Classes for the 2024-2025 school year began Aug. 15 in the Durant Independent School District and Superintendent Mark Moring has hit the ground running.
Moring took the reins as superintendent July 1 after Duane Merideth retired. Moring said during an interview last week that he has a renewed excitement for the school district and he expects it to be a fantastic school year. He said 3,804 students are enrolled which is a little above last year’s enrollment.
“I truly do (feel excited) and I believe that with all my heart after all of the teachers I have met and the administrators I’ve met and the community members I’ve met,” Moring said. “I just feel a love and support for this school district out of that group of stakeholders.”
During a meeting Aug. 13 of teachers and staff, Moring asked teachers to raise their hands if they had only been at Durant Schools.
“We had several of them raise their hand, and I had to whisper, ‘You guys have it really good,’” Moring said. “They do. When you’ve been to other schools, not saying that other schools are bad, but when you’ve been to other schools and you feel the warmth that our community and our teachers have for our students, it’s refreshing.”
He said he likes to get out and meet people in the district and that he will continue meeting all of the fabulous teachers.
“I like to get out and be involved and I’m just a people person,” Moring said. “I like to see what other people are doing and pull ideas from other people and you can pull ideas that are good, ideas that are bad that you don’t want to do, and you can’t learn that from sitting at a desk.
“You don’t learn a whole lot sitting behind a desk. You get work done and there’s part of the job that you have to get work done, but we serve 3,800 students and another 500 staff. I mean, that’s a lot of people and we’re in the people business, ultimately. So, I want our staff to know and our community to know that I am right there in the trenches with them and that I want to listen to them and that I want to be receptive to things that they might see in the district that could be a positive change for our students because our students only get one chance.”
Asked is there is anything the school district could improve upon, Moring said he is still evaluating that.
“There are always places that you can get better because one of my favorite sayings is, ‘You don’t have to be bad to get better,’” he said. “We can get better on things that we’re already doing great. But throughout this next six months to a year, I’m just really taking a deep dive into it and I asked the teachers yesterday to take a deep dive and to evaluate what you do, evaluate what we do. Where can we get better? It’s not that we’re bad on anything and some things we may be, but we can always strive to get better.
“I’m 49 years old and I feel I’m a better version of myself than I was five years ago. So, if we’re not constantly trying to get better, we’re getting worse. If you’re staying the same, you’re getting worse, but we’ve got to push and strive to make our students in Durant employable adults in Durant or on the world stage in the competitive job market.”
Moring said there is a deepseated intrinsic value that teachers have for the school district and the students. He described the desire to take care of the “whole student” and making sure they are loved before they learn.
“What I talked to the teachers yesterday about is, teach and coach them hard but love them even harder,” Moring said. “That’s the secret sauce to success. We’re here to teach and educate them, but they need to know why we’re doing it. One of the reasons why we’re doing it is because we love our students. We want to see our students be successful.”
Moring spoke of the “One Team, One Family” motto that Superintendent Merideth used. He gave examples of the football coach being focused on the football team or the vocal teacher focused on the vocal program.
“But those teachers and all of the teachers are concerned about the whole child, not just their kids and their program,” Moring said. “I’ve had conversations with people that they truly want their students to have a good, educational experience and they want our students to be competitive, not only in the market in Durant, but in Oklahoma and the United States and the world. I truly feel that. Our back-to-school presentation was absolutely phenomenal in expressing those ideas.”
