Building Relationships, Yielding Results: How Superintendents Can Work with School Boards to Create Productive Teams Paperback - 2015

Julie L. Hackett has been a public educator since 1992, and her background includes experience at the elementary, middle, high school, and post-secondary levels. She began her career as a high school English teacher in Maine, where she was a passionate advocate for helping struggling students learn to read. Julie became a frequent presenter on this topic, sharing ways to engage all learners. As a member of the National Writing Project and an active teacher researcher, she developed an innovative program and partnership between preschool students and her struggling high school readers. In 2000, her efforts culminated in a book, called Strategic Reading: Guiding Students to Lifelong Literacy, 6-12 published by Heinemann, that she coauthored with Tanya Baker and Jeffrey Wilhelm.

After being promoted to the position of Dean of Students, Julie served as an elementary/middle school principal in a regional school system in Maine. In 2001, she was appointed to the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI)--the single largest 1:1 educational technology program in the world, designed to put technology in the hands of every middle school student in the state. At this time, she pursued a doctoral degree in educational leadership, which she earned in 2005 after completing her dissertation titled "Exploring the Links among Professional Development, Teacher Performance and Student Achievement."

Julie then began her career as a central office administrator in 2002, when she was appointed to the position of Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, a role she held in two different school systems in Maine. She led both districts in strategic planning and the creation of comprehensive teacher-developed local assessment systems. In addition, she taught graduate-level courses at her alma mater, the University of Maine, including an instructional leadership course for aspiring principals and a series of gifted and talented courses that she developed for educators. In 2007, Julie and her husband, Frank, and their children, Parker, Cameron, and Kelsey, moved to Massachusetts. She first served as Assistant Superintendent in Taunton, and then Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning in Brookline, where she also led the strategic planning work, as well as efforts to close achievement gaps.

In 2009, Julie became the first female superintendent in Taunton, Massachusetts. One of twenty-four urban school districts in the Commonwealth, the Taunton Public Schools is a diverse school community with approximately eight thousand two hundred students and one thousand two hundred fifty employees. The district had been consistently in the bottom 10 to 12 percent for per pupil expenditures, receiving the least amount of funding of any urban school system in the state for several years running; despite this, its student achievement indicators across a variety of disciplines rivaled those of other high-achieving, affluent urban districts in Massachusetts with per pupil expenditures more than doubling those of the Taunton Public Schools. Julie and her team found creative ways to implement and fund a districtwide model of inclusion that is one of the first in the state, and expand wrap-around services, the arts, foreign languages, and career and technical education offerings. These efforts led to the lowest dropout rates (less than 1 percent) and highest graduation rates (90 percent) in the school system's history. Julie also takes pride in her work as a mentor, helping at-risk high school students graduate and go on to college.

In her career as a central office administrator, Julie has worked with five school boards and more than thirty school board members. She has been an invited guest speaker at state and national conferences where she has shared strategies for establishing effective superintendent and school board relations. Now in her sixth year as superintendent, Julie Hackett and her school board have worked together to transform their schools and build superintendent-school board relationships focused on their mission of "academic excellence for every student, every classroom, and every school."