Incoming superintendent sets priorities for Aspen School District

Incoming Aspen School District Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry described the school board unanimously choosing him as superintendent as the proudest moment of his career.

Mulberry, who has worked in the school district since 2015, was the board and community’s obvious choice to succeed Dave Baugh after he announced his resignation. When the board discussed if it would conduct a national search for a new superintendent, the community came out in droves to support promoting Mulberry in place of a lengthy and expensive national search. Board President Christa Gieszl said she received over 300 emails in support of Mulberry.

“I cannot believe how much support we got for him as an administrator in a position for 10 years,” Gieszl said. “That just made me feel so lucky that we had him and that he was going to be able to kind of continue the work that he was completely integral in with Dave (Baugh). I mean, they really were a team working on these curriculum changes, getting our schools aligned and getting IB approved, all of it.”

---

---

After serving five years as Aspen High School principal and four years as assistant superintendent, Mulberry officially took on the superintendent role July 1. He’s inheriting programs that he has already had a large part in building, like a burgeoning housing acquisition program and a fully integrated International Baccalaureate district — curriculum implementations that he largely oversaw.

“There’s going to be a sense of continuity there that you wouldn’t have otherwise,” Mulberry said. “I mean, these are my people.”

---

---

As he takes the reins to helm ASD, Mulberry’s priorities include increasing the district’s housing stock, continuing to build on the district’s IB programs, and addressing issues like a cell phone policy that Baugh began to address before he left the district.

Housing

In 2020, voters approved a bond that helped the school district double its housing stock for staff in three years. It initially set a goal of housing 100% of its staff, but a survey conducted by the school district suggested that it needed to house only about 70% of its staff.

The district is nearing the end of the $114 million bond, and the school board voted against pursuing a bond measure on the November ballot to ease the burden on taxpayers. Mulberry said the district is in a good place with its housing, but it will need to work on acquiring or building more units to accommodate for the growing cost of living in the Roaring Fork Valley.

“I think we’re in a good spot this year with our hiring process and our ability to give housing to the current employees, but just always know it’s the specter on the horizon and we’re going to have to address that,” Mulberry said. “As more and more of our staff that have housing in the valley matriculate out, retire, and do those sorts of things, I think our new staff doesn’t have the same opportunities in getting housing because the affordability, even downvalley, is inaccessible I think with the salaries we have now.”

Mulberry said the path forward will require providing housing to any staff members who need it. He floated the idea of pursuing a bond in another year, but it would ultimately be the board’s decision to do so. But he also said salary improvements would likely be needed to retain staff.

“We still need to have lots of improvement around salary to attract our employees because it’s still very expensive to live here, even if the housing is provided,” he said.

In May, the school board approved a new collective bargaining agreement with the Aspen Education Association, which included a new salary schedule and a 4-6% salary increase for staff. The approved contract increased salaries by about $2,000 from their previous step on the 2023-24 salary schedule.

AEA negotiates salaries and benefits with the district every year.

International Baccalaureate 

As assistant superintendent, Mulberry oversaw curriculum changes in the schools, playing a key role in IB authorization for the middle and elementary schools. Aspen Middle School received authorization for the middle years programme in 2023 and Aspen Elementary School is awaiting final authorization for the primary years programme — school leaders said a final visit from an IB representative yielded positive feedback.

That authorization will make ASD the only fully integrated IB district in the state. Now as superintendent, Mulberry hopes to build support for the schools, especially the elementary school, to ensure the curriculum is executed well in the classroom.

“Curriculum is taught and then curriculum is learned, so we have to get to those two phases of the curriculum, which takes a little bit longer than you might imagine,” he said. “It’s one thing to get everybody to agree what should be taught. To get them to do it is another thing entirely, you have to build in the supports for new staff coming in.”

Building in training and growing the district’s group of content leads that work under each schools’ IB coordinators will help integrate the new curriculum, he said. 

“So much of what happened is the teaching happened in isolation, and what we’re trying to do is make sure that every kid that goes through the program gets the same experience going through it,” he said. “I told everybody we’ll know that we’ve hit our mark when nobody requests a different teacher when they do this because they know they’re getting a high quality program with whoever is teaching it, and we’ve been working really diligently to create all of those systems to make that work.”

Cell phones

During the 2023-24 school year, the district began to tackle a growing cell phone problem in the schools. A survey of parents, staff, and students conducted by the district in December revealed that 89% of respondents thought cell phones distracted students. 

Teachers expressed having to frequently interrupt instruction to police cell phones, and district leaders pointed to the negative mental health effects of social media use in the schools. The board, staff members, parents, and students are torn on the best way to address the issue.

Mulberry said he was in favor of a full cell phone ban in the school district. Amid district and community uncertainty, however, he will form a task force of stakeholders to discuss how best to address the problem.

“I think my goal in having this conversation with the community, and students, and parents, and everybody else, is we’re looking at this as like a cell phone ban is a sense of loss instead of what you’re going to gain,” he said. “We’ll gain back our community, we’ll gain back the students’ presence and attention in class.”

In a March town hall discussing cell phones, some students who attended said their phones were important in communicating with coaches, checking their class schedule, and getting in touch with their parents in an emergency.

“There’s so many other ways that we can communicate changes in schedule and practice and those sorts of things with kids during the day that you don’t need a cell phone for,” Mulberry said.

Strengthening programs

As superintendent, Mulberry also hopes to strengthen existing programs in the schools, like the outdoor education program. 

Strengthening existing programs will also mean working toward becoming an innovator in how it provides learning opportunities, he said.

“The work that I’m going to challenge my team to do is ask what is going to be our stretch,” he said. “Already some preliminary work is coming out of this with creating an innovation team and looking at what it is we’re doing … I have a feeling it’s going to be technology, it’s just kind of the world we live in, whether it’s manufacturing, whether it’s AI.” 

Aspen High School Principal Sarah Strassburger said the district could continue to grow as a leader in the state under Mulberry’s leadership.

“I look forward to all of that collaboration, and I think we’re on the precipice of becoming the school district that I believe we are and can be, which is that model for school districts around the country,” she said. “I know he’s really passionate about that work and he’s ensuring that the right people are leading that work.”

Strassburger was assistant principal of the high school with Mulberry and took over as principal in 2020 when he became assistant superintendent of the district.

Mulberry hopes that influence will come with the district’s growing partnerships in the community with places like Colorado Mountain College, the Aspen Institute and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

“I put it this way to my staff: If it can’t happen here, where could it happen?” he said. “We are really given a lot of advantage and I hope everybody sees that and I hope that we capitalize on it and we do what’s right by the kids in this community.”