WESTBROOK – It goes without saying that Marc Gousse is pleased with his new role leading the Westbrook school district, but he isn’t letting it go to his head.

In the beginning of March, when he was picked to be the interim superintendent after Dr. Reza Namin resigned, Gousse jumped into the deep end, tackling one of the worst budget crises in recent years.

In an interview Friday, Gousse talked about what he sees in the district’s future, and said he remembers that in March, he wasn’t the school committee’s first choice to run the district, or its second. Even when the committee finally did choose him, he said, it wasn’t unanimous, and he isn’t forgetting that.

“That is very humbling,” he said.

Committee Chairman Ed Symbol said the committee expects to sign Gousse’s new, three-year contract as superintendent at its June 29 meeting, after the American Journal’s deadline. His was the only application during internal advertising. According to Martha E. Sumner, the city’s director of human resources, Gousse would be paid $125,000 for the first year, the same as Namin; $126,250 the second year, a 1 percent increase; and $128,775 the third year, a 2 percent increase. Sumner said those increases are slightly below those included in the recently signed three-year teachers’ contract. They will receive no increase in the first year, a 1.5 percent increase the second year and a 2.5 percent increase the third year.

Gousse said he wants to improve communications among school staff, do more to show what the kids are learning, and help good kids serve as role models to kids who are having problems, all as part of making the city’s children better prepared for their adult futures.

“It’s not just enough to get by. It’s not just enough to graduate. We need to be better than average,” he said.

Gousse is taking over at a rough time for the district. He is its third superintendent in two years. That would be a difficult enough adjustment for the schools and the school committee in an ordinary year, but massive losses in state and federal funding left him and the committee with a $3.7 million budget shortfall and less than three months to figure out how to close the gap.

What followed was a series of emotional meetings with parents, students and fixed-income taxpayers, all putting pressure on Gousse and the committee to come up with a balanced solution.

In the end, the 2011-2012 budget came in at $30.7 million. It cut six teachers and seven support staff, and raised the property tax rate by 37 cents per $1,000.

And there seems to be little hope that next year will be any easier. Gousse said that he might have had to lay off 17 more employees this year had it not been for $500,000 in federal funding he found at the last minute, funding he knows will not be back for the 2012-2013 budget.

There is also no word yet on whether more state and federal funding cuts are in the works, but, Gousse said, work has already begun on the next budget, and he hopes that having more time to figure out what to do will give him and the district more chances to cut costs without eating into the staff or hiking taxes again.

“There may be more savings there that I’m not aware of yet,” he said.

Gousse also said he is not ignoring the public’s input on the matter. Prior to the June 7 referendum, Gousse went public, through a presentation at the high school, a televised appearance on local cable, meetings with parent groups, and even visits to local coffee shops.

The campaign was all an attempt to show the taxpayers just what their money is paying for, and hear what they want from him and the schools. That public outreach, he said Friday, will continue. Gousse said he intends to keep making public appearances soliciting input from the public.

“I don’t just want to hear from them when we’re trying to pass the budget,” he said.

Gousse said he is also setting up a superintendent’s council, which he envisions as a group of 10-12 people that will meet quarterly, if not monthly, with him about the state of the city’s schools. He is reaching out, he said, to a handpicked number of people, including students, parents, and taxpayers, some of whom, he said, have been critics of the district. In addition, he said, he is happy to include anyone else who wants to join. No one, he said, will be turned away.

“Those people have something to say, and I want to hear from them,” he said.

Gousse said he wants to see more communication between schools and between grade levels. In some respects, he said, lack of interaction has led to “islands” of instruction he wants to change.

Part of that, he said, will come through the implementation of individualized learning plans for students. It will amount, he said, to a file for every student, starting in kindergarten, where teachers can keep notes on a student’s strengths and weaknesses.

Those files, he said, will be passed from one teacher to the next, reducing the need for new teachers, and even new schools, to “get to know” the students. As a side bonus, he said, this new idea is one of many that will cost little to nothing to put in place.

“We just have to change how we do business, and that doesn’t cost money,” he said.

Gousse said he also hopes to address the real danger of kids making bad choices and heading down the wrong path. Gousse’s father, he said, dropped out of school in the eighth grade, but went to night school in 1969 to earn his high school diploma. Gousse credited, among other things, his father’s example and that of his teachers with his own success in life.

“It was teachers and coaches who made sure I stayed on track,” he said. “I never forgot that, and I never will.”

To that end, Gousse said, he wants to step up programs like peer mentoring, where older kids visit with younger children to offer guidance and support, or ongoing relationships the district has with programs from the United Way and other charities. The goal, he said, is to set good examples.

“There’s nothing wrong with teaching kids how to be good people,” he said.

Whatever the future holds, Gousse said, he expects to meet it with hard work, an eye for the needs of the students, and above all, humility.

“It’s not about me, it’s about the kids,” he said. “I’m just a placeholder.”

“We just have to change how we do business, and that doesn’t
cost money,” said Marc Gousse, whose contract to become Westbrook’s
new school superintendent was expected to be signed this week.
(Staff photo by Sean Murphy)