New superintendent excited for district’s future

In early December, the Wills Point ISD Board of Trustees announced that Scott Caloss, an educator with more than 23 years of experience in public education, had been selected after a months long search as the lone finalist for the district’s open superintendent position.
Caloss’ resume includes serving as a math teacher, coach, assistant principal and principal. Over the past 11.5 years at Poth ISD, Caloss served as the junior high principal for eight years before transitioning over the Poth ISD superintendent’s position in Aug. 2012.
Late last week, Caloss sat down with the Chronicle for an interview to discuss what brought him to Wills Point, and where he sees the district going moving forward.  
“I have a father that lives in Dallas so this is a lot closer to him than where I was working. That was intriguing - being able to spend more time with him. Getting into the history of Wills Point I found it was a good school district with some successful traditions. That was also intriguing. I’d be getting into a good district with good people,” said Caloss. “Over the past week, getting to meet people and know people, there’s some very good people in this district and in this community. From a professional standpoint, this was also a good step for me going from a smaller school district to a bigger school district.”
While excited about the opportunity in Wills Point, Caloss was also quick to express his gratitude for the Poth community.
“The district I came from, I had been there over 11 years. It’s a great district. They were great to me and great to my family. We basically raised our kids there but I was just ready for some new challenges.”
Caloss continued, “That is the toughest part with my daughter being a senior. Obviously she’s going to finish her senior year out in Poth. That was tough. My wife and my daughter and I had to sit down and have a long talk about it to make sure that everyone was alright about it, that we could get through the next few months, and we worked out some things to where even though I’m not there, the communication is still there. We’ll visit each other on weekends and when we can. We feel like our family is close enough and strong enough that we can get through the separation for a few months.”
Asked whether he always envisioned becoming an administrator, Caloss stated, “Not necessarily. Probably the biggest thing from going to a teacher-coach to now a superintendent is that you’re not forming those bonds with kids because you’re not around them as much. That’s probably been the toughest part but the satisfying part in this position is that you can still have a really big effect on the success of kids as a superintendent. That part is really what’s driving me right now. I still do all I can to be around them – I visit classrooms and go to activities. I like to sit down and read to kids when I get the chance and ride buses. I still try and do as much as I can to be around the kids but it’s still not the same as when you’re a teacher and a coach.”
“What I’m doing right now, I’m trying to meet with a lot of people in the district and the community to get input from them as to what they see as the strengths of the district, and what they’d like to see us improve on. I want to gather all that information, and look at all our information, our test scores and programs that we have in place, and come up with the goals for this district,” said Caloss. “By no means do I think that Wills Point is a district that’s bad or in trouble. Every district can improve and that’s our goal.”