The Superintendent
For Kevin Bott, helping in Santa Fe's recovery is an all-in commitment
Kevin Bott is committed — to his wife and four children, to his faith, to the students and families in the schools he serves.
“This isn’t just a job for me,” said Bott, who succeeded Leigh Wall as superintendent of the 4,500-student Santa Fe Independent School District in July 2021. “This is where I’m supposed to be.”
That all-in commitment becomes obvious within minutes of meeting Bott, who was an assistant superintendent in Lampasas ISD in the Texas Hill Country when 10 people were killed and 13 were injured in a shooting at Santa Fe High School in May 2018. And it never waned in the three days I spent there in late September, as Bott went from one appointment to the next during the day, attended a school board meeting one evening, and then juggled taking care of a sick child while going to after-school events on the other nights.
“This is a faith-based community, and people want to believe everything happens for a reason,” Bott said during an 8 a.m. interview on a late September morning. “We’ve got kids here who deserve great experiences and great things. This community deserves healing and progress because they’ve endured so much. It’s time for them to feel the blessing of academic, athletic, and student success. They’re ready for it. They’re hungry for it.”
Superintendent Kevin Bott stands next to the seal of the Santa Fe Independent School District.
Working to Build Trust
Even though he’s a native of Houston, 40 miles to the north, Bott knew he would be perceived as an outsider when he accepted the job in Santa Fe. The core of the district, which also serves parts of unincorporated Galveston County and the outskirts of Texas City, Dickinson, and League City, is in a small, conservative town concerned about being consumed by the encroaching sprawl of the metropolitan Houston area.
“He has worked really hard to become part of this community,” said Rusty Norman, a longtime Santa Fe resident who chairs the school board. “On Friday nights, you’ll see him in the stands at football games, talking to anyone and everyone who wants to ask him a question. He does everything he can to be accessible to everybody.”
About this series:
This is the fifth of six pieces that expand on my freelance article focusing on how the Santa Fe, Texas, school district is moving forward following an on-campus shooting in May 2018. To read the story, which appears in the December 2022 issue of American School Board Journal, click on this link.
In his first week in the district, Bott reached out to the families of the shooting victims to introduce himself and give his condolences. He told them he wanted to get to know them better as the district moves into this “new phase of healing.”
“It was hard because I didn’t know them from Adam, and several asked, ‘Why are you calling me?’ I wanted them to know I’m available to them at any time,” Bott said. “I tried to reassure them that they all have a direct line to me. I think that’s the least we can do.”
Bott said he believes this approach is key to rebuilding trust in a community that has been rocked by a series of tragedies and controversies over the past five years. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey flooded the region, leaving 1,000 families displaced at least temporarily. Twenty months after the shooting, COVID hit.
This past February, Mayor Jason Tabor resigned as he faced a recall election stemming from a Facebook post in which he gave an inaccurate motive for the shooting. The student charged in the shooting has yet to face trial after being declared mentally incompetent on three occasions.
“The purpose of those meetings with the parents was about developing trust. They needed to know I am sincere about improving our district,” Bott said. “I’m trying to make sure that everyone — teachers, parents, staff, students, community advisory groups — knows I’m listening. Our staff is listening. If there’s something we need to do, we’re going to address it right away. We are trying to move forward.”
Bott talks with Bill Pittman, Tabor’s successor, “almost weekly” and participates in meetings with local community leaders about development that could see the district triple its enrollment over the next decade. A bond referendum to build a new school and increase capacity failed by 30 percentage points shortly after Bott arrived; a second, smaller bond failed by 2 percent earlier this year.
“What we are focusing on is how can we make sure we’re still taking care of Santa Fe, honoring our past, honoring our citizens, and still be positive for those who are coming,” Bott says. “We’re doing everything we can on the front end to make sure we’re prepared for growth, because it is happening.”
Education a Difficult, Complex World
Even though residential development in the district is coming, student attendance in Santa Fe has declined since Harvey originally displaced families five years ago. High school enrollment fell after the shooting, and some families have chosen to homeschool or send their children to private schools since Covid.
In Texas, school districts receive state funding based on attendance, not total enrollment, and the school board has been forced to dip into its fund balance to keep from cutting staff. Before Wall retired as superintendent, she opted to keep the staff as is, a move that Bott has supported because the state and nation are facing a large teacher shortage in the coming years.
“The reason in large part is because teachers are feeling less valued, and we have to look at what we’re doing to make sure they feel valued. Even though we are looking at a deficit, we must find a way to continue to give them raises, incentives and bonuses,” Bott said. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that yet. I just know we don’t have a choice. We just have to be very strategic.”
Part of Bott’s approach has been to reach out to the community to help them understand what educators face in today’s landscape.
“It’s a very different world than it was five years ago, 10 years ago. And while the times have changed, people’s perspective and understanding of what schools hasn’t necessarily changed,” he says. “In general, people don’t realize how much harder and complex schools are today. It’s 10 times harder to be a teacher and educator, but we haven’t been thrown 10 times the support. If anything, we’ve gotten 10 times less.
“We have to go to our communities and let them know that we have to work together. We need your help because we want to fix and we want to improve things, but we can’t be thrown to the side to do it alone anymore.”
The prevalence of social media — and the rumor, innuendo, and falsehoods it sometimes perpetuates — has not helped Bott and others in their quest to build community. After the shooting, the district now requires everyone entering its schools to go through a metal detector, a decision that has chafed some parents.
“During our kindergarten graduation this year, we had a line out the door, and parents were complaining on social media about the metal detectors being an annoyance and a hindrance to them having access. One week later, Uvalde happened,” Bott said, alluding to the shooting that killed 19 elementary school children and two adults just 300 miles away. “No one said a word, and in fact, some people went back on to Facebook and said they were wrong to complain about our approach to safety.”
Bott knows that newcomers don’t understand, at least initially, Santa Fe’s steps to “harden” its schools. In spite of the security measures, he wants parents and community members to feel like they are appreciated, and most of all, welcome.
“We have to find a way to make our schools safe and welcoming. That’s a written directive from me to all of our staff. We have to do both. We just have to do both.”
Santa Fe ‘Stole Our Hearts’
During the interview, Bott alluded several times to faith and its role in his work. He specifically listed two symbolic examples: The varsity football team’s rebound this fall and what brought him to Santa Fe.
High school football often has an outsized role in small communities, with success and failure on the field serving as metaphors for success and failure in life. Santa Fe’s varsity team has traditionally struggled against faster and larger opponents with bigger programs, with only three winning seasons in the past 15 years.
After winning only five games in three years, including a 0-10 mark in 2021, the district went outside the program and hired Blake Ryder as the new athletic director and head football coach. This fall’s team started hot, winning its first three games after an opening night kickoff was returned for a touchdown at home.
“In 22 years, I’ve never seen that on the first play of the game, the first play of the season in the first game at home,” Bott said of a team that ended its season at 6-4.
He pauses for a moment.
“I think it’s a symbolic moment of we’re turning this around. We’re moving forward. We’re not forgetting. We will always remember and honor the past. But that was just a great moment.”
Another “great moment” for him was coming to Santa Fe, Bott started thinking about moving closer to Houston after his mother lost everything during Harvey. The search was paused temporarily by COVID, then renewed when a “friend of a friend” mentioned that Wall was retiring after 14 years as superintendent. When Bott interviewed in person for the job, he and his wife visited Santa Fe and the community “stole our hearts.”
“The reason I’m here is because my wife told me this was the place where we needed to be,” Bott said. “It’s a big deal to move your family to a place that needs to experience healing, but she was right. It has been a good fit for us.”
Coming Next: Unfinished Business.