Editor’s Note: This is the third in a three-part series of stories from an interview with Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert.

The diploma Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert earned in 1998 when he graduated from high school wouldn’t meet the graduation requirements Indiana students have to meet today.
“I always tell our freshman parents when they’re coming in from freshman orientation, I look at this and I’m like, ‘OK, 1998, this was an Academic Honors diploma. I graduated with zero dual credits, zero AP credits and did not take a single Career Center class. Now, what I did would not even get you a general diploma inside Warsaw Community Schools,’” he said.
And that’s exciting to him.
“Students are leaving with college credit, certification credit already obtained. Whether you want to go into welding and machining - you can get all of your certifications right through our Warsaw Area Career Center,” Hoffert said. “If you want to go to an Ivy League school, you can take AP credits in just about any subject that you could imagine and transfer those into an Ivy League school.”
So many paths and avenues are open to today’s students, from aviation and culinary classes to engineering and construction.
Want to learn a world language? Warsaw Dual Language Immersion (DLI) students going through the program right now will test out of AP as freshmen. They’ll have three years of upper-level classes being offered to them, Hoffert said, “That they’re going to be more fluent than their teachers, which is incredible to think about.”
Four of Warsaw’s elementary schools are now STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) certified. Edgewood Middle School, the high school and career center have been distinguished as Project Lead The Way.
“So, you have all these different opportunities for students to really explore things before they have to make a final choice,” Hoffert said. “I know sometimes there’s a question out there, ‘Are we making kids choose too early?’ And the fact of the matter is, we don’t want them to have to choose too early. We want them to be able to explore, pick some things that they want to explore further and then realize that, ‘Hey, you know what, when I get into college, I’m coming in here - or technical school or trade school or whatever avenue they might pick - they have an opportunity and background to be able to utilize those things.”
In a lot of ways, Hoffert said, WCS is preparing students for careers that don’t even exist yet, and that’s one of the school corporation’s biggest challenges.
“Fundamentally, one of the things that we want to make sure that we’re doing is we’re giving them the problem-solving skills, and that really can be in any class. That’s where STEM education really comes in, and the idea of project-based learning really at the lower levels because a lot of district partners will tell us, ‘We can do the final training when the machines change or when the technology changes - we can help them with those changes. But we need them to be problem-solvers along the way,’” he stated.
When it comes to the actual programs within the school corporation, Hoffert said they’re always looking at what student needs are. During student enrollment, the school district can see quickly where students’ interests are.
“So that’s when we start working inside of the curriculum to say, ‘OK, maybe we need more computer science classes. Maybe we need more welding classes.’ Welding was a perfect example of it. We have 150 kids in welding now. So again, this is definitely an industry need; at the same time it is a student interest that has taken place,” Hoffert explained.
When putting together programs for the district, the school corporation looks at student interest and needs, as well as the community needs as an industry.
“We realize that many times, we’re the initial training ground, the initial pipeline for our local industry. So if students have the interest to go to Purdue as engineers, we want to make sure that we’re providing pre-engineering classes that are out there. If they want to go into the trades, we need to make sure we’re providing the correct instructors and the correct programs to be able to help them get into the trades and get farther. If there’s specific colleges and universities that it seems like are trending with our schools, we want to make sure we’re working hand-in-hand with them to be able to provide the next steps for them into those programs,” Hoffert said.
Of course, there’s page after page of state mandates on what schools have to teach and offer. Hoffert believes they’re added with good intentions, but they do provide challenges, especially in resources for a school system.
“When we’re having to provide more instructors, more class schedules - again, those definitely do provide more challenges,” he said.
If there’s one thing Hoffert would like the state legislature to tackle, it’s deregulation.
“School systems are one of the most regulated industries/organizations that are out there, and deregulation is one of the things that we’re always looking at. That even if new legislation is passed, what is the sunset on it? Because we find that a lot of times there’s many laws that are still on the books, for good intentions, from 35 years ago, but no one has ever taken them off the books,” Hoffert explained.
The other big one, he said, is that the state is the funder of education.
“Just as we’ve seen costs go up, as everybody has, costs inside of our schools continue to go up and that Education Fund is what directly pays our teachers. And, so, again, we are very dependent on the state legislature for increases that we can be able to give our teachers, and what happens directly inside of the classroom.”
As for this school year, Hoffert said it’s started off really well.
“We’ve kind of moved out of the impacts that the pandemic had, finally, because the last couple years we were very short-staffed in some key areas - things like bus drivers, paraprofessionals, food service, substitute teachers, even general education teachers, especially in the areas of science and special education and math. Those are probably the biggest need areas that we have,” Hoffert said. “We went into this school year and we are fully staffed. It doesn’t mean that positions don’t open up throughout the year, or that we could use extra sub bus drivers or more people inside of our sub pool - we can always use more of those things. But, we are actually able to look and realize that we weren’t having to hire at the last second in the quantities that we had been in the last four to five years.”
He said they’ve also tried to work very hard on compensation levels in all areas, which is an ongoing challenge.
Some renovations are finishing up at the high school, while the district is starting to look at Lakeview Middle School and what the next steps for it are. Inside WCS’s facility plan, Lakeview is the next major building to be addressed.
“We’ve been able to keep the school tax rate flat, which is something we’ve really worked on with our fiscal planning. That any updates that do occur inside of our facilities do not have a tax impact. The same thing is true with our budget: We’re keeping things level and fiscally conservative here inside of our community,” Hoffert said.
Finally, Hoffert mentioned how proud he is to be a graduate, a former teacher and a parent inside the school community. “What I want for my kids is the same thing I want for every kid here in this community: I want them to have just an incredible experience, knowing that - not only for myself but our entire staff is vested here inside our local community. Pretty much my entire team has kids inside of the schools, and the same is true with our school board members.”