Superintendent sit down: Hillsborough County Schools' Van Ayres answers questions ahead of new school year

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Students across the Tampa Bay Area will return to the classroom in about a week, embarking on a new school year.

As the largest school district in the area, ABC Action News reporter Mary O’Connell sat down with Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent Van Ayres this week to learn about what’s new, priorities, goals, and challenges for the school year.

Watch full report from Mary O'Connell

Here is an excerpt of the questions that ABC Action News reporter Mary O'Connell asked HCPS Superintendent Ayres.

What’s new this school year that parents and families should be aware of?
It’s really a continuation. Nothing really new. We did have some around elementary and middle schools, there’s some state law that changes around cell phones, where cell phones now in elementary and middle have to be out of sight from the entire school day, so the time that they walk onto school grounds, cell phones have to be put away, elementary and middle. That’s kind of the big change. They have to be out of sight all the time. Our high schools still follow the same rules as last year, really up to the principal, so they can maybe use it during passing periods or lunch time, but the big change for this year, only real thing is just around cell phones, elementary and middle. Putting them away. Keeping our students focused on instruction.

What are you looking forward to this coming school year as Superintendent of the 7^th largest school district?
We’re a growing school district, so in Hillsborough County, we continue to grow. We’ve got actually our new, what’s exciting this year is we have our new high school, Morgan High School, out in Wimauma, and it’s going to open up. It’s going to be our 29^th high school, so we’ll have 29 high schools this fall. So that’s kind of the big, exciting news there, but for us, it’s just continuing the momentum. We’ve had great momentum over the last couple of years. We were up to like 98 percent of our schools now rated A, B, or C. We are on a strong track of growth, and we just want to continue that acceleration. Really big push on reading proficiency. We’ve got a three percent jump in our grades 3-5, two percent jump in grade 3, which is, literacy and our literacy rates is our big push in our school district to continue to push those, and we’ve done a tremendous job over the last couple of years. This year really is just about continuing the momentum, and attendance. I mean if any message out to our families is around attendance. That is the one thing that is out of our control, but over the last number of years, it’s gotten a little bit better over the last couple of years, but ever since COVID, we’ve noticed our attendance numbers have started to decline, so main message is our teachers can’t teach, our principals can’t lead our schools unless we’ve got 100 percent attendance, so we want all of our students Monday, August 11 in their seats on time ready to go Monday.

You’re going into your third year as Superintendent, so what, you touched on it a little bit, are you proud of? What do you think the district can improve on?
You’re always trying to get better. One of the particular pride points is we’ve had over the last number of years, over the last couple of years, we had a 15 percent increase in our Advanced Placement pass rate, so we had almost 28,000 students that took an Advanced Placement exam, and we’re up to 70 percent of those students having a passing score, 3, 4, 5, so as you look at what they can then do after high school and earning credits. It’s tremendous and tremendous growth for us. Our push is always, like I mentioned, around our literacy rates. We’re at 56 percent of our students right now proficient grade 3-5. We need that number of course to be 100, so we’ll continue on that push.

There’s been a lot of headlines about the federal funding freeze over the last couple weeks. What do you want families to know about that if they’ve seen that in the news recently?
Good news, the funds are no longer frozen, so they’ve been released, so just this, few days ago, we did get word from the state that the federal funds have been released to the state, so we’ll be getting those funds, so big relief for all of the school districts across this nation, so that’s been taken care of, so it’s one less thing that schools districts, families have to worry about. Those funds have been released, so we’re ready to get this school year rolling.

Another thing that had been in the headlines a little bit were book removals here in Hillsborough County and in other districts across the state. What do you want families to know about book removals as they happen?
We’ll always follow Florida statute, follow the law. There were some materials that the Department of Education felt that were inappropriate, and I went before the Department of Ed and acted quickly and removed those 55 books, and as you mentioned, some other districts as well had similar books, so we’ll always follow the law. It was a Florida Statute 1006.28 around material, inappropriate material. Those books were reviewed, and those 55 books were removed already this summer.

Is the district experiencing a teacher shortage, and how bad is it?
Yeah, so still a shortage, but we are in a much better place than we were even last year, so we started last year with you know upwards of 600 teacher vacancies. Now put that in perspective, you know we are the 7^th largest, we have almost 300 sites, so the 600 number as we started last year sounded large. We’re actually 200 fewer this year, so we're down to around 430 as we currently sit today (Tuesday, July 29). Special thanks to all our community around that millage referendum that was passed, allows us the ability to recruit and retain teachers. We’ve already noticed the difference just in this short period of time. We’re down from 600 last year to 400 this year, so a definite reduction, and then as important is our bus drivers, so last year we started with 150. We’re down to 50 bus driver vacancies right now, so you talk about the importance of getting to school on time and getting home on time. Our families are going to really notice a big difference as all of our routes, we’ve got bus drivers to cover them. Big improvements on that end. You’re talking 220,000 students in our district. We have 80,000 students that get on a school bus every day.

If you had to name a couple of your biggest priorities and goals for the school year, so when you look back next May to see what you’ve accomplished, what would you say those goals and priorities are?
Number one goal is always around our third grade readers, so third grade proficiency is always a number that we look at of all the metrics. School districts, got a lot of numbers that we look at. Third grade proficiency always for us is a primary metric that we look at to have more of our students proficient in third grade because there’s such a direct correlation between third grade proficiency, and then ultimately graduation, and then number two, our graduation rate. We’re going to release, the state will release those in December. We are hoping, pretty sure it’s going to be the highest graduation rate we’ve ever had in Hillsborough County, somewhere in the 90s or above, so we’ll wait to see those results for these past seniors that just graduated. We just graduated in May over 15,000 students from our school district, so pretty proud, and to have a number, highest ever, those are always two priorities that we’ll always continue to stay focused on, you can’t lose sight of.

What’s your message to parents, to families, to students for a successful school year?
It’s the energy and passion to come to school with, right? It’s the excitement, so we’re ready to go, we want them to be ready to go, and number one, it just comes back to being ready for the first day, so getting those school supplies ready prior to school, showing up to school on time. We start on a Monday for the first time in a long time, so it’s a full first week back, so just that message around, many years in the past, we’d start around Tuesdays or Thursdays, but we’ve got a full week coming back, so we want everybody ready to go. Message would be those sleep schedules over the next week because we get ready, kind of get that routine back in place, and over the summer, you tend to go to bed a little bit later, wake up a little bit later. Time to get those routines over next week, try to put those back in place because we got to lot work to do starting Monday the 11th, and everyone’s excited to have everybody back.