Cabot School Board member to leave position in September
Cabot School Board member to leave position in September
Dean Martin, Cabot School Board president and operations group commander for the 189th Airlift Wing of the Arkansas Air National Guard, said the current generation of youth who graduate from Cabot High School, then enter the military, is a good one.
“I see a lot of young 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds come through these doors,” he said. “There are a lot of folks who write off this generation. I can tell you that what I see districtwise and what I see militarywise is our future is very bright. We have some sharp young men and young women coming through our school district and coming into the military. “It is just an honor to serve with them.” Martin, who is in his 10th year on the board, said he will not run for re-election next September when his second term expires. His youngest son, Joseph, will graduate in May.
“My youngest son is a senior this year, so I felt like this year, the time worked out really well,” Martin said. “When he graduates, it will be time for someone else to have the opportunity to step in and make those changes. I do have grandkids in the district as well.”
Martin, 48, who was born in Opelika, Alabama, but grew up in Germantown, Tennessee, graduated from Germantown
A school board is a group of people who have to come together and have a common vision and work together to attain those goals”. Dean Martin PRESIDENT, CABOT SCHOOL BOARD
High School in 1987, then attended Memphis State University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering in 1991. He was also in ROTC at Memphis State.
After graduating, he was commissioned in the Air Force in 1991 and was a communications officer at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska.
Martin went to pilot training in 1995. After graduating from that, he was assigned to the 50th Airlift Squadron at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville in January 1997. He then made roots in Cabot.
“I had a good friend whom I served with, and he and his wife moved to Cabot,” Martin said. “I was still single when I got here. I bought a new house. It’s an investment. I met my wife, Ann, in 1998. We were married in May 1999. She had a son, Barrett, who was 5 when we got married. They moved to Cabot, and that is what got us started in the school district.”
That may have led to Martin wanting to serve the community by being on the school board. He was originally elected in September 2008 and was re-elected in September 2013.
“It wasn’t that I saw problems or things that I thought needed to be changed,” Martin said of his decision to run. “I had two sons in the district. At that point in my life, and even now, I felt like I wanted to do something to give back to the community and be involved in the decision-making for my kids’ education. I thought it was a good way to give back.”
Martin faced opposition both times but won two terms.
“Most board members that you will talk to would say it’s going to take a good year to two years before you start to get comfortable with how a school district operates,” Martin said, adding that he had to learn terminology from facilities to curriculum to discipline — “the whole gamut. It just takes a little time. You’re just hitting your stride probably year 3 or year 4; then it’s time to decide whether to run again or not.
“I felt like I had gained a lot of knowledge. I felt like I had good insight to contribute to the board.”
Martin is one of seven board members who are elected at large.
“A school board is not one person,” he said. “A school board is a group of people who have to come together and have a common vision and work together to attain those goals. One person does not a school board make.”
During his first term, Martin served as president, vice president and secretary. The same can be said for his second term, during which he is currently president. He said being president means having more communication with the school district’s superintendent, Tony Thurman.
“The decisions made by the board are collective decisions made by all of us,” Martin said. “In the president’s role, you work a little bit closer with the superintendent. He’s the only person [the school board] hires and fires. When it’s your turn as president and when things come up that may or may not need board attention, [the superintendent] is going to call and talk to you and bounce things off you. This is when we decide if things need to come before the entire board.”
Martin said Thurman’s communication skills are outstanding.
“I don’t think you’re going to find anyone else anywhere in the state who communicates with board members as well as he does,” Martin said. “I think that is one thing that has made our district very strong as well.”
Thurman also spoke highly of Martin.
“I would use Mr. Martin as a model for what an effective school board member should be,” Thurman said. “He has always been a very strong advocate for the state, students and public education. He is very skilled at analyzing situations and asking thoughtful questions.
“Though not from an education background, he really understands how schools and systems should work by focusing on the big picture of what we want to accomplish and how to set focused priorities to meet those goals.
“I would also share that though Mr. Martin has a military background and is very methodical in how he approaches situations, he is a genuinely kind man and has great love for helping others any way that he can. It’s been an honor and a blessing to work with him for the vast majority of my tenure as superintendent.”
Martin said the way students learn in 2017 is vastly different from the way he was taught when he was in school in the late 1970s and 1980s.
“What has amazed me … is how differently our kids learn versus how we were taught many years ago, in my case, as well as all the opportunities we didn’t have,” he said.
Martin cited Monday’s school board meeting.
“We had a presentation on robotics in the district,” he said. “We had a kindergartner come in with a robot. Then we had two fourth-graders. Then we had a middle school student and a 10th-grader and seniors.”
Martin said the 2017-18 school year is the first for robots to be fully integrated from elementary school to high school.
“To see how that progresses as it comes up was just amazing, how technology, if utilized correctly, can open so many doors to learning in the district,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of growth in that area.”
One thing Martin has taken pride in is what the district is doing with what he called the “middle-tier students.”
“When you think about the classroom, we do very well with educating those advanced students, the top 20 percent,” he said. “They love coming to school. They are sponges and soak it up. On the other end, you’ve got the bottom 20 percent, the ones who struggle. We provide interventionists and attention to get them brought up and help them along.
“It’s the middle 60 percent who are the ones who fly under the radar.”
Martin said the middletier students may be A, B or C students.
“How do we motivate them to move up and keep them engaged?” Martin said. “The middle-tier focus is one thing we hit really hard in our district and continue to do so, motivating them and giving them that little push they need to be excited to come to school. That is important.”
Martin said he doesn’t have any regrets during his time on the school board. However, he sometimes wishes things would happen in a more timely manner.
“I can say there are times you wish things could happen faster, changes you wish could happen quicker,” he said. “I know that, especially in the military, it just takes time for things to happen.”
An example is the 1-to-1 Laptop Initiative, in which all students will receive a laptop computer of some sort to use at school and at home.
“That started big several years ago,” Martin said. “We were pressuring Dr. Thurman that we needed to go this route. We brought in some experts. However, if we don’t have the bandwidth to support all those devices, if we don’t have the teachers trained or are comfortable with it, the tools on these devices, then this is going to be a paperweight we’re giving to these kids.
“That was not very smart on our part. We’ve got the bandwidth now. We can support every student on the network now at the same time.”
Martin said that more than 75 percent of all classrooms in the district have a cart full of Chromebooks. And it will be 100 percent in the near future.
“That is something we thought should go faster, but in the end, you look at it in hindsight, and we’re glad it didn’t go that way,” Martin said. “We’re glad we’re where we are now.”
During his time in the Air Force, Martin was deployed to Afghanistan following 9/11 in September 2001. He left the 50th Airlift Squadron in 2002 and went to the 53rd Airlift Squadron to train students. He joined the Arkansas Air National Guard in 2004.