Following the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation Board meeting on April 11th, a new Superintendent of schools has been chosen to replace the current Superintendent, Dr. John Quick. The newly chosen Superintendent, who has known and worked with Quick for several years, is Dr. Jim Roberts. Roberts is the current Superintendent of Schools for the Batesville Community School Corporation.

According to Dr. Jill Shedd, president of the BCSC Board of School Trustees, many things were taken into consideration when selecting candidates for the open position.

“We were respectful of what the community told us they wanted in the survey and interviews we conducted, and that was that the leader of our school corporation would be a collaborative partner of the community,” Shedd said.

“We, as a board, believe that our school corporation is already doing great things, so we were looking for an individual who would build on our strengths, and take us to even newer or greater places.”

The Batesville Community School Corporation is much smaller than Bartholomew Consolidated. Transitioning between the sizes will be a challenge for Roberts, especially when connecting and tying himself with the student body.

“When I look at the size [of Batesville], the small buildings and how my office is set up, I can walk across the parking lot and be in our high school in five minutes,” Roberts said. “I know that Dr. Quick gets out in the [BCSC] buildings quite often, and so I’ll look to him as to how he has been able to manage his responsibilities as Superintendent while still interacting in the buildings. I am anxious to be able to be out and about in the evenings to witness the various activities.”

Roberts is no stranger to Columbus. He, his wife and his three daughters lived in Columbus for 11 years before moving to Batesville. He attended Indiana University, and during his senior year he was a student teacher at Columbus East in 1987. He focused on math education at IU, and he said he always thought he would be a teacher and a coach.

“I had wonderful teachers as a high school student, and I was an athlete so I had wonderful coaches. From that experience I knew I wanted to teach and coach,” Roberts said.

He first began teaching and coaching at Hauser High School. While there, he was influenced by strong school administrators.

“I appreciated the job they did, and so I decided that being a school administrator would be a neat thing to do, and I thought that I could expand the impact on the number of students I had to work with. As a teacher I had the students in my classes, as a coach I had the students on my team, but as a principal I had the whole student body,” Roberts said.

He then moved to Batesville and worked his way up through assistant principal and principal positions, and then pursued a doctorate degree in Educational Leadership.
“It was all a path that was followed a few years at a time, seeing other important people doing neat things within the school system and believing that I could do something similar,” Roberts said.

Roberts will begin his new position as Superintendent of Schools for BCSC after Quick’s retirement on July 1. He looks forward to the opportunity to expand upon the size difference of the school districts, and to get out and about and interact with all BCSC students.