MERIDIAN TWP. — A group of elementary schoolers piled onto a massive beanbag chair as they waited to hear from their classroom visitor: Superintendent John Hood.
Each year, Hood, 53, goes to different classrooms and reads a book to celebrate March is Reading Month. But this year, it was a bit more special.
After more than 30 years in the school district, Hood is leaving. He announced in November he’d be retiring, and his last day would be Wednesday, March 25.
But not before one last trip through the district, one more chance to connect with students.
‘This place is magical’
Originally from upstate New York, Hood first came to Okemos Public Schools as an intern teacher. He was a student at Michigan State University placed to work in the district at Chippewa Middle School.
He said he fell in love with the district almost immediately.
“I just remember feeling like, ‘This place is magical. It has all the ingredients to be the best public school.’ I grew up in upstate New York and I always thought I’d go home after college, but I really fell in love with Okemos,” Hood said. “It was the teachers who took me under their wing and made me feel a part of their work family even though I was an intern, talking with parents at parent-teacher conferences and connecting with them … I was just like, ‘This place has got it right and I want to be a part of it.'”
After working as an intern, he was hired into the district full time as a teacher before becoming a principal and then assistant superintendent. He became superintendent in 2019.
As he makes his way from building to building this March, even reading a French edition of a Dr. Seuss book to a group of high schoolers, Hood said the goodbye tour is full circle for him.
While he’s sat in the central office for the last seven years, officially taking over as leader of the district in January 2019, a little more than a year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hood got his start working as a teacher. He said he may be working as an administrator, but in his mind, he’s a teacher.
“I am a teacher. People say, ‘You’re a superintendent. You’re an administrator.’ Yeah, but no, I’m a teacher,” he said.
When he visited Bennett Woods Elementary school on Friday, March 13, he read Patrice Karst’s “The Invisible String,” a picture book talking about unbreakable, invisible connections between people, even when they’re not around.
Hood said he chose that book because when he looks at his time in the district, he sees the many connections he’s made.
‘A calling to serve’
Hood grew emotional, with a minor pause in speech and the slightest crack in his voice, as he reflected on his 30 years in the district.
“Looking back on it, my career has been a calling to serve,” he said.
Hood said each classroom he taught grew bigger and bigger, from a sixth grade classroom to helping run musicals to being a union president and ultimately to him leading the biggest classroom of all: an entire school district.
Dean Bolton was on the Okemos school board that selected Hood to serve as superintendent.
He’s known Hood for about two decade, first meeting him when his son was an elementary student in a school where Hood was principal.
Bolton said he’s always found Hood to be student-focused and a compassionate leader.
“Those are the things that stood out to me,” he said.
Dan Wertz, a former Okemos Public Schools superintendent, told the State Journal that one of the last promotions he made as the district leader was making Hood an elementary principal.
Wertz said he thought Hood was a good leader because he had good relationships with the teaching staff and was highly regarded by district principals, but also because he offered great insightful comments during administrative decisions.
“He was very well liked as an elementary principal,” Wertz said. “His school closed and he was moved to a different elementary school and integrated into there very, very quickly. He just had that knack to work with people.”
30 years as a change agent, constant
Hood said he felt like he helped guide the district through periods of adjustment, whether that be new buildings or administrative changes or pandemics, as he transitioned from position to position over the past 30 years.
“During the journey, I feel like I’ve been in places to help with transitions,” he said.
Hood was a district principal when Edgewood Elementary School closed. He was there when the district restructured from two middle schools that serviced sixth through eighth grades to one building serving fifth and sixth graders, and another serving seventh and eighth graders.
After becoming superintendent, Hood said he helped the district by remaining as a constant when many administrators left the district. He was there when the district got a new mascot in 2022, moving the district from the Chiefs to the Wolves, as well.
In three decades he’s seen a lot of changes in education, Hood said. Technology has become a core part of a student’s experience, whereas when he started, people relied on finding information in books in the library. What’s stayed the same, he said, is how much relationships matter.
“To me, it was being that change agent that could be a constant to get the district through some really hard times,” he said. “I feel like with the relationships I built in that 30 year span that I was uniquely positioned to help care about the district and get people through some really hard times.”
Now, the latest transition he’s helping the district with is his own retirement.
Hood’s last day is the district’s final day before spring break. He said he decided to retire before the end of the school year because other district leaders are expected to retire over the summer, and he thought it would be better for the district to space out retirements.
He said for the future of the district, he hopes the district continues to operate with the belief that the district will work together, with the “we” being bigger than the “me.”
School board members chose Matthew Olson, who currently serves as assistant superintendent of Northwest Education Services in Traverse City, to succeed Hood. He entered into contract negotiations with the board after the March 17 meeting. In the meantime, Assistant Superintendent Stacy Bailey will act as interim superintendent.
In his retirement, Hood said he wants to work on advocacy, hoping to get a bill passed that if any educator dies as a result of school violence, their families are taken care of financially, similar to how families of first responders killed in duty might receive benefits.
He said he also plans to return to New York to spend time with his family. His mom, who was an educator, would sign onto Zoom for each school board meeting.
‘Full-circle moment’
In addition to the many transitional periods the district has gone through under Hood’s leadership, major construction projects have been in progress.
Under his leadership, the district was able to earn voter approval for a $275 million bond to rebuild Chippewa Middle School, Kinawa Middle School and Cornell Elementary School.
This March, he signed his name to the last I-beam being installed in the new Chippewa Middle School, which is set to open for the next school year.
“It’s really for me a full-circle moment because I started at Chippewa when it had just been renovated and reopened in ’95, ’96 as a middle school,” he said. “To be able to put the capstone on my career with a new building of Chippewa, it’s a remarkable feeling to have the bookends of where I started and where I ended. It’s a legacy I’ll be very proud of.
“It’s more of what the building represents … You can build the brick-and-mortar and put the steel up and all that, but it’s really … The building blocks are the people and the relationships,” Hood said. “To see how that has all had to happen to design and build a building represents what we all stand for.”
Contact Karly Graham at kgraham@lsj.com. Follow her on X at @KarlyGrahamJrn.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Okemos Superintendent John Hood retiring after 30 years with the district
Reporting by Karly Graham, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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