Dr. Hunt's UAdventure

In the summer of 2023, Upper Arlington Schools welcomed a new superintendent, its first new leader in a decade. As part of the district’s Listen Learn Lead community engagement process launched in 2022, Dr. Robert Hunt hosted a series of community and staff engagement sessions in the spring of 2023, prior to his official start date, to get to know the community and to allow all stakeholders an opportunity to begin to get to know him as well.

As he looked forward to the fall, Dr. Hunt wanted to build off the Listen Learn Lead process to create new opportunities to shape his first year with Upper Arlington Schools and provide crucial feedback from stakeholders to inform the district’s next strategic planning process.

Beginning in September 2023, Dr. Hunt embarked on a great adventure — “Dr. Hunt’s UAdventure.” That fall, you could find Dr. Hunt traveling all around Upper Arlington. He spent a full day in each building to get to know each unique school community and hear from students, staff members and parents/guardians about what they value in their school and what they’d like to see improve. He sat on the carpet for morning meetings and read-alouds at the elementary level, sang (somewhat reluctantly) in music classes or jumped into the day’s activity in PE classes, and served lunch with a smile in the cafeteria. Most importantly, drawing inspiration from the Board of Education’s Listen Learn Lead community engagement process, Dr. Hunt spent a significant amount of time on each visit meeting with students, staff members and parents/guardians.

Woven into the “UAdventure” series were opportunities to meet with another group of important stakeholders — community members. Dr. Hunt hosted two community Coffee & Conversation events as an extension of the “UAdventure” series and, finally, a community town hall meeting that recapped what he had learned so far from his adventure.  

Dr. Hunt's UAdventure Summary of Learnings