth grade just a few years ago. We must make sure that we are remaining within our scope and sequence to prevent our students from falling behind.”
- Have a sound, fiscal policy and program.
“When we go out and do these construction projects, we get a bond rating,” Guice said. “Our bond rating has remained very, very high because we work real hard to make sure that we are taking care of our financial resources entrusted to the district by our community. We don’t overspend. We follow our budget.”
Guice is looking extensively at possible avenues of getting all employees an increase in compensation.
“Our non-certified employees deserve more money, as do all of our employees, so we’ve got to get to a point where we can do that,” Guice said. “We just finished the first steps of a salary study, so we can see how we stack up with everybody else and see where we need to go, so that’s another area we will be working on in the months ahead.”
As personnel director, Guice created staffing guidelines to lay out the standard pupil:teacher ratios, formulas and procedures used for staffing positions within the district. These guidelines provide directions to make sure that we are staffing within our means.
- Recruit, retain and develop high-quality staff.
Guice said ULM and Tech each have been averaging about 25-30 certified teachers graduating a year, and Ouachita Parish is fortunate enough to hire most of them.
“Out of the 50 area graduates last year, we probably hired 40 of them, but both their junior classes that will be seniors next year are in the 70 range,” Guice said. “It’s important for us to hire as many of those as we can. We traditionally hire about 150 teachers a year, and ULM and Tech are our biggest suppliers. We plan to expand our recruiting efforts at all three of our local universities and through non-traditional paths where we can.”
In Guice’s first year as personnel director in 2015, he hired 230 teachers. That number has since been on a steady decline as fewer teachers are leaving the district each year, with the exception of the COVID year.
“I would say that fortunately we’re probably ahead of a lot of other districts in the area,” Guice said.
5. Improve and increase the avenues of communication and information sharing to all groups.
In a time where social media has taken over as the quickest way to get information, it’s also a place to get a lot of misinformation. Guice is committed to getting more news out that comes straight from the district and schools to ensure factual information is being presented to all those involved with the school system, whether that be parents, students, employees, etc.
“I just felt like if they’re going to get information that way (through social media), they need to get it from us and just increase our transparency,” Guice said. “Getting more information out there is what we need.”
All five priorities cover the majority of Guice’s list of things to accomplish with urgency. Discipline and special needs children are also issues that have come to the forefront after talking with teachers around the district.
“The days of these special needs kids being pulled into classes on their own … those days are over,” Guice said. “They are in our regular classrooms, but a lot of our teachers – most of our teachers – they weren’t trained to teach that way. All kids learn differently, so we must ensure as a district that we are provided the appropriate training to all of our staff so that they can differentiate their instruction in a way that reaches all students.”
Guice is committed to keeping the conversation line open with his teachers and stakeholders. He plans to have his elementary, middle school and high school directors visiting schools frequently throughout the school year to provide that listening ear and to be a support system.
Additional settings for Safari Browser.
