Dr. William Pearson: M.D.E. Partnership Districts, and Addressing the Teacher Shortage

<p>Podcast for Leaderful Schools has had a series of conversations with influential people talking about how schooling has been affected by the pandemic, how we're coping with it, and how we hope to be coming out of it. Today's guest is Dr. William Pearson, Director of the Office of Partnership Districts in the Michigan Department of Education (M.D.E.). The Michigan Department of Education is the state’s administrative office that supervises education across the state.</p><p>Dr. Pearson proudly continues a family tradition as educators. To achieve his goal of becoming a superintendent, Dr. Pearson ensured he had both teaching and administrative experience at the elementary and secondary level. His career continued as Assistant Superintendent for Instruction in South Lyon and then superintendent there for 20 years. “I left South Lyon, actually retired but still kept on being a superintendent.  The best move I ever made was to accept a position in Mount Clemens, in Macomb County, for two years where I was able to work with a high poverty district and we made some marked turnaround efforts. I was a superintendent at St. John's for a little bit, and then I worked for Munetrix, which is a data analytics company for a few months.” He had a chance conversation with Sheila Alles, who was Interim State Superintendent at the time, and offered to help out high poverty districts, resulting in his current position as Director of the Office of Partnership Schools for M.D.E. “When I was hired in December of 2018, I was also named the State School Reform Officer. There was only one in the State and the Legislature removed that position, so I remained the Director of Partnership Districts, and we currently are working with 26 districts around the state and 98 schools.”</p><p>Dr. Pearson provided historic context for his position. “In 2017-2018 Dr. Whiston, the previous state superintendent, decided that instead of trying to close schools, a new concept called partnership districts would be formed where M.D.E. would work with a di