Dr. Felix Chow will be taking over as superintendent of Anderson Community Schools on Jan. 1. On Thursday, he visited The Herald Bulletin newsroom to introduce himself and set forth some of his educational ideas.
Chow has quite a pedigree. He formerly ran the school system in Flint, Mich., which, like Anderson, suffered a devastating economic blow when General Motors closed factories leaving poverty and abandoned properties in the wake. Flint has been featured prominently in the documentaries of native son Michael Moore. Chow has also worked around the Detroit area, in Pontiac, and has seen the economic ravages to the Motor City.
He said he needed an $18 million loan to keep the Flint school system solvent but no bank would give it. Without the money, Chow said, the system would go broke with two months to go. He got the loan but at 6 percent interest, not, he said, the usual 2 percent.
So he’s been through financial wars that Anderson hasn’t seen. He points out that the foundation to running a good school system is a concentration on people and finances. He said that a lot of people don’t want to see an emphasis on cold, hard cash, but he’s never known anyone buying something with no money.
It’s clear with the hiring of Chow that Anderson Community School Corp. was seeking someone who is battle tested in the public school wars and has a firm grasp of making a system work in adverse conditions. ACS board member Irma Hampton Stewart joined Chow and agreed that the board was looking for someone outside the system who would bring in fresh ideas. In fact, Stewart noted, four candidates were interviewed and all were from out of state.
Last spring, when Superintendent Mickey Lowe announced her resignation, The Herald Bulletin editorialized that the next leader should be experienced as a superintendent and understand the challenges facing public school systems. Chow meets that criteria and then some. Multilingual, he will be able to communicate with Hispanic parents and students who comprise a growing segment of the ACS population.
Chow enters his new job at a time of upheaval as the board readies itself to close schools. A vote could come at the Dec. 8 school board meeting, and Chow is already active in crunching the data and talking to people about what the future might hold for the ACS population.
Of course, the emotional attachment of residents to their schools, especially the high schools, will have to be taken into consideration. At Tuesday’s school board meeting, the residents in attendance said they preferred a rearrangement that kept both high schools to serve grades 7 through 12. Obviously, the controversial ruling by the board would be to take the city to one high school.
Chow didn’t tip his hand as to what he might recommend.
ACS appears to have made an excellent choice in Chow. He seems passionate about education. He understands the highs and the lows of public education. He’s well versed in education policy. He certainly brings intellectual acumen to the job. Now he’ll have to get out and meet the people, and set up some of the partnerships he spoke about. These partnerships are with ACS and any organization that can advance education.
Personable and outgoing, Chow should have no trouble finding people who, like himself, want to remake ACS into a vibrant public-school system.
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