School Spotlight: Hilliard City Schools

Episode 4
Title: School Spotlight: Hilliard City Schools
Subtitle: Pivoting and persisting during a pandemic

VoiceOver (00:02):

ChangeAgents In K-12 is presented by SchoolMint and features top educators, practitioners, and leaders sharing research and experiences as well as stories of hope, opportunity and student success. This interview was recorded in the spring of 2020 during the time of wide and extended school closures due to the Corona virus pandemic.

Dr. Chris Balow (00:23):

Welcome to the podcast, everyone. Today, we have the great pleasure of speaking with Dr. John Marschhausen who is the superintendent of Hilliard city schools, which is a suburb of the Columbus Ohio area, and, uh, John, uh, uh, Dr. Marschhausen. I'd like to welcome you to the podcast today.

Dr. John Marschhausen (00:46):

Thank you. Great to be here.

Dr. Chris Balow (00:47):

Awesome. Well, let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Marschhausen. And I know him a little bit personally, and in fact, my, my granddaughter five-year-old attends a school in his district, so that that's kind of fun for me, but, uh, dr. Marsh has been superintendent for seven years at Hilliard city schools and 15 years as a superintendent and heal your, it is, uh, the eighth largest district in the state of Ohio, uh, fast growing serving, uh, over 16,000 kids, three high schools, three middles, uh, 14 elementary schools. So it's definitely a challenge. So he has his, uh, uh, BA degree, uh, from Wittenberg university, a master's from Dayton and a PhD in leadership from Capella university, dr. Marsh housings, uh, worked with, uh, governor Casey appointed to the Ohio digital learning task force. He was also, uh, received an appointment as superintendent in residence at the Ohio state university. And in this role, dr. Marsh house and served as a conduit between K-12 and college faculty. Well, I could go on to read many more things and accomplishments for Dr. Marschhausen, but, uh, let's begin, uh, with, with the, uh, the, the Q and a part of the podcast. Are you ready? John?

Dr. John Marschhausen (02:06):

I'm ready.

Dr. Chris Balow (02:07):

Okay. So, um, as a school superintendent and district leader, uh, give folks a, uh, a quick description of, of your district, uh, maybe some of your structures and teams, um, any, uh, characteristics, demographics of your district.

Dr. John Marschhausen (02:26):

Well, Hilliard city schools, uh, as you said, is a suburb of Columbus Ohio. In fact, I'm about 50% of our students live in the city of Columbus. Um, so we, we reside in multiple municipalities. Um, I, as a superintendent have the opportunity to work with many civic and city leaders in both townships and cities in the central Ohio area. We are, uh, about 25% free and reduced lunch. We have students from 40 different countries that 52 different languages. We have a growing Muslim population. Um, we are home to the North Islamic center, which is one of the largest mosques in the Midwest. And we've had the pleasure and opportunity to really, uh, appreciate it, embrace the diversity that's growing in our community. When we look at what we're able to do in Hilliard. And one of the things is we get into the conversation about challenges are around the covid crisis. Six years ago, we launched a technology task force that went through all of the different devices and platforms. And after working with hundreds of community members and leaders, um, we became a one-to-one iPad district. So in grades K through 12, we are one to one with iPads. They get replaced every four years. Um, we also, four years ago went K to 12 with canvas is our LMS and our learning management system. Um, so we were very fortunate that when we started looking at remote learning or e-learning as we call it in Hilliard, we were well situated to do that. We also, my predecessor, Dale McVeigh, um, in 2008, challenged the district to explore what should schools look like in the year 2020 and the VA, that was our 2020 plan. And I inherited the middle of that plan when I arrived in Hilliard in the spring of 2013. So the work from 2020 really focused on personalization, it took Hilliard away from a focus on standardization. It put our focus on what should school look like, come 2020, uh, what are the skills students should have? What should we be looking for in terms of changes and shifts in school? And it came with the focus, knowing that schools are really hard to change because parents went to school and they think school should look like school, look like when they went. So as we approached 2020 in 2018 and 2019 here in Hilliard, we said, all right, what's our vision for the next decade? And we called that our next 10 plan. And it was next with the Roman numeral 10. Our students still think I stole X from Apple, um, for 10, because I'm not sure where we stopped teaching Roman numerals. But so our next 10 plan, we launched this past October in October of 2019 with a focus on what are our students gonna need come 2030 with, with the knowledge that our kindergartners right now are the class of 2032. So as we started looking at what should school look like? There was an intentional focus even before this crisis on blended learning, utilizing technology, preparing kids for a flat world, preparing kids for a global economy, um, looking at design thinking as a part of what we should be teaching. And then the other cool part of that that really came out loud and clear was an identification of what are the must haves in a Hilliard education, because there are some non-negotiables in school, regardless of what the future looks like. And when you start talking about arithmetic factions and Mac math facts and reading and writing, and certain things that regardless of technology, this is our core. This is the foundation on which we build schools. Um, so that's also incorporated in our next 10 plan. Those two vision statements are our foundation and our heart is our VBO. As a district, we partnered with a company called focus, three gentlemen named Tim kite. And we went through a process that we're now in year six with again, to identify what are the values that are at the core of a Hilliard education, what behaviors do we exhibit that support those values and what are the outcomes that we want? So we have three core values in Hilliard, and we talk about those values, our kindergartners, our first graders, your granddaughter probably could talk about, stand up and own it and power of the team and passion for growth. And because we have those values, we lean into them in times of crisis to make sure that our actions match what's at our, in our core.

Dr. Chris Balow (07:50):

Wow. That that's just a fantastic, the, the long range planning aspect that, that you've embarked on. It seems, uh, very powerful and I don't think it's happening across the country. Uh, definitely. And, and I was, it was interesting. I was looking at your strategic commitment plan and your number one commitment was around blended learning. And as you said, that was written before the advent of, of COVID-19. And, and so I, I guess, um, you know, forward thinking on the part of Hilliard city schools left you in a better position than many in terms of being able to, to continue to provide an education to students, uh, despite kids not being physically in the classrooms.

Dr. John Marschhausen (08:37):

Yeah. And one of the things that we've done is with our commitment plan and our 2020 plan, the simpler, the better we use a lot of infographics, our district's border approved mission statement is to prepare students to be ready for tomorrow. And if you walk into any ready for tomorrow is above every door in the district. When you walk in. And one of my goals as a leader is to never create a strategic plan that sits on a three ring binder or in a folder on your desktop, that people don't look at good for you. So, as we look at, you know, ready for tomorrow's our mission, but it's also our brand, it's our just do it. It's, it's how we do business in Hilliard. And not only do we say it, our vendors say it. Now our partners say it. Now it's about being ready for tomorrow. And, um, with the commitment plan that you looked at, what are the measurable goals? We give a midyear update to our community. We give a final update to our community. We don't set goals that are like hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat. Our goals are challenging and more often than not, when we report to our community on a goal, our report says in progress, and then we give the data. We have some specific SEL goals. We partner with Panorama on our SEL measurement. And as we give those assessments, our goal for last year for 2018, 19 was to increase our sense of belonging during the school year. We didn't get it. So we tell our community, we didn't get it. Here's what the data says, you know what we fail. So what are we going to do? We're going to make that a goal again, this year we're going to learn, we're going to get better. We're going to embrace the fact that, Hey, this is hard. And if this was easy, if everybody could just increase, improve a district wide, every child's sense of belonging, everybody would be doing it. Right. But nobody is. So sometimes you gotta reach high. And you know, you don't clear the bar the first time, so you get better.

Dr. Chris Balow (10:53):

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, that's one of the things that impressed me about your plan is that it was very, uh, concrete, specific, measurable, and you had very, very clear targets and it's kind of refreshing. Um, when, when leaders say, Hey, we didn't, we didn't hit that Mark, but we're going to, we're going to do make some changes. And, and it's all about the data, uh, that, that makes a difference, uh, in terms of those decisions. Well, let me ask you, John, um, what's been your process for scaling up a virtual instruction since the advent of COVID. I know you had a lot of things in place, but kind of describe what you had to do to, to ramp up and, and what's worked well. And where do you see continued challenges?

Dr. John Marschhausen (11:41):

Seven through 12 has worked fairly well for us in Hilliard. Our seventh through 12th grade students and teachers were in canvas every day. We have moved most, most of our textbooks and our resources to canvas. We averaged prior to COVID 12, 12,000 independent log-ins to canvas a day out of 16,500 kids. So even some of our elementary kids were getting into canvas every day, but seven through 12 and every class that's, that's where they're taking tests. That's where they're, they're doing things in their classrooms. Our seventh through 12th grade teachers have been fabulous. They have shifted to that online experience quickly. We've learned a lot. Um, right now we're having lots of conversations about if we have to do this next year, and if we have to go asynchronous, what does asynchronous look like? When we, we made several administrative decisions in the two days that we had to prepare for this. Um, we said that we want all our teachers to have three hours of posted office hours per day. We want them posted to parents and students that way everyone knows when they can get with you. That's when you can have your, your zoom chats and your Google meets and your team times and all those things at the elementary school, our teachers truly wear capes and have been superheroes because we did not send home. I pads with elementary kids in grades K through four, the iPads weren't carts in their classrooms. And the governor made an announcement on a Wednesday afternoon. I think it was March 13 on March 14th. We sent home iPads with every elementary kid with the bricks. We tore apart the carts and said, mom and dad they're coming home. We knew 96% of our kids had connectivity at home. So we are extremely blessed and fortunate in a suburban district where most people have means that they could get connected. Spectrum did the three months free for anybody who, for whom it was an economic issue. And we purchased, uh, a handful of Verizon hotspots that we've distributed to some families that just needed help. So almost everybody at high speed, we also in our parking lot identified. And if you still go to our website today and look at our COVID page and our e-learning page, there are maps that show you where there's high speed internet available in our parking lots. Uh, cause some of these, some of these folks who had internet access may be using a phone as a hotspot and have data issues. So we've made it so that if you have to come and download something and upload something, mom and dad could pull into any of the parking lots. There have been times that our stadiums, because at our three main football stadiums, we have wifi in the stands. We turned the broadcast out to the parking lot and you will see videos of kids. And I saw one yesterday, one of our choir's did one of those zoom, those zoom performances. And there were several kids sitting in their cars, singing with headphones in my assumption is those are kids whose wifi at home one and have allowed them to pull that type of bandwidth to sing in here and do it all on time. So they're pulling into our parking lots to use our high speed internet in school. So we've done some of those things, but back to elementary teachers, they've had to build the plane and fly it simultaneously because unlike high school where a lot of the structure was already in canvas, it wasn't an elementary school. It's one of the areas that we're really focusing on for next year. In fact, the Hilliard city schools in collaboration with Lakota local school district, uh, Matt, Miller's the superintendent down in Lakota. It's a suburban Cincinnati district. We are partnering to build a complete K six online curriculum for next year in canvas. Um, I believe that we're going to have a certain percentage of our kids and kids across the country whose parents are fearful about sending them back to school, even if we're back in school. And I don't want to lose those kids to charter schools, to online schools, to homeschooling. I think it's incumbent on us to be ready to educate every kid from home. If we need to, some of those kids are going to have underlying health conditions or mom or dad or grandma or grandpa, for whatever reason, if you want to stay home in Hilliard in the 2020 21 school year, we're going to have an online Academy for you ready to roll. So where we're doing that with Lakota, but I'm also mindful that the online resources we're building for an online Academy could also be flipped. If covid spikes, at some point in the upcoming school year, we're going to have better resources for our elementary teachers. The other thing we hear, and I'm sure you hear this across the country, we could be alternating days in order to get to the social distancing. We may be at 50% capacity in our buildings at any day. So if a teacher's teaching a kid on a day, the B day kids, we are now going to have online resources. So that individual classroom teacher doesn't have to create them. They're created, they're vetted, they're quality matters certified, and they've been made by, you know, you mentioned we're the eighth largest district. Lakota is the ninth largest district they're made by two similar suburban districts with similar demographics. So we can turn that on for all of our teachers to use. If we have to go to blended or remote learning.

Dr. Chris Balow (17:43):

That's just fantastic. The collaboration with other districts and really leveraging both of your experiences and expertise. And I'm just impressed with the creativity that, you know, this, this, uh, pandemic has, has put upon us that, that you've been able to respond and creative ways to, to meet the needs of kids. You know, earlier on you were talking about, you know, where to kids need to be in in 10 years. And I was thinking, I interviewed, uh, dr. Scott McCloud recently, and he's author of a number of books on 21st century learning, which is really about the four CS. And one of those is around collaboration and that's an important skill for, for kids to collaborate. And, um, you know, myself working in the private sector in a software company, collaboration is one of the key things that the CEO looks for. If you can't work in groups, you can't work for the company. And so I wonder, I've been asking people, how are you in an online virtual world? How have they figured out some ways for kids to collaborate effectively? Because actually the way of the world in the future, I think a lot of companies are going to be virtual. Uh, yeah, our company has learned, Hey, we don't need an office and we're going to shut down. Uh, we're considering shutting down some office space

Dr. John Marschhausen (19:06):

On my business advisory council. We have leaders from fortune 500 companies in Columbus who are having that very conversation that they really don't need individual offices. They need collaborative space where people can come in when they need to collaborate, but there's a lot of work that they can do from home. Now, I would also say that we've learned in public schools that you can't replace face to face. We're not adults working in an insurance company, right? So for the vast majority of students, the face to face interaction is essential for the highest level of learning and also the social emotional development side of things.

Dr. Chris Balow (19:46):

Yeah. And the climate and relationships are so important.

Dr. John Marschhausen (19:49):

Huge. Now, the further up you get, we will, as a result of this crisis, high schools are never going to look the same. And I use the analogy that when I went to college in 1989, for the first time my parents could stand at the gate at Bradley international airport in Hartford, Connecticut, and wave while you were on the plane. And when you got off the plane, they were standing right there. As you came up, nine 11 changed airports forever. And the nine 11 crisis burst TSA and airport security and airports don't look anything. They don't look like they did pre nine 11 schools are going to change. And I don't know how, but in a post COVID world, they're going to be some changes in schools, in the high schools. It's going to be flexibility. When you start hearing parents talk about school start times, and we've been having debates in education for a decade about when should school start? I can say to parents. Now, if you want to take American history online and your English 10 online, you can come to school at 10, we can blend any high school students experience so that they can do things online. Our partnership for in Ohio, it's called college credit plus it's where kids take community college and college classes while in high school. And in Ohio, the state pays for that. Our partner is Columbus state community college. We have more, we gave out almost 5,000 Columbus state credits last year to high school kids. Now, Columbus state's moving online. So high schools are going to ship kids. Very few kids in the future are going to be in high school from first period to eighth period. Every day like we were, when we went to school, their day is going to look very different, but how do we get those elementary kids in a covid time to collaborate? We've done a lot with zoom. I know there have been concerns over security with zoom, right? As a company, talk about someone who's been phenomenal at responding to each challenge. And really, I don't know anyone from zoom. I don't own Zoom stock. I I've just been impressed that they've adapted and adjusted and made changes it. Talk about responding to the market each step along the way that they've been great. We also have people like we're a Microsoft and office three 65 district. We haven't used teams yet. We're starting to have the conversation about, okay, what does teams look like? And is this something we should start looking at? I know lots of districts are districts are Google districts and they use Google meet. Um, what do those meets look like in Google? We're finding ways to create collaborative opportunities.

Dr. Chris Balow (22:52):

And it sounds like, uh, the canvas platform, uh, helps in that regard too, to have kids collaborate around the curriculum and so forth. So one of the things I'm hearing is having, you know, software systems that, that really improve efficiency and that in the time of COVID, you know, one of the things, uh, you know, as a licensed psychologist, I always think about kids' mental health, social, emotional learning, and so forth. And what some of the things I've heard from people across the country is that, you know, not every student is embracing, uh, virtual learning, uh, with attendance issues, maybe some behavior issues, uh, maybe different than what we might call, uh, you know, problem behavior in a classroom. But if your teachers run into any of those concerns,

Dr. John Marschhausen (23:39):

Our teachers and our guidance counselors have checked on our students who we have the most concerns with Chris. We were really fortunate that COVID came when it did, because we knew our kids for us in Hilliard, we had just finished our third quarter. So the teachers and counselors had three quarters of a school year to know who those students are that we need to be mindful of as we broke and dealt with this crisis. I'm very concerned about next year, if, as we open up as a country, if we see a flare up that causes us to start a year online, we're not going to know our carrots. And how do you build, build those relationships and build that trust, right? So that is a teacher. You know, that Johnny has had trauma when he's coming to your classroom. Um, we have teachers with some of our youngest students who we know come from traumatic experiences. We know struggle at home. Those teachers call every day and they zoom every day. And when you have teachers calling you and calling our team like we're collecting iPads because we're putting a new management system on them. We recycle about a quarter of them every year. So we have iPad pickups. We have teachers who in tears are saying, well, Chris needs his iPad during the summer because I'm going to call Chris every day and I'm going to zoom every day. Wow. We're making those adjustments. Yes. Let Chris keep his iPad. We'll pick a time that we flip it out. And we have teachers who are saying, I'll go to their house and give them their new one and take back their older one, but they need us. So those types of situations we know are our older kids who live in neighborhoods. I don't know about where you live. I didn't know I had all these neighbors. Cause if the sun comes out, there are people everywhere, outside. And like people are riding their bikes. And they're rollerblading. I had seen roller blades for like 10 years, but apparently people are digging them out of their basements. We see kids playing outside again. And my wife and I had the conversation on a walk. They didn't play outside. Cause they were always at organized travel sports leagues. They were always at baseball or softball or soccer, whatever it was without all that organized sports they're playing in the neighborhoods. That's a fascinating observation and they're learning to play again. So part of that free play. If you're a kid who has the opportunity to be outside and engage in a socially district's distance, safe environment in your neighborhood, you're getting some of that SEL, some of that support you're getting out of the house, right? Um, you worry about the kid who's in soccer, the kid who isn't allowed out, um, the kid who isn't in a safe neighborhood, um, we're fortunate. We don't have a lot of those places in Hilliard, but that's where you were. No, I would not be a, I don't want to lobby for alternating days, but alternating days are better than no days.

Dr. Chris Balow (27:02):

It is. It is. Yeah. Kids need that FaceTime. And the relationship and belongingness needs of, of being part of a classroom. I was reading a study out of California that, and you referenced this around, um, you know, the trauma that kids are facing increased trauma, family, dysfunction, food, uh, you know, insecurity, housing insecurity with people, losing their jobs, more abuse and neglect, uh, alcoholism. Um, and one study showed about a 33% increase in kids who are, uh, facing significant trauma. And earlier you mentioned about your SEL initiative to support social, emotional learning and mental health and, and it, and it's in your plan, um, which is, you know, warms my heart. So, um, we have folks talked about how are we going to meet the, the, the increased needs of some of these kids when, when they come back to us?

Dr. John Marschhausen (28:01):

Yes. In fact, we have a director of social, emotional learning and a director of student wellness.

Dr. Chris Balow (28:08):

Fantastic.

Dr. John Marschhausen (28:08):

And both of those roles focus on that part of our plan, which is the student wellness, social, emotional piece. There's actually a new study that just came out of the university of Pennsylvania. That takes a macro look at a bunch of studies. And it's, there are teachers who are fearful. If you take time away to do SEL that you have less time for academics. This study shows that if you spend more time in SEL the academics improved. Yes. Even though you're not spending time on them. Yeah. So, and the behavior improves and engagement. Correct. And it I've been quoted and I'm not the first one who said this. We've got to do Maslow before we do Bloom. And if you do the Maslow first, so when our kids return, we have to ascertain really quickly, who are the kids who are in fear because mom or dad lost their job. And the financial strain in the home is felt by the kid. Regardless if the parents are trying to keep them from that or not. If you have a parent who has a heightened concern of the virus, and there are people who say, it's not going to get us, no worries. Just go. And then there are other people who are going to be really hesitant to kids, keep send their kids to school, and we're going to put masks on kids. And when the kid takes off a mask or puts on a mask, what does this all look like in a school setting? And how do we handle that? Because some of this is going to be the fear of a kid to catch the virus. And it's a deep seated fear. That's been kind of driven into them in the home environment, right? What if they lost a parent or grandparent a family member? So as we look at our country and I'm not, I try to stay as apolitical as I can as a school superintendent, the divisiveness that we hear on the news, that if you're in a household that is political or that talks politics, when that divisiveness comes into a classroom and the conversations generally will come up in generally speaking, and we're going to be in an election year. And generally speaking, kids puppet their parents' political views. We create more tension because unlike a time when Michael Dukakis was running against George Bush, yeah, there, there was a political tension, but it was nowhere near the political tension that we're going to see in 2020. And that's going to manifest itself in our classrooms too. So there are our teachers need training. Uh, I went to college for teacher prep in the late eighties and early nineties. And no one prepared us for this. No. And what training can we get teachers for handling trauma behavior? Our police department tells us that during this crisis in Hilliard, Ohio, the number one increase is domestic violence of the runs that they make. And kids are either part of that or watching that. And even if they're in their room, it creates stress and trauma in their lives. So we have to be mindful of that.

Dr. Chris Balow (31:44):

Yeah. And, and I think your, your basic teacher may have a little anxiety about how to meet the, the, these emotional and mental health needs of some of these kids who've been traumatized. So I assume you have a phalanx of psychologists and counselors. And, um, I know you've, uh, worked with some outside experts at Ohio state to really think about what kinds of, you know, a tiered system of mental health services. I know you've worked on that.

Dr. John Marschhausen (32:12):

Correct. And we've got partners from nationwide children's hospital, too. We have identified hope squads here in Hilliard. We partner with a company called grant does hope who trains in our middle and high schools and our middle schools. We have 30 students who are trained as hope squad students in our high schools. It's a larger group of students. And these are kids who listen and look out for each other and identify behavior that is concerning, know who to report to. We actually had three kids last year, who over the course of a weekend showed behavior that was concerning to appear. We partner with our police hope squad. Kids can call the non-emergency number at the police department, identify themselves as a hope squad student. The police will do a well-check three times. Last year. Kids were transported by squad and admitted to nationwide children's hospital because of the behavior and the emotional trauma they were in. Um, we save lives by having kids be part of our frontline. And then you mentioned the partnership with Ohio state, and I'm blessed to be the superintendent in residence. There just this morning, I was talking to an epidemiologist at Ohio state about reviewing our back to school plans next year, as we look at planning for potentially 50% of our students, can I get eyes on that plan from someone who this is what they do? It's not what the department of education does. They are going to tell me education plans. The politicians are going to tell me what the polls say we should do. Um, as Ohio's department of education, just hold our PTO, asking them if we should go back to school in the fall, but I'm going to get some epidemiologists and some have public health folks to say, okay, here's where your risks are. And we're going to have to weigh the risks. And it's just, it's the same with everything that we're going to do. What, what risk are we willing to take and what is an acceptable risk to get kids back in school? And then you balance out with the social emotional, because we know if we keep them home, there's also a risk with keeping them home.

Dr. Chris Balow (34:32):

Exactly. These are, um, um, I was just going to say, these are, um, extremely difficult decisions that, that superintendents face and Hilliard is blessed to have someone like you at the helm who is so thoughtful and forward thinking and taking in all the information and always thinking about the whole child. So, so impressive. Um,

Dr. John Marschhausen (34:57):

The whole team, our cabinet is amazing. And what I would tell any leader, and you mentioned this earlier, surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and who don't think like you, we actually had the conversation over the last several weeks, who are our dreamers, who are the planners, who are the dot, the I's and cross the T people, because we're going have to assign cabinet members outside of their role, some tasks in the next several months, because it's no one's role to plan for 50% capacity in your buildings. It's not in anybody's bailiwick right. So what does it look like? And so let's get our dream team together. It would be what Steve jobs at Apple used to call his pirate team, who are the people who think about what we can do. And then once we get the idea, we use the design thinking model to identify where our obstacles are going to be and where opportunities are going to be. But then I need a dot the, I cross the T do-er to make sure that everything happens. Chris, I'll be the first one to tell you, that's not me. Okay? I'm not the guy who should be putting everything in place to making sure everything gets done. But we have people in our team who do that. So when we build a team here and there are 15 people on cabinet in Hilliard, in different director roles, you want a diverse group of thinkers, a diverse group of doers who are willing to challenge each other who know their roles. But when you look at big processes, you need people who have those different capacities capabilities to be able to get from point a to point B. And we're really blessed that we've been able to do that.

Dr. Chris Balow (36:51):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dr. Marschhausen I want to thank you for sharing every, everything that's happening in, in Hilliard city school. So impressive. And I know that many, many people are going to learn some really important lessons from, from what you've been doing and heal you. And so, thanks again. But before I let you go, we always play a little game with our, with our folks called this or that. It's very simple. I'm just going to ask you, what do you prefer this or that? And you can describe why you, why you prefer something, or you can just let it go, but let's start dog or cat John.

Dr. John Marschhausen (37:30):

Dog. And I actually have both, but right now, dog.

Dr. Chris Balow (37:33):

Right now, dog. Okay. A cake or pie.

Dr. John Marschhausen (37:36):

Pie.

Dr. Chris Balow (37:39):

Pie. Okay. Sounds good. And what kind of pie?

Dr. John Marschhausen (37:43):

I'll throw a personal, like, you don't need to know this, but I'm lactose intolerant so I can eat many more pies cause they don't have dairy in them. So pie definitely. And I love Apple pie with the sugar crust top.

Dr. Chris Balow (37:55):

Oh yeah. You can't beat that. Are you a big party guy or a small gathering type of person?

Dr. John Marschhausen (38:02):

Small gathering. Love the conversations.

Dr. Chris Balow (38:05):

Fantastic. Okay. So you're in the shadow of, of the horseshoe at the Ohio state university. So you a football or basketball fan.

Dr. John Marschhausen (38:16):

I have season tickets to both. One of the cool things about the superintendent in residence position is my faculty rank is visiting associate professor. So I have the opportunity to buy faculty tickets and you might even get up and spot when I do get a parking spot, um, I will confess, I have a daughter who will be a senior at Ohio state next year. And I also have another daughter who will be a freshman at Ohio state next year. So those basketball and football tickets get split up among the family. But if you drove past my house right now, there's a Buckeye flag flying proudly, um, outside of my house and we bleed Scarlet and gray in Hilliard, Ohio.

Dr. Chris Balow (39:03):

Well I'll reveal my middle son has a master's degree from Ohio state and I'm not a Buckeye fan, but he is. So I am disappointed as a father, but he loves his Buckeyes.

Dr. John Marschhausen (39:16):

It's part of what we do here.

Dr. Chris Balow (39:18):

It certainly is, um, jogging or hiking?

Dr. John Marschhausen (39:21):

Jogging. I'm an early morning exerciser and I would, most superintendents, I talked to understand that if you don't get it done before your day starts, there are too many ways that your exercise habits can get interrupted. So I am a 4:20 AM alarm guy, and I get my exercise in first thing in the morning.

Dr. Chris Balow (39:47):

Well, that that's impressive. Okay. A couple more. Okay. Let's see here. Pancakes or waffles.

Dr. John Marschhausen (39:56):

Uh, neither again that lactose intolerance problems.

Dr. Chris Balow (39:59):

Okay. Now this is a really important one. I ask everyone this toilet paper over or under.

Dr. John Marschhausen (40:07):

Over.

Dr. Chris Balow (40:08):

Okay. Me too. Well again, Dr. Marschhausen thanks so much for, for sharing your experiences and expertise with the world. And it's been an absolute pleasure and thank you so much.

Dr. John Marschhausen (40:21):

Thanks for the opportunity.

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