After nearly 10 years at the helm of Pasadena ISD, Superintendent DeAnn Powell reflects on her career as a series of tough decisions in the pursuit of big results. Sometimes, that means knowing when to give people the ax.
In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Powell gave first responders permission to open Dobie High School as an emergency shelter while she was marooned across town due to floodwaters. They managed to open the school doors remotely via computer, but the bathroom doors remained locked.
“I said, ‘Do one of the firefighters have an ax?’” Powell said. “Yes? Chop the doors down…Well, don’t chop them down, but chop them open.”
Last week, Powell announced she will be retiring at the end of the school year in a report by the South Belt-Ellington Leader. Powell became the district’s first female superintendent, and the first superintendent to be a Pasadena ISD graduate, in November 2015 after decades as an administrator and educator. Over the course of her stewardship, Powell oversaw disaster recovery efforts after two hurricanes and a tornado, weathered the Covid-19 pandemic, and presided over rising academic achievement and college readiness while many districts struggled to move the needle.
In a sit-down with the Houston Landing last Friday, Powell looked back on her time serving the Pasadena community and shared her hopes for the district’s successor.
“We can always be improving,” Powell said. “If we were perfect, we would be 100 percent.”
Pasadena ISD serves over 48,700 students, the vast majority of which are Hispanic and/or economically disadvantaged. Although Pasadena is its own municipality to the southeast of Houston, the school district includes parts of Pearland, Southeast Houston, La Porte, Deer Park, and Clear Creek. For that reason, Powell said her roots in Pasadena as a city could only take her so far; in order to connect with the school community, she had to engage every child and family on an individual basis, relying on a network of parent coordinators at every campus to escalate issues and concerns.
Much of that approach has translated to significant investments in extracurricular activities and wraparound services, Powell said, investing in the “whole child” beyond solely academic achievement.
Her leadership style appears to get results, particularly at the high school level. As of 2022, Pasadena boasted a 91.3 percent graduation rate, 2.2 points above the regional average and 1.6 points above the state average. In the same year, 73.4 percent of Pasadena students met the state criteria for college, career, or military readiness (CCMR) compared to just 66.7 percent of students across the region and 70 percent of students statewide. CCMR data is used to measure how prepared a graduate will be for life after graduation.
In a career marked by firsts, Powell pioneered several initiatives well ahead of the curve, Deputy Superintendent of Staff and Academic Achievement Toni Lopez told the Landing. The district implemented full-day Pre-K in 2017, five years before the state mandated all Texas school districts do the same. By the time the Covid-19 pandemic moved learning into the home, Pasadena students had already been learning on their own school-issued personal devices. While most districts may boast one or two early college high schools offering associate’s degrees upon graduation, Pasadena expanded its early college program to high schools districtwide.
Coming out of the pandemic, school districts began to reemphasize the importance of social emotional learning and mental health supports, with some childcare centers starting to incorporate mental health education as early as Pre-K. Powell’s five-year strategic plan, published in 2021, promised to infuse all curricula Pre-K through 12th grade with social emotional learning by 2025.
Now, Powell says her next foray will be into the Wild West of artificial intelligence (AI), helping students and teachers use the emergent technology effectively and responsibly. The key to making big leaps, Powell said, is her commitment to piloting programs at a micro-level before they get iterated districtwide.
“I give my team a lot of credit, because they bring some ideas that maybe a superintendent would say, ‘That’s too much. That’s crazy. We can’t get ourselves involved in that,’” Powell said. “But we pilot it, and if it’s good for kids, we do it.”
Powell said she is retiring to spend more time with her grandchildren, but will continue to work for the district in some capacity during the superintendent search process and transition period. In terms of regrets, she said she doesn’t have very many – although she wishes she had moved the needle further in academic achievement.
“There’s been a changing field that we’ve had to play on, and so I’m never satisfied until more students are meeting that level of expectation,” Powell said. “I have high expectations, I’ll just be honest.”
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