After 40 years in education, including stints working in the prison system, Pulaski County Superintendent Don Stowers is retiring at the end of the month.

In his 8 ¹₂ years heading the Pulaski County division, he's overseen the closure of four schools -- and the opening of one -- all while enrollment and the economic engines in the area have declined.

During a recent interview, Stowers talked about his decision to leave and the challenges that schools will face with increased academic accountability and less revenue in the coming years.

Q Why did you choose to leave the school system now?

A It's time for someone else to take a look at the school system. It's time for me to find other ways in the community -- we're going to continue to live here -- for me to reinvent myself and find other things that I want to do. Eight and a half years is really a long tenure for a superintendent. It beats the national average of 3.5 years. I've been here awhile. Folks know me. I know them. We've been able to accomplish lots of things, but it's still time for me to move on and do other things in my life.

Q What are some of the achievements you are most proud of?

A One of the things I'm most proud of is the improved student achievement in Pulaski County. We're doing really well on our Standards of Learning ... on our No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress. ... Secondly, we have a really enviable student services program. There are so many people to credit. The [Pulaski County School] Board has just been stellar for advocating for student services in the county. Those are alternative schools and alternative opportunities ... to help those students who get in trouble with drug and alcohol issues.

We have improved relationships with our colleges and universities. ... They will help us in any way they can. Plus, our students really focus and work hard at getting along with each other and doing well. I'm proud of our Building Futures Program, [which has built] two new schools. We've done renovations as we've had the money, renovating one of our elementary schools for the governor's school.

We have emphasized with our student services, and also with our continuous improvement, the whole child. We're not just into giving tests and seeing how we're doing on the test. We're interested that the child ... that he or she is safe and healthy and all of those things. We still have lots of work to do in those and other areas, but those are some of the things that I'm most proud of.

Q Conversely, what are the biggest challenges facing the division going forward once you leave?

A Certainly one of the things that we'll all be facing -- the county and the school system -- is the fiscal, the money issues moving forward. With the economy in the shape that it's in, we are losing students. We're down into the 4,500s and at one point, we were at 5,000. In the mid-'80s we were at 6,500 students. So those are concerning -- how are we going to sustain our mission based on the monies that are available to Pulaski County. ... I'm concerned about our infrastructure. We desperately need a new middle school. I'm disappointed in myself that we didn't get a middle school built during my tenure here also. We also need to renovate Dublin Elementary School, and then start on the high school because it was built in '74 and it needs work, too.

Then, the whole fact that, and you'll hear this with any educator you ask ... how can we help every student be successful. I'm not satisfied when one doesn't meet his or her goals because I'm so goal-oriented myself.

Q Then, speaking about the economic issues facing the school system, what have you been able to do to stave off that impact?

A This year, we were fortunate enough to receive stabilization monies. That kept us from literally having to sever our ties with 56, 58 employees, a lot of them support employees. What the coming year brings will be very, very interesting. Will those monies be available? We don't know. We suspect that they will not.

Is Virginia's economy going to continue to not grow as fast as we had anticipated? That translates directly to us ... 60-some percent of our budget is derived from the state budget. ... We have also combined schools. During my tenure, we've closed four schools and opened one, but still, even our school numbers are diminishing. That attrition we were able to glean from combining schools, that helped us too. When you're running 14, 15 students in a class, that's great for those students but it's not very efficient fiscally.

We continue to look at ways that we can be more efficient with our green initiatives. We have new routes in our transportation system this year. We're looking at recycling efforts in our schools, but also looking at the energy issues in our schools ... looking at the low-hanging fruit, turning off lights, computers, those types of things.

Q What happens then when that money is not there and you've gone through all of the measures to stave off cuts. What's next?

A The alternative, unfortunately for us ... the board will have to make really difficult decisions about staffing. The majority of our budget, probably 85 percent, is in salaries and benefits. There is not much leeway in other areas. Certainly we have a wonderful sports program. We travel a lot for those. We have fine and performing arts programs, those are great. But these are values of a community. These are not areas where a community would want to look at to make cuts. That's not palatable to anybody.

We looked at every area of the school division to make the cuts that we did last year and we may have to look at that again. ... We cut $1.2 million from last year's budget. That was through attrition, cutting central office expenses. So you become lean to the point that here are no other places to cut except salaries and benefits.

Q How are you seeing the economy affecting students academically and otherwise?

A Certainly we are seeing an increase in free and reduced lunch because our families just don't have as much money as they used to have. We have wonderful counselors and administrators in our schools. We take care of kids as much we can emotionally and socially to make sure they're supported in the schools by our folks. Some of our [nonprofits] in the county are supporting backpack programs over the weekend where there are nonperishable foods given out. That's one of the ways we've dealt with that issue.

Q What ways have you directed staff, counseling or otherwise, to reach students and say, "This is how I can help you"?

A Be vigilant in the schools and having good relationships. Parents are really good about letting us know when there are issues, so we can watch behaviors at school.

Having these alternative issues available for students. [We have] peer mediation. To my knowledge, we haven't had an increase in fights or those kinds of things in our schools. I tell my administrators every year, we're going into the holiday season [and] this is a period of time we have to watch the emotional stability of our staff and our students. A kinder word, a smile, things that we do anyway.

Q The next superintendent is probably going to be the person who is responsible for overseeing the schools when the 2013 No Child Left Behind 100-percent-proficiency deadline comes around. What are the challenges for this person?

A That's a tremendous challenge. At some point, when schools start hitting the wall [and say] "This is as many as I can get through this," hopefully common sense and good wisdom will prevail and we'll figure out another accountability measure that's more realistic for schools -- it's 100 percent of the students in that particular class, on that particular day, in that particular ethnicity group pass the test. The accountability issue on that kind of defies logic for us. Although schools have made great strides in improving instruction based on the Standards of Leaning objectives in Virginia and in other places, one of the things that has been troubling to me as an educator about some of our accountability issues is the multiple-choice test and the single test on the single day. Some school systems ... use the norm-referenced test. In Virginia, we use criterion. We say, "Here's the objective. Let us show you how to get to that objective."

Already in Virginia there's a group of superintendents working to see if we can do more toward having an accountability system that deals with an integrated curriculum rather than teaching the silos of English and the silo of math, of social studies and science. [Instead one] that it's integrated that there might be a humanities component there that we can teach the relationships -- good teachers do this anyway ... so that we can find efficiencies in teaching students and rather than having criterion reference taught to the test where we have a very wide and general, but not very deep, curriculum, that we can have more depth to our curriculum.

We're trying to find time. We hear our president talking about finding more time in school, but we're trying to find efficiencies so that we can teach more depth. I think that's exciting and that could be an exciting model that we could have as we approach the 2014 [NCLB deadline]. What are we going to do with all the schools if schools can't make it? Are there resources enough to help us with all those schools if they don't make that 100 percent? It's aspirational, but unrealistic in a lot of ways.