Determined to make a difference

A loud, affable voice echoed through the halls of Robert D. Campbell Middle School as a burly, bearded man in a black suit strutted through the lobby waving to staff, fist-bumping students and talking with faculty. 

Dustin Howard, superintendent of Clark County Public Schools, said he looks forward to days when he can go out and see the students that he views as the future of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. 

“He has completely transformed the community perspective of our district,” said Shanda Crosby, the Clark County School District’s community relations coordinator. “He has transformed the way that teachers buy in, how staff buy in. It’s amazing.” 

Howard was named superintendent in September 2022 after working in Clark County Schools for 24 years as a special education facilitator, vice principal, principal, and assistant superintendent. Howard said he never thought his path would lead to the top job in the school system, but he’s proud of the impact that he’s had as a hands-on leader.

A native of Raceland, Howard was raised by a single mom, his grandparents and mentors he met in public schools, where he admits that he wasn’t the best student. He received a football scholarship to Centre College, where he said he found his calling after volunteering at an after-school reading and self-esteem program during his senior year. 

“I wouldn’t have ever been successful without public school,” Howard said. “I needed school and people at school.” 

After earning his master’s degree at the University of Kentucky, Howard got his first job in Clark County Schools in 2002 as a school psychologist at George Rogers Clark High School. Now he oversees nine schools, including the recently added Clark County Pre-School, which has been key to improving children’s literacy and comprehension before they enter elementary school. 

As he weaved his truck through the backroads of the Bluegrass toward the Central Kentucky Educational Cooperative meetings in Harrodsburg, Howard said he wants students, “to be proud of where they are from and where they went to school and to come back here after they leave for college.”

“As Superintendent, you’re more on the balcony looking at long-term vision planning and professional development, recruitment, retention, budgets, legislation,” Howard said. “I wanted my job to be impactful in the world, so that I could make a bigger footprint, that every day I was going to work making a difference in somebody’s life.”