THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412270257
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 216 lines
Joseph Peel stood in front of about 20 sixth-graders at Sheep Harney Elementary School - some squirming, some whispering, some riveted to a screen showing an ancient European castle.
Wearing a colorful tie dancing with fanciful dinosaurs, speaking in the low, considered tone typical of his presentations, Peel showed the children how evolving architecture can reveal the way people lived long ago.
It was the day after Peel, superintendent of the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Schools, had faced county commissioners with a request for $24 million in building construction. Now he was back where his career started more than a quarter-century ago - in the classroom.
``I would like to do it more,'' Peel said after teaching his fourth and final class of the year. ``Every time I do it I'm reminded how hard the job is, to try to keep their attention.''
Peel, a former teacher who now oversees some 800 employees and nearly 6,300 students at 10 schools, is guiding the district through a historic period of upheaval. He has pretty much left the classroom for the education board room, but he says his job is fundamentally the same as it always has been.
``I don't think I ever left teaching,'' said Peel, 49. ``I just have different students now.''
Peel's current classroom is the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank County community. His subject is reinventing schools for the 21st century.
``Schools are about getting kids ready to enter the real world, and the real world is changing,'' Peel said. ``If we're going to survive as a nation, we have to educate every kid better than we were educated.''
For the past two and a half years, Peel has been shepherding the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Schools through what administrators call one of the greatest periods of change in the system's history.
As one of six state pilot sites working with Outcome Based Education, the system is readjusting the way it teaches kids, based on a set of core beliefs: that all children can learn, but at different rates; that children and parents should be treated as clients of schools; and that children need to be evaluated based on what they can do as well as on what they know.
The trick in the information age, Peel has said, is to teach students how to find and use the information they need for whatever they're doing.
Under these tenets, schools are changing. Innovative scheduling, new forms of discipline, state-of-the-art technology programs, classrooms grouped across age lines into ``families'' of children and teachers, and new ways of measuring student performance are just a few of the efforts that have shaken up local education in recent years.
Along with these innovations, the district is moving management decisions downward, flattening the hierarchy between the central office and the schools. Site-based management, which includes school-improvement teams and school-based decisions, is empowering principals and teachers to do what is best for their kids.
Grants are being sought and used to develop staff members, to train them in current research and to give them time for planning and coordinating activities.
Unlike past reforms that have swamped school staffs across the country and then disappeared, these efforts are all related, and the process is here to stay, officials at Elizabeth City-Pasquotank say.
``I think that's kind of a refreshing change for a lot of people,'' said Charles White, director of school-community relations. ``I think we're bringing together a lot of different things under the same focus. . . Professional growth has become one of the hallmarks of Dr. Peel's administration.''
Those who have worked with Peel say he's just the right person to coax the system and its people into a new era.
``I've found Joe always to be someone who challenges everyone around him to be better than they thought they could be,'' said Dare County Schools Superintendent Leon Holleman, who worked with Peel in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system for nine years.
``As my supervisor, he always was willing to listen to different proposals. And if you didn't have anything, he wanted to know why,'' Holleman said. ``Anything less than my best didn't cut it.''
Peel came to Pasquotank County in mid-1992 after 25 years in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, where he started as a German and Spanish teacher who coached football and wrestling. He gradually moved through the ranks, holding several principal and central office positions.
``He's experienced all levels in the school system,'' said Elizabeth City-Pasquotank School Board Chairman Marion Harris, and that was one of the reasons he was hired.
Peel grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where his father spent more than 40 years in the local school system, teaching science, coaching and overseeing secondary schools as an assistant superintendent.
Peel played football in high school and said he ``got in my share of trouble,'' but wouldn't elaborate. ``I always say the reason the Lord made me a principal was to punish me for being so bad when I was a teenager,'' Peel said, chuckling. ``But I always did my schoolwork.''
He went to Davidson College just north of Charlotte on a football scholarship and played center while earning a bachelor of arts degree in German education. He twice studied in Germany, once during his undergraduate career and again a few years later. Many of the slides he showed the Sheep Harney children were taken during his trips to Europe.
Looking for a change in 1992, Peel applied for the Pasquotank superintendent post.
``This was, I thought, a good opportunity,'' Peel said of his job offer here. ``I liked the geographic area for one thing. I was extremely impressed with the board of education.''
The board has been impressed with Peel, as well.
``I think he's done an outstanding job since he's been here,'' Harris said. ``I don't know of anybody that works any more, any longer, any harder than he does.
``He's responsible in large part for seeing and knowing what's going on in other places and maybe guiding us that way,'' Harris said. ``He recognized everything is not going to work. . . We don't want change just to be changing. We want the end result to be a better product.''
And the efforts appear to be paying off. Two elementary schools - Pasquotank and P.W. Moore - were named entrepreneurial schools by the state this year for innovation in scheduling, student discipline and technology use. Only Peel's former employer, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, also had more than one school recognized.
Elizabeth City Middle School has been chosen as one of three Showcase Middle Schools in the state and is one of 89 schools nationwide selected for a new technology curriculum program. All the schools are breaking ground in classroom grouping, student assessment and staff development.
Assistant Superintendent C.E. ``Mack'' McCary, who joined the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank system three months after Peel, said the superintendent is ``the major reason I'm here.''
``The thing that struck me about Joe was his integrity, not only his vision but his willingness to stand for things,'' McCary said.
``Joe genuinely cares about people. He genuinely cares about the kids. There's no mistaking that if you want to get his dander up, then you're doing something that's hurting kids.''
Peel says his concern for others is a driving force behind his work.
``I really believe that people are basically good,'' he said. ``I trust people, have faith in people. I think people basically want to do the right thing and want to be successful.''
``I believe that children are our No. 1 reason for existing,'' he said, adding that politics or inertia sometimes get in the way of doing the right thing. ``All too often in education, we're guilty of making decisions for our own reasons.''
But it's not just schools that need to change, Peel said. It's society.
``We've got some serious problems,'' he said this month on the way to Williamston for the opening of a new state public education building. ``I think we have an increasing number of young people growing up in situations where they just don't see much hope for themselves.''
Peel has high hopes that the county's recently awarded Smart Start grant, aimed at keeping its youngest children safe and healthy, will help turn things around.
``By 2 years of age, so much of what a child is going to be is determined that it's almost frightening,'' Peel said, fingers resting on the steering wheel of a state-owned blue Caprice Classic. ``If you don't get a smart start, you really don't get a start at all.
``If you look at what we're being held accountable for . . . we can't afford for any child to come to school not ready. We don't have the resources to deal with all these kids.''
The difficulty in solving problems is that positive change doesn't occur overnight, despite constant pressure on officials to show results.
``We haven't realized yet as a people or a culture that to make the kind of social changes we're looking at . . . it isn't going to happen in someone's term of office,'' Peel said.
Peel spreads his influence not only through the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank system, but also throughout northeastern North Carolina as chairman of the region's Superintendents' Council.
He was instrumental in changing the focus of the Northeast Technical Assistance Center to better share resources among the 20 school districts it serves. The Williamston event was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center's new building.
An avid reader of educational literature, Peel is looked to as an authority on the cutting edge of education.
``If I want a book review or a book critique,'' Dare County Superintendent Holleman said, ``I call Joe.''
Peel says he applies everything he reads to his work and assures people that the schools' reform efforts aren't out of left field.
``People get real nervous when they think you're experimenting with their kids,'' Peel said. ``We have really tried to emphasize change that is . . . research-based.''
And although the superintendent sometimes has to make unpopular decisions, he says he works hard to take everyone's feelings into account.
``The worst part of my job is when I encounter people who don't think they've been treated fairly,'' Peel said.
He said he makes a strong effort to make sure people understand the process behind his decisions. He has a lot of different groups who rely on what he does: students, parents, teachers, staff, board members.
``I'm not sure that I can please all those people,'' Peel said. ``I'm not sure that it's my job to please people. . . . What I do worry about is that people feel that they've been listened to.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
Joseph Peel, superintendent of Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Schools,
has been a catalyst for improvement in the district and the region
since taking over in 1992.
Graphic
JOSEPH W. PEEL
Born: Feb. 13, 1945. Grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Education: Doctor of education in school administration,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1989; educational
specialist degree in school administration, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1976;
master of education in school administration, University of North
Carolina at Charlotte, 1973; bachelor of arts in German education,
Davidson College, 1967. Has studied at Universitat Erlangen/Nurnberg
and Goethe Institut in Germany.
Career: Since mid-1992, superintendent of Elizabeth
City-Pasquotank Public Schools. Spent about 25 years in
Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System, serving as area superintendent,
acting deputy superintendent, junior and senior high principal,
assistant principal and teacher.
Memberships include: North Carolina Association of School
Administrators, Association of Supervision and Curriculum
Development, Phi Delta Kappa, Albemarle Area United Way Board of
Directors, Elizabeth City Area Chamber of Commerce Board of
Directors, First United Methodist Church of Elizabeth City. Chairman
of the Northeast Superintendents' Council.
Awards: Charlotte-Mecklenburg principal of the year, state
finalist, 1987; principal of school that was named a National School
of Excellence, 1986; principal of school recognized by Ford
Foundation as one of top 50 urban high schools in nation, 1982.
Family: Wife, Carolyn. Sons, Jason and John.
by CNB