Gridiron made way for admin career for Holliday
September 18, 2009By Josh Spilker
Rick Holliday’s office at the New Hanover County School Administration Building is a shrine to the East Carolina University Pirates. His office and bookshelves are awash in purple and gold.
His devotion comes from being a member of the football team in the 1970s.
A native of Williamston, N.C., Holliday says all he wanted to do was play football. And as a player, Holliday got to be a part of some of the Pirates’ most successful seasons under Coach Pat Dye.
“I went to East Carolina as a walk-on and earned a scholarship,” Holliday said. “We had some really good teams.”
Holliday played center, a position that he readily admits is usually filled by people bigger than himself. He said that the sports information department at the school touted him as the smallest lineman in Division 1.
“There weren’t the behemoths that there are today,” Holliday said.
Just as Holliday exceeded expectations on the field, he’s done the same with his 28-year career in New Hanover County schools. Holliday never really planned to go into administration.
“I wanted to play, then I wanted to coach,” Holliday said about his mindset at the time.
After starting out as a teacher and coach at Laney High School in 1982, Holliday became an assistant principal in 1988 under the encouragement of then-principal and mentor Ken McLaurin.
“He said, ‘you know I really think you should consider administration,” Holliday said.
During that time, Holliday acquired his master’s degree from UNCW and later received a doctorate from NOVA University based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. In 1995, Holliday became the principal at Lakeside High School, which has traditionally served at-risk students.
“That was a good place for me because my dissertation was on at-risk programs. I actually got to apply some of my research,” Holliday said. Holliday went on to be a principal at Williston and then back to Laney before assuming an administrative role with the school system in 2004.
Holliday said that his desire to coach was based on a desire to lead, and that he found equal satisfaction leading the direction of students, teachers, and schools.
“Running a high school to me is really the epitome of leading. I enjoyed that,” he said.
Now, Holliday is the assistant superintendent for student support services, which means a lot of different things that don’t fit together, he said.
Such as handling enrollment, school assignments, drop-out
prevention, special education and now athletics.
“Now we don’t have an athletic director, so (the schools) will be working directly with me,” he said.
Part of his struggles is trying to help parents understand how changes they may want for their child impacts the whole system. A move from one school to another may swing the pendulum.
“What I have to balance is someone advocating for a child…and how that affects the system as a whole,” he said. He said it was impossible to know what life would be like in administration as a former teacher because the access to information that he has now is so much greater than it was when he was teaching.
He likens it to overseeing a battle. A teacher often only has the perspective of one unit, but the administrative system sees the whole field.
“(As an administrator) you may lose some perspective on the ground, but you see the whole battle,” he said. Holliday described himself as a “teacher’s principal,” but said that he can’t help but see some situations differently now.
“You couldn’t help but see it differently from the other side of the table,” he said. “You can, because you now have more information.”
Maintaining quality across the system will continue to be a top priority, as the system has built and opened new schools and renovated older ones. They will also update their strategic plan from ten years ago, which Holliday says will mean more resources for struggling schools.
“Schools that have had problems and (are) struggling, we’re giving additional resources,” he said. “As a system we felt it was time to sit down and re-evaluate.”
Holliday said he understands why parents are frustrated with more federal and state standards, but believes that New Hanover County schools are as good as they once were. At football games or in the grocery store, Holliday hears the same complaints about No Child Left Behind or perceived “failing” schools. He’s developed a response to them.
“Instead of going into it, I ask ‘how is your child doing in your school?’” And he said the response is usually positive.
In the 80s, according to Holliday, everyone believed that the schools were good, but he says he doesn’t see that same spirit, even though SAT scores are just as good as they were and roughly the same number of students are attending top-flight colleges and receiving scholarships.
“When I came, the general consensus was that they were great schools, that was just a general feeling about the schools. We have some accountability measures that aren’t congruent that creates a general feeling that the teachers and superintendents are not doing all they can. Really, it’s the same school system we had in the 80s,” Holliday said.
