Kentlake’s Site Council didn’t meet again before the end of the year and I felt like I needed a little closure on Joe Potts’ first year as principal.

So, we met for lunch on July 22 and I picked Potts’ brain about this past school year.

“We set out to do a few things at the beginning of last year,” Potts said. “One of them was to align curriculum and standards.”

Another goal was to impose a process for teacher collaboration and interaction based on student learning.

A major goal was “to raise expectations in terms of student achievement and rigor,” he said.

For example, last year there were more than 460 students enrolled in Advanced Placement or University of Washington classes. This fall there will be more than 1,500.

“What this tells me is that kids are stepping up and challenging themselves,” he said.

Based on those terms, Potts said, he felt his first year at Kentlake was successful.

Still, Potts understands there are those who are concerned, even critical, of the idea of putting kids into AP and UW classes for what appears to be just for the sake of it.

“There’s some trepidation around that because what if a kid can’t succeed,” he said. “I won’t begin with that premise.”

Potts believes in having high expectations for students and you have to expect them to do well when raising the bar higher.

It’s also important to create consistency, he explained, not just at Kentlake but from kindergarten students at Cedar Valley Elementary all the way up through eighth grade at Cedar Heights Middle School.

So, to that end, the efforts to create vertical alignment with Cedar Heights is something else Potts felt was implemented successfully.

And that ties back into the importance of teacher collaboration.

“That work will continue because a high school will only be as good as its feeder schools,” he said. “Generally, across the country, teaching has been a very solitary act. We can’t do that any longer because of the stakes. We have to have some degree of consistency. We can no longer afford to have people do their own thing.”

That doesn’t mean he intends to stifle the creativity of teachers.

But, as I learned last fall, students crave consistency as well as high standards. Despite what people may think about teens, the kids I know at Kentlake want to be challenged, and if the number of students enrolling in AP and UW classes nearly quadrupling doesn’t tell that story then I don’t know what will. You can’t strong arm that many kids into those classes.

“We have great kids,” Potts said. “I believe they want their school to be great.”

That’s not to say Kentlake didn’t face some tough times this past school year. There were still students who needed to be disciplined. There were still students who made bad choices.

There was also some turnover among staff and if the 100 or so kids I talked to last fall were right, those teachers were not best suited for Kentlake, or possibly the job. Potts couldn’t identify who had left but about a half dozen positions opened up over the course of the school year.

And there’s no denying the March arrest of Barbara Anderson, who taught math at Kentlake, for sexual misconduct with a 17 year old student of hers caused a scandal.

“There were some bumps in the road,” Potts said. “And we had this incident that was staggering.”

He said there was no other way to describe Anderson’s arrest other than staggering.

No one ever said taking over Kentlake would be easy, least of whom Potts, who had previously served as an assistant principal at Kentwood High for several years. But, who could’ve seen that coming? Never in a million years would anyone have guessed a teacher working at Kentlake would be arrested for an inappropriate relationship with a student.

And based on what I’ve been told by students it was a huge surprise to the boy’s classmates, as well.

I had a few long conversations with the Kentlake principal after the arrest made the news. I won’t tell you the content of those conversations but I can tell you it was not an easy time to be in his shoes. I did not envy him.

But, Potts has to move on and help Kentlake continue to move forward on every front, and there still remain a number of challenges.

With a school that was in step five after six straight years of not making significant improvement as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act when he took over a year ago, Potts has a long term plan he is slowly, but surely putting into action.

The Site Council, which I was a part of last school year, will continue as part of a three pronged approach to the school improvement plan. The other two pieces are the Instruction Leadership Team, which will be made up of curriculum leaders, and the administration or Potts and his three assistant principals — a year ago he had four, but due to budget cuts, Kentlake is losing one which presents yet another challenge.

Potts noted the Site Council meets again in late September. We last met in late April. There will be much to discuss.

“We’re going to review the school improvement plan and our 30/60/90 plan,” he said. “I’m really excited about the Instruction Leadership Team. I’m excited about the future. You just have to have the courage, energy and stamina to stay the course. And I believe we have that.”

Potts has told me in past conversations that he thinks the process of getting Kentlake where it needs to be will take three to five years.

Year one down. At least two more to go.

At least I can take a break from thinking about Kentlake for the summer.