By far the biggest story in Prescott this past week was the appointment of Clark Tenney as the new Superintendent of the Prescott Unified School District. Mr. Tenney’s appointment was not unanticipated. When current Superintendent Joe Howard announced his resignation last year, the PUSD school board took the unusual step of naming Mr. Tenney “Interim Superintendent” a full year before Mr. Howard’s scheduled departure and only a few weeks before a newly elected school board was seated.
If the “fix” was in for Clark Tenney, it was probably unnecessary. Mr. Tenney is widely considered one of the brighter bulbs among PUSD’s lackluster cadre of “educators”, as they like to be known. In a room of 40 watt bulbs, a sixty watt bulb stands out.
In his two decade career with the District, Mr. Tenney has burnished his resume as a classroom teacher, elementary school principal, assistant principal of Prescott High School, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, and since December of 2022, Interim Superintendent of PUSD and Joe Howard’s anticipated replacement. His rise thru the ranks suggests both ambition and genuine talent as an education bureaucrat
In the interest of full disclosure, I am personally acquainted with Mr. Tenney. We met in 2012 when I was taking education courses at Yavapai Community College. One of them required a few hours of classroom observation. Mr. Tenney was gracious enough to allow me to sit in on a few sessions of his Japanese class at Prescott High School. I didn’t understand a word of Japanese and neither did the students. But I remember being impressed with his teaching style and classroom management. The kids respected him and behaved themselves.
In the following years, I picked up a Masters Degree in Education from ASU and visited dozens of Arizona classrooms as a member of the Education Committee in the State Legislature. I think I can say with confidence that Clark Tenney is an excellent teacher with a deep commitment to his profession. Last week’s unanimous vote by the Prescott School Board in selecting him as the new Superintendent of the Prescott Unified School District is well deserved.
In my view, the sooner he takes over, the better. He has his work cut out for him. PUSD has been in decline for years. Enrollment is slipping as more families choose higher performing charter and private school alternatives. Even home schoolers taught by lay parents out perform our district school students. Arizona’s new universal voucher system—Education Scholarship Accounts—is likely to accelerate the migration away from government run education.
Although PUSD still performs above state averages, their margins are slipping. The demographics of Prescott give us some protection from the social pathologies endemic to public schools. Drugs, school fights, and teen pregnancy are not as rampant in Prescott as they are elsewhere in the state. But even here they are a part of the public school experience. Our schools don’t have as many migrants and English Language Learners who require extra resources and pull down average test scores. But it’s still the case in Prescott schools that teachers are sufficiently afraid of disorderly students and thefts from the classroom that they keep their doors locked. Lack of discipline and the fear of violence are big enough problems that the administration lobbies for cops in the classroom or School Resource Officers, as they are euphemistically known.
Public education in Arizona is a battleground and Prescott’s government run schools are no exception. Mr. Tenney is inheriting a lot of problems not of his making. The problems are urgent. But its going to take some time to straighten things out.
Teacher recruitment is a particular challenge. District schools claim they can’t find enough qualified teachers because the pay isn’t high enough. But charter and private schools typically offer lower pay. They don’t report the same difficulty finding teachers. District school administrators respond that the charter and private schools use teachers who are not certified by the state. But if certification is so important, why do students at the charters and private schools out perform the district schools? We need better answers than we’ve been getting.
Prescott’s last school board election saw allegations of “woke” curriculum and anti-white bias in the classroom. In an interview with Prescott eNews, Mr. Tenney denied that PUSD taught Critical Race Theory and assured us that his focus would be on improving academics. We commend him for coming in. A link to his full interview can be found
Arizona’s new Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, was elected on the promise to drive out critical race theory and “woke” ideologies from public education and refocus on academics. Prescott eNews extends our best wishes to Clark Tenney on his appointment as Superintendent of the Prescott Unified School District. Let’s hope he’s on board with Tom Horne’s “reset” in public education. If he is, it could go a long way to restoring trust in a public school system that dates from the founding of Arizona.
[Editor’s note: The public is invited to meet Mr. Tenney at a community forum Wednesday evening, April 26th, 5:15pm, at the Mile High Middle School]
