Shane McCord

Guiding conversations with community leaders.

In this podcast, we'll explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, perhaps providing resources, connections and belonging for business professionals.

And Rocket Space, an event and meeting venue in the heart of the East Valley with a full service four person podcast studio. In today's guiding growth, we have an amazing, amazing community member here that I cannot wait for you to tell us all about. Sarah.

Yes, one of my favorites. This guest is a native of Arizona.

And graduated from Mesa High School. He has made a career in the field of education with more than 27 years experience in settings including elementary teacher, assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, and he has spent a majority of his time.

In Gilbert Public Schools.

He is now the superintendent of the district serving more than 33,000 students. An eternal optimist and a wonderful friend.

We welcome Dr. Shane McCord.

Hello, Mr. Shane.

Hello. How are you?

We're so glad you're here. Thank you for being with us today. We start this show out with what we call rapid fire.

Rapid fire. All right.

So, Sarah.

All right, here we go. Would you rather travel to the past or to the future?

Future.

What's your hidden talent?

Fishing, hip hop or rock concert?

Hip hop.

Have you ever lived abroad?

No.

What's your go to Snack?

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

Getting through the show might be your answer, but what makes you hopeful?

What makes me hopeful?

Kids, are you more of a thinker or a doer?

Yes.

If someone was to play you in a movie, who would you want it to be?

Gosh, I'm sure everybody says somebody really cool. Sean Astin.

Oh, really?

Right.

Yep.

There you go.

What's your favorite pastime or hobby?

Fishing.

Came up twice. We're after digging that last question. Glass half full or half empty?

Full.

Congratulations. You're in the club now.

There it is.

Gilbert City Lifestyles is a locally owned publication whose mission is to find and share great stories in our community and help build a stronger, more vibrant local experience.

Become a digital subscriber@citylifestyles.com Gilbert. Let's talk about where it all began, shall we?

We shall.

Going back to being. Bring us through the history of, like, how you got into the education world. And we'll dig into that later.

How I got into education. So I was a business major where I was at MCC and then went into NAU and followed my wife who was my fiance at the time down because she was in education up there. So she was student teaching.

Followed or chased?

Both. I don't even know if I actually had a choice at this point. So. And then when she. So I went to asu, Business major still. And I went. And after she got a job in Gilbert, she was teaching kindergarten at Gilbert Elementary. I went in there and I. Well, I. I saw what she was doing, and I worked with her kids quite a bit because I had some time between classes and whatnot, and I fell in love with the kids. I'd also coached football at Mesa High for a year and loved being around, just being around the kids and what that did for me as an individual. And so I went back to ASU and switched my majors and added a couple more years to my college career, but. But then that's how it happened. Okay. Yeah.

When you think back to your childhood, were any of your parents teachers or any educators?

No. None. No. My dad quit school in sixth grade. My mom quit school in ninth grade. My dad was one of nine, and they were cotton farmers in Missouri. And my mom was one of nine, and her dad left the family, so she had to help provide for the family. So she became a waitress at that age. Wow.

So, yeah, so that's a big decision to make, to switch course like that. And also a male in the industry, which is probably something that maybe, you know, wasn't as mainstream at the time. What. What really gave you the inspiration to, like, take that risk? I mean, it's one thing to think that you want to do it. It's another thing to take action and put action behind it.

Well, college is a big investment, and I didn't want to go to college, spend a lot of time, effort, and come out with a degree that I didn't really want to do anything with being in. I was a marketing major, and my mom pointed out, she's like, well, you'll. You'll be a salesperson. And I was like, well, you know, but I'll make money. And she goes, yeah, but you'll be in sales. And I thought. So that kind of sank in. And then I went into my wife's classroom, and, you know, right then I knew it wasn't about the money at the time. It was just about being happy, fulfilling some things for yourself and impacting the lives of others. So that's what drove me down that path.

Yeah. And you shared a story about the significance of just being happy and the role that your grandmother played in your life with that Yep.

Grandma was a huge influence. So she's an Irish immigrant, came over when she was 16 years old, was never anything other than a housemaid or a housekeeper. She lived with us basically most of my life, and we were two peas in a pod. And so she took care of me, I took care of her, and she had a lot of belief in me. I was the baby. And so, of course, I took a lot of grief from my brother and all my cousins, but at the same time, it kind of molded me into who I am today. She was tough, resilient. She had, I think we counted it up, 17 surgeries her whole life, all the way from double, triple bypass, new pig's valve in her heart. And she just kept going. And so she was someone that I could talk to. And she treated me not just as a grandchild, but as an individual. And so, yeah, she was the person.

She'S brought a lot of. Who you are today.

Yep. Yep.

It's amazing.

Very much so.

So you mentioned earlier that sales was what you thought you might be going into if you kept going down the marketing route. Right. Do you find now, though, that you've been in the education world that you see the parallel between sales and education?

Oh, completely, yeah. You know, it's. It's. When I started, that wasn't the case, but now that's what it's all about to a degree. You know, we have to market our schools, we have to market our programs, we have to market our reputation, because we're always in a constant tug of war with charter schools, competing school districts about enrollment, and kids aren't numbers. But you want to keep your enrollment as high as you can because that equates to the number of staff members you have, and you want to keep people employed. And so we serve the community. We're the largest. Well, I think we're the largest employer in the town of Gilbert. We have over 4,200 employees. And so it's important to us to be able to provide for that. But we also firmly believe that we have the very best education system in our boundaries. So, you know, I think there's probably like, 38, 39 charter schools in or around our boundaries. And so we're in constant competition.

Yeah, and your product becomes very emotional. Right. I mean, parents, kids are their world. And so it's not. I watch you and your leadership, and I think about the very different audiences that you serve and that you are trying to stay on top of curriculum and making sure that you're bringing innovation. You have parents to Answer to kids, to answer to teachers, to answer to a community, employers. How do you balance this?

You listen. You listen a lot and you try to figure out where you can make compromises. You realize at some point you can't make everybody happy, but you got to break it down to the kids. At the end of the day, everybody will have a point of view or an opinion. But if it's not good for kids, then we shouldn't be doing it. If we are doing it, then how do we do it differently and make it better for them? But it's a challenge. And you do. You run into different thoughts and ideas and people aren't shy about sharing them, and that's okay. There are those that are shy about sharing them and you want to hear from them too. So you try to figure that out. But yeah, it's a daily, not a grind, I would say, but just there's challenges and there's triumphs in everything you do when it comes to that. And we try to do it the best we can.

So let's rewind to Val Vista Lakes. Val Vista Lakes, your first destination, right?

Well, second, actually, but I taught fourth grade one year at Mesquite Elementary. I actually student taught at Val Vista Lakes in fifth grade and then I came over after a year to Valveston. I taught sixth grade there. Okay, yeah.

So those were your first moments, right, as a teacher?

Correct.

Tell us about that.

You know, there's two types of jobs in education, either teaching and administration. And if someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, you gotta go back to the classroom, I would run to the classroom. Just because that's, I mean, spending time with, you know, 12, 13 year olds, you know, 11 year olds is phenomenal. They energize you. They're a lot of work, take up a lot of time, but they are, I mean, they're about as pure as you can get. And you also know that you can have some great influences. It's always nice to see those kids that come back or that you've had over the years and you see where they're at and they're successful in their own right, in whatever they do, but they remember certain things that you said or did in class and that's special. And there's not a lot of jobs where you get that. I know that a lot of people are having a hard time going in education because of the pay, because of the stress that's involved with it. And trust me, I get it and I understand it. There's a lot of jobs out There that are stressful and time consuming and sometimes not as rewarding as you want it to be. But at the end of the day, you have 25, 30 kids that depend on you for a lot of different things. And so I can't imagine a more important or enormous responsibility than that.

That's cool.

Educators change lives in very unremarkable moments. Right. Was there an experience in your childhood or as you grew up that you can think of of a teacher that really influenced you?

Well, yes. So this is. It's kind of a negative influence, to be real honest with you. But, you know, I got on the bus after my third grade year, the last day of school, and I was at Baltz Elementary. And at that time, you. You got the paper, report cards, you know, you open them up and whatever. Well, at the bottom it said promoted to blank grade. Right. Well, mine was still blank. And I was like, oh, you know, my teacher forgot to fill us. So I jumped off the bus, I ran back to the classroom, and I'm like, hey, you forgot to put four on here. And she looked at me and she had glass, and she kind of pulled them down to the end of her nose and looked me up and down for a second. She pulled out her red pen and she wrote four. And then underneath it she wrote parent permission. And I looked at it. I didn't care. It said four, right? So put it back in and went about my. Didn't think twice about it. And then as I was putting a scrapbook together, my mom said, here, I got you, you and your brother, two photo albums. Put a scrapbook together. Here's all your stuff. And so I think I was in seventh grade, and I pulled it out and I looked at it, and I was like, what's that mean? And my mom starts laughing at me. And I go, what? She goes, well, they wanted to hold you back in third grade. And I go, what? She goes, yeah, they didn't think you should go to fourth grade yet. They wanted you another year of third grade. And I was like, why? My mom's like, well, you couldn't read. And I go, but, like, I was first in times tables for math. And she goes, yeah, but you couldn't read. And I go, huh? And so that just stuck with me, that two things that I had a teacher that, you know, she's probably doing her job, in my opinion, but at the time, I didn't think she cared about me. Today, I have a little different view of that. Then I also had parents who were like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to hold him back. I was young. I started school when I was 4. In Arizona, if you turned 5 before December 31st, at that time you could go to school. And so I was always on the younger age or the younger side of it. But that kind of hit me and that made me think a lot and that made me kind of change my focus on, well, yeah, there are people watching out for you and how you do one way or the other, so you better do it as best you can.

Yeah, interesting perspective on that, for sure. So then, okay, going back to the career path here, Gilbert High. Right. That was the next thing left.

Got a job at Gilbert High as an assistant principal. I was over sophomores and that was a culture shock. I hadn't been in a high school since I was in high school and I had a four year old and a six month old at home. Both my boys are very young, and again, my wife was teaching and so that was a challenge. I was gone probably three or four nights a week.

Were you doing football then too?

No, no. But as a assistant Principal, we had 3200 kids at Gilbert High at the time. You had to cover events at night. And that school's busy 24 hours a day. And so, yeah, I learned a lot. People are like people that want to be administrators today. I have a lot of conversations with. And they're like, well, why would I? Do you need to go to the high school or junior high to learn about administration if you want to be an elementary principal? And I said, if I wouldn't have done that portion of it at a secondary school, at a high school, I would have been just drowning as an elementary principal because you deal with a lot bigger issues and a lot of different things as an AP at a high school than you do as an elementary principal. And so that gave you much different perspective. And then when you got to the elementary, like, I had to back it off. I mean, I. First person I suspended was a kindergarten kid. Whoops. And I was like, well, you know, he kept on peeing on the playground. So. But it was one of those things where I stepped back and go, okay, hold on, I gotta dial it back a little bit.

So during those years, who is it that you leaned on for advice?

Dr. Santa Cruz? Charlie?

Yeah.

Yeah. The best part of my day was probably at the end of the day when I was walking to my car. And at Gilbert High, it's from one end of the building to the other is about a quarter mile and my office and Another assistant principal's office was down at the other end. Everybody else was at the administration side, and so you had to walk that way to get to your car. And I'd always stop by Charlie's office and say goodnight or just kind of download with them. And I'd always get just a little different perspective on things from him, and it was extremely valuable. And Mark Cisterna, he was the athletic director there at the time, and he just became a very good friend as well as just a calm individual who, you know, looked at things differently. And then, of course, I had Lana Moore, who was right next to me, and she was a principal in Gilbert for a long time. It was always nice to be able to bounce things off her. That's the nice part about being at a high school or junior high. There's always more than one administrator, so you have that other person. Elementary, generally, you're the only person, so it's all on you.

So when the opportunity came up to apply for superintendent, what were you thinking?

Yeah, I still ask myself that question. No, it's, you know, again, opportunities. All I wanted to be was an elementary principal. After that, I became director of Community ed, then executive director of human resources, then assistant superintendent of admin services. And every single one of those opportunities, you know, just kind of appeared more than anything. It wasn't that I was looking for it. And so this is another one of those type of things where, you know, I was in Mesa at the time, and I love Gilbert and I always have. And there's just something special about Gilbert Public Schools and the town of Gilbert and East Mesa that draws people to you. We're looking at candidates for one of our junior highs right now. And I asked that question of them, like, why do you want to come here? And they talk about the school district and they talk about the town, and that's different. And if you haven't been anywhere else, you don't know. But when you do and you come back, I mean, my time in Mesa was phenomenal. It was perfect for the perfect time. But you come home, it's like every time I walk into Val Vista Lakes, it's like I'm still coming home. There's just something there. So, yep, yep.

That's cool. So you have two sons.

I do.

And as you were going through this process, I'm curious what a educator's perspective is. As you look at your own children going through the process, going through the systems, do you see it in a different view or. I mean, I'm just curious how that looks from your lens there.

I think you as a dad, you have to. You have to step back a little bit and let them go through the process to a degree on their own and inject when you think you're supposed to. Sometimes I injected when I probably wasn't supposed to. In terms of advice, you know, the son who's a firefighter, he almost became a math teacher at Campo Verde High School. And they had. They were ready to hire him, but he was still waiting for the word from Mesa Fire Department whether or not he was going to get a job there. And I told him, I said, listen, they're gonna hold off for another week, but if you sign a contract with us, you're not going to leave until after the year. I'm not gonna let you break your contract because these kids depend on you. And he's like, no, no, I get it. And then two days later, he got the call. And then my son came in at Val Vista Lakes. And he's fortunate. He's got a team there in sixth grade that he absolutely loves. And the principal, Patrick Miller, is exceptional. He's very personable and very good at having fun at the same time, making sure that they're working towards that goal, and that's making sure kids are educated. My son who teaches there, his kindergarten prep teacher, is a teacher at the same school. So that's funny, because he's the kid that used to stand inside her kindergarten prep classroom when it was at my school at Houston, and he would kind of bite on his finger because he was nervous. And then he'd hear my voice come over the loudspeaker for the morning announcements, and he'd start crying. I'm sure he loves that I'm saying this right here, but that's okay. Any rate, that was the process. And those. We have a very good relationship. We're very close. We're very tight. And so they're not afraid to call me out as a dad. And they know it goes both ways, but yet the communication is always open.

So where did the football part come in? I'm trying to figure out where that came in in the journey here.

So I was at MCC and my football coach at the time at Mesa High, when I was there, he was still there, and he needed someone to help coach running backs. And so he called me and I said, yeah, so that's.

So that was during college.

That was during college, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, nowhere else. I'd help out at Highland High when both my boys played there. And Pete Walheim was the football coach on Friday nights. But, yeah, that's special. Special place in the world for football coaches. They don't get paid nearly enough to do what they do for the time and effort that they put into it. And they take away from their own families. I mean, it's. If, you know, spouses of football coaches, you know, those are special people too, because they're involved with football coaches.

Yep. I happen to know a few of those.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna sing your praises a little bit, which I know makes you uncomfortable, but you are so well received by the community and you work so hard to see big picture. And. And you are well received with the business community and with your parents and your students. And what is it. What is the magic that makes that happen?

I don't think it's magic. I mean, you're looking at me today and I have a button up shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes on. It's Friday. That's how we work it in Gilbert Public Schools. And I think we're. And it goes back to Wally Dilecki. It's that humanistic approach that's the hardest part of the job. Because there's many times when you can't be that person. The situations don't dictate, or you gotta make those tough decisions. And so I think if you're just. If you're just true to yourself. I'm pretty much the same person at home that I am here, maybe a little bit. Although my boys did call me Hannah Montana for a while just because I had two different identities. But you gotta love that, right? But it was. But I think essentially it's who you are. And if you let people in. I think sometimes leaders are afraid to let people into them and who they are personally. And I'm okay with that. I mean, you're gonna accept me for who I am one way or the other, or you're not. And that's up to the individual, because that's what I should be doing as an education leader. We have kids and families and staff members from all different backgrounds, walks of life, different beliefs, political systems, whatever, and, you know, that doesn't bother me. I just want to make sure you're a good person. And if you're not, let's talk about that, and let's get you on that path.

So a little ptsd, but let's talk about your leadership the last two years.

Oh, yeah.

Probably the toughest two years of your entire career, I would guess.

Yeah.

And yet you kept things moving and you kept everybody feeling really Comfortable. And I'm curious, especially when it comes to your leadership team, how did you continue to inspire and see them through that without yourself, you know, losing a little bit of hope sometimes?

Well, I'll tell you, that's the best part, is that it was a team effort. And when I say team, you know, folks in my cabinet, the administrators, teachers, you know, everyone, support staff and also the governing board, you know, they, they had a rough go of it as well, and it kind of brought them even closer together to a degree. You've got five different people from five different walks of life and beliefs and thoughts and. But what everyone learned was about compromise and, you know, geographically where we're setting. Again, you had clashes of political beliefs when it came to a pandemic, and that's okay. And you got to step back and look at it differently about, again, what is best for kids. You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, you might have thought this was best for kids. And then towards the middle of it, you're like, well, wait a minute, maybe that's a little bit different. You know, a lot of kids suffered through this and a lot of families did. We would get videos of parents sending us clips of their kids crying at home because they couldn't go to school and those types of things. Or if we did open up and go to school, we'd get emails saying, you're gonna kill kids. And so, I mean, there was playing on your psyche one way or the other, but we communicated a lot with each other and we did a lot of check ins with each other. That pandemic, I remember it was during spring break of that year and I was putting Shiplap on our kitchen island, having a great time. It's always that time to kind of do a project that my wife wants to do.

A little fixer upper in you, huh?

Right. Well, yeah, yeah. At least my wife thinks so. My skills are not that good, but I turned and I listened and something came on the TV and I was like, this doesn't sound good. So I called everybody in and two days later we shut the schools down for what we thought was going to be a week. We do look back now and laugh at ourselves a little bit. Just because we thought this thing would be done in over two weeks, tops.

Well, I think the whole world did.

Yeah. And it was eerie around here because we showed up to work every single day, you know, when a lot of people were not. We showed up every single day, sometimes Saturdays and Sundays, but it was eerie. When you drive around town and there was nothing going on. I mean, that freaked me out a little bit.

What do you think came out of it that's positive? Either a lesson that you learned or something that's been implemented.

I learn lessons every day, Sarah, and I'm wrong so many times during a day. And that's what I love about education, that's what I love about leadership, is that you're never gonna be right all the time. You're gonna make mistakes, and you can beat yourself up over it. Some are bigger than others, but you gotta continue to believe in yourself, and you gotta surround yourself with some phenomenal people. What I learned a lesson learned, man. Or what we gained out of it, maybe. Let me take it from that point of view. I think there are certain things that skills that people acquired during that time that they continue to use for kids today. We learned that at parent teacher conferences, there's more than one way to get ahold of a parent and to get them in. We've learned how to communicate differently with families, and we've also learned that how valuable we are to families. And I think families actually realize that a little bit different, too. But we continue to grow. We continue to build on those lessons and hone them. I mean, when we first went remote, there was a bottleneck in the Internet service, and it just. We were just geared up, ready to go. Our chests were pumped up, pumped out, ready to roll. We knew this was going to go off without a hitch. Half hour into it, we're like, oh, my God, and what happened here? You know, and so some things were working, some weren't. And so we learned from that. But it wasn't anybody's fault, necessarily. I think that's the other thing. I think people want to blame a lot of people about a lot of things, and I think that's come up over the last couple years. And not just pandemic, but politics, and we can't do that. We can spend all of our time pointing fingers at people and making them believe they're the cause of all of our issues, but that shouldn't be the case. We've got to work together.

Well, I know as a household, what we learned is that my kids actually do want to go to school.

Yeah, Isn't it?

It's amazing.

And I think, you know, even our staff's like, okay, this is great for a while, but we miss kids. We miss seeing them.

A lot of people.

Yeah. And when we first started going back and it was hybrid, and I'd walk and I'd go through Schools, and you would just see a totally different mindset and just energy.

And so do you ever wonder about the path not taken of maybe just staying in the classroom and what life might be like?

Oh, yeah.

Do you?

So I got to sub because in January when Omicron hit, and actually that portion of it, in terms of hitting our schools was worse than any other time during the pandemic. And in terms of substitutes and we didn't have enough subs. I mean, we have 400 on our roster ready to roll. But even half of them were like, no, I'm not working. Which I understand. I mean, that's a choice they can make. I ended up subbing in a sixth grade classroom at Pioneer elementary. And I got home and I was like, well, here we go. Let me just go do this. But it was also good for me. And granted, I can't begin to explain what a teacher goes through today compared to what I went through, you know, 20 years ago. I mean, that's. That would be asinine in me to actually think that. But I know that, A, it's about attitude in anything we do, and B, you got to be prepared as much as you can. Good teachers plan extremely well. And I think we have just a ton of teachers that do that. And I think they also learned some of that through the pandemic as well. And so we've got to cut them some slack sometimes, too.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a rough little world.

Yeah.

Hey, this has been a great conversation. I've learned a ton from you. I have a lot of respect for you and what you do for our district and the town of Gilbert. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

As a father of nine children, I can say we take full advantage of your resources.

Nine children. I thought you were kidding when you mentioned that outside. I just thought you picked a number out of the air. 9.

I figured you could relate.

Wow. Wow. Well, I have two and two plus 33,000. Yeah. Two plus 33,000. Yeah. And three dogs.

Yeah. I know.

We didn't even spend any time talking about my dogs, but we'll do that maybe at another segment if you have a pet segment.

But I do have to say how cool it is that your sons both went into service oriented fields.

They. They are. You know, it's in. It's different conversations with each one. When the oldest one talks to me about firefighting, you know, he'll tell me about people who die.

Yeah.

You know, I worry about that for him psychologically, and he handles it well, but I know when he doesn't, because he'll want to talk about certain things for a little bit longer, and that's okay. That's what we're here for.

Yeah. Well, it's always an honor to spend time with you.

Thank you.

You actually, I just want to tell our listeners that you've actually served as a mentor to me and I've learned so much from you these past few years especially, I've leaned on you a lot. And I always think to myself when I'm having a bad day, Shane's day is probably much worse. And so I'm okay.

Thank you for, like, well, somebody's worse off than me today. I appreciate that. That's good.

Know, you've just led with such dignity and integrity, and you really do take time to listen and involve your stakeholders and from a very genuine place. And so I've always respected that about you.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it and love spending time here.

Thank you.

All right, so what an amazing episode, right? And if you like this, we have plenty more. Subscribe to our tribe and join our fans and you can learn about all these great episodes we have. We'll send them right to you. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you.

Guiding conversations with community leaders.

Ben, let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast?

This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us. So I think there's many opportunities at hand. Whether you want to again, be on the show. Reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.