This summer Neshaminy School District hired its fourth superintendent within two years. The man taking on this daunting role, Joseph Jones, began his career in 1986 as a math and English teacher in New Jersey.

Jones comes from a position as superintendent at Woodbury City Public Schools, before which he was an assistant superintendent and a high school principal. Jones was named the 2016 New Jersey Southern Regional Superintendent of the Year while at Woodbury; he received the Gloucester Superintendent of the Year award in 2015.

Jones is replacing Gloria Hancock, who was promoted temporarily to the position of acting superintendent after another acting superintendent, David Baugh, left Neshaminy for a full, five-year contract at Centennial School District. Baugh received the position after elected Superintendent Robert Copeland resigned from the position in the spring of 2015 after receiving the position of Superintendent at Lower Merion School District.

Like those before him, Jones is likely to face an array of projects in his new position: teacher contract negotiations, meeting state regulations, regulating the building of new schools, managing public relations, and maintaining a healthy relationship with the school board, among other things.

“It’s hard to say [how to expect teacher contract negotiations to proceed] because I really haven’t sat at those tables, haven’t had those conversations, but I hear that everyone is working well together and that this was a joint decision for them to go to this next stage, which is the fact-finding stage. Now an outside person will take a look at both sides and the positions that each side has at this stage of the game and they’ll come up with a recommendation for a resolution,” commented Jones in an interview with The Playwickian this August.

“Unfortunately there’s a history here of a recent contract that didn’t settle. They usually settle, they usually settle much quicker than that. What I’m hoping is that people will want to move towards settlement to avoid that kind of long, elongated standoff of sorts,” continued Jones.

Having not long been at Neshaminy, Jones has chosen to refrain from comment on some of the more prevalent issues within the school district until he can gain a more complete understanding of all sides. His position was activated on August first, and his contract guarantees it to him until 2020.

“I come from the experience of having been a superintendent in another district so what I learned there is that it’s very important to have a school system that is what I’ll call mission focused. The school district has a mission statement and behind that we have belief statements and really that should end up being what drives all of our decision making. For me, a goal, a real important goal, is to make people understand what are our beliefs. What’s our mission statement? What does it say? What does it mean for us as teachers, as educators, as just Neshaminy School District employees in terms of our work that we’re doing with students,” said Jones.

The current mission statement of Neshaminy School District is “The Neshaminy community empowers students to be productive citizens and lifelong learners,” said Jones.

“What I hope to happen as early as first, second, or third grade is that we’ll be talking to kids about what it means to be a good citizen and have them finding examples of people in their community who are good citizens. If you keep hearing, when somebody asks you what did Neshaminy do well for you, I’d love to hear you say I really know what it means to be a good citizen. I feel like I’m a contributing member to my society. Ultimately, when you step across that stage to graduate, you know what it means to be a lifelong learner, you know what it means to be a productive citizen, and you feel empowered. It’s kind of exciting when everyone starts thinking like that and that’s kind of where my focus comes from,” concluded Jones.