Patrice Pujol Ascension Parish Superintendent

Ascension Parish Superintendent Patrice Pujol is one of four finalists for National Superintendent of the Year. During her tenure she's worked to improve the standings of the district's lowest-rated schools -- but says the strategies the district is using in those schools have also helped improve student performance throughout the district, helping it increase the number of A schools from 6 to 16 over the course of three years.(Photo by Brianna Paciorka, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

(Brianna Paciorka)

They say results speak for themselves. Well, consider this:

Four years ago, when Louisiana first began issuing letter grades to schools, Ascension Parish had six A-rated schools among its 26 campuses. Now it has 16. The district started with six D schools and one F. Now it has but 3 D schools and no Fs. That's despite the fact the district has had to figure out how to handle enormous change as it serves one of the fastest-growing parishes in the state.

But change isn't something that worries Superintendent Patrice Pujol, who has led the district through its remarkable progress over the past five years.

"I was always looking more at how can I change things, rather than how can I keep them the same," Pujol said.

And that fast-moving, nimble approach appears to have worked, borne out by the improved scores. That success is one of the reasons Pujol is one of only four remaining contenders across the entire country for national superintendent of the year, which will be awarded Feb. 26 at a convention in San Diego.

Those who have worked with Pujol, 58, say she runs her district like a CEO. Not in the sense that she's looking for ways to cut costs and protect the bottom line, but, rather, from the perspective that she's 1) both pragmatic and strategic, 2) focused on managing and providing support to her staff, 3) always looking for the best new practices, and 4) ready to change, if needed.

"Patrice starts with the student front of mind, and she leads her people with that idea front of mind," said state Superintendent John White. "She doesn't get hung up on politics and rhetoric, she does the right thing. What that results in is a school system that prioritizes the things that make sense."

In speaking with her principals and other staff, Pujol frequently returns to the same theme: Making sure the schools are being flexible enough to adapt to the needs of individual students and their families. And that's a tricky task in a school district -- a type of institution that tends to get bogged down in bureaucracy, in tradition, in politics.

"The world outside of school is changing exponentially faster and faster and faster," Pujol said. "And so the world in school has to change exponentially faster and faster and faster. That's a challenge for us all."

That message was on display at a recent meeting with district middle school principals and other administrators. Sitting around an extra classroom used for staff training and meetings at Gonzales Middle School, the principals bounced from topic to topic, raising concerns and ideas related to special ed, to after-school tutoring, to Common Core. Pujol mostly listened, occasionally tapping away at her cell phone, letting the staff work through their ideas. When Pujol chimed in, it was often in the form of more questions, pulling the principals to the bigger picture.

One principal said she was getting questions from parents about after-school tutoring services, but she didn't have a way to fund that kind of program.

The thing the principals should focus on, Pujol responded, is not how they can provide those tutoring services. It's "why are they asking that? What is their kid not getting?"

There is likely something that can be done during the school day to address that child's needs, she indicated. Maybe they can be pulled out of class for additional help, for example.

Pujol's leadership style is "demanding but fair," and she's proven that she can motivate her staff, said state Rep. Ed Price, D-Gonzales, who was on the Ascension Parish School Board when she was hired as superintendent.

"Everyone knows that even though it's a demanding style, she's going to be fair about it, and she's going to promote the ideas that get things moving forward," Price said.

Keith Courville, executive director of the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana, which represents teachers, described Pujol as "sensible" and "very easy to work with."

At that same Gonzales meeting, one principal chimed in that her school was offering some tutoring services on Saturday mornings, making it easier for parents who work during the week to attend. That's the kind of idea Pujol likes - something that gets to the realities of family and school life in today's modern world.

"Regardless of whether the family is middle-class, or affluent, or a family that struggles a bit more, there are demands placed on those families in ways that didn't exist 30 years ago," Pujol said later that day. "I think sometimes schools are slow to change and think about how we can best accommodate families, rather than how we can accommodate them."

But while change is her mantra, the one thing Pujol hasn't been interested in changing is the location of her own career.

Pujol is not only a native of Ascension Parish: She has spent her entire 38-year career thus far in the parish's school system. Her dad had a grocery store in St. Amant, and she grew up helping at the store, running the cash register and meeting pretty much everyone in town.

She said she "just grew up with a sense of community, and a sense of service to community, that was instilled in me by my parents. So teaching was an obvious choice for me in terms of a career."

Pujol taught English at St. Amant High, worked her way up to principal and then climbed the district career ladder, serving in a few different roles at the district office before being named superintendent in 2010.

When Pujol became superintendent, her first priority was to reduce the gap between the district's lowest-performing students and schools -- including those on the west side of the river, around Donaldsonville -- and the district's highest-performing students and schools.

"While overall our parish was doing extremely well, we had this subset of schools that were just not performing at as high of a level," Pujol said.

So she grouped eight of the lowest-performing together and called them the "turnaround zone."

In those schools, she put in place a teacher advancement system, which emphasized teachers giving extensive support and feedback to each other. She also put a career ladder system in place, so teachers could get promotions to become "mentor teachers" and "master teachers" - helping the district attract some of its best teachers to those struggling schools. And she moved some of the most talented people from the district office and "embedded" them on those campuses. Now, when a principal or someone else at the school has a question or an idea, they have someone easily accessible who they can run it by - not to mention someone who has worked with them to set goals for their schools, and who can keep them on track toward achieving those goals.

Interestingly, while some other areas have tried bringing in charter operators to address their lowest-performing schools, Ascension Parish's approach was uniquely homegrown -- like Pujol herself. While Pujol is actively involved in researching and contributing to education policy, when she brings ideas back home -- like the turnaround zone -- it's her staff and herself who implement them.

"She takes the best of our work and she uses the things that she thinks are valuable," said Gary Stark, president and CEO of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, whose organization developed the teacher advancement system that Ascension Parish uses. "She makes it her own."

The impacts of the turnaround zone are felt beyond those eight schools. Pujol says that the district has taken many of the ideas that worked best and implemented them in other schools. She says the district's increase in A schools is a result of the ideas fleshed out at the D schools.

That's not to say there's not progress to be made. Three schools - Lowery Intermediate School, Lowery Elementary School and Donaldsonville Primary School -- are still D-ranked. Moreover, there are still two C schools.

But White says he appreciates that Pujol doesn't shy away from that.

"She doesn't sugarcoat that, she's honest about that," White said. "I admire Patrice for the number of A schools she has, but I admire her even more for how hard she works on the D schools. And those schools I know are soon going to be As and Bs."