Superintendent seeks excellence in Mount Clemens schools

MOUNT CLEMENS — Julian Roper’s office has a nice view. A look left from his desk reveals the interior courtyard of Mount Clemens High School, a common area with planters and trees that gives a nice break from the concrete parking lot and fluorescent light reflecting off the floors of the school’s hallways.

Straight across from Roper’s desk, however, is a whiteboard bearing what the Mount Clemens Community School District’s latest superintendent has his vision set on.

“This is our driving mantra, a new standard of excellence,” Roper said. “I demand excellence from all of us, including myself. Our kids deserve excellence and our families, our community deserves excellence.”

Finding excellence in a district known for its falling enrollment and shuttering of campuses can seem like a tall order — perhaps even a wholly audacious task — to those outside of the district. Roper, though, has reason to believe excellence can be achieved. It is only his second year as superintendent, but he has been in this position before.

Roper credits his journey into education as a desire to impact lives, much like how his own life was impacted by education professionals.

“I grew up on the eastside of Detroit and came from a very impoverished community and background,” Roper said. “When my dad died, it was just my mom and I. It left me with choices. I could have gone left or right, and one of the things that kept me from going left was the educators in my life, in my school. I attended Detroit Western International High School and from my football coaches to my principal, who was a mentor, those relationships and those people stepped up and filled that father role and mentor role for me, and kind of became who I wanted to be for somebody else.”

The goal of being a principal or superintendent was never Roper’s primary goal. His first job after returning from Grand Valley State University was a special education role in his old high school, and a year later he began working as a Title I parent and community liaison in the Detroit Public Schools central office. Despite the parent-facing role, Roper found himself mentoring students from Southeastern High School. His work caught the attention of several district officials; Roper says Southeastern High School’s principal Brenda Gatlin wanted him to work in the school, while DPS Superintendent Connie Calloway encouraged him to become a principal. Roper ended up having a job made for him at Southeastern while taking on other roles throughout the district.

Roper’s work caught the attention of a colleague from the YMCA, who reached out to him about a role in their upcoming charter school project. Roper was hesitant to accept the project, but having the nonprofit YMCA operate the school eased some concerns he had toward the school’s motivations. Roper accepted the offer and became the founding administrator of Detroit Leadership Academy.

“That experience really prepared me for leadership as a principal and a superintendent because not only was I an administrator, but I started this school from scratch,” Roper said. “I didn’t know what phase we were in. It was myself (as) the superintendent at the time, so everything from the paint on the walls to the carpet to the first student recruited to first staff recruited, my principal and I at the time developed that district, which still exists to this day.”

When the YMCA began to move away from the charter school, Roper began looking for other opportunities. His next move would not be too far away from home — his new home, that is, in Center Line. Roper’s kids attended Center Line Public Schools, where Roper ended up becoming a principal.

In 2023, a former assistant principal emailed Roper the job listing for the superintendent’s job in Mount Clemens, telling Roper, “They need you here.” He had no aspirations in going above a principal position, but felt like the job listing was written for him. After going through the interview process, the Mount Clemens School Board agreed. Roper was chosen from three finalists in a quick meeting May 31, 2023, after a long meeting of interviews and board deliberation on April 25-26.

Roper says he had no set expectations for Mount Clemens upon arriving. He had heard negative things about the district throughout the job search process, but was not deterred from continuing with the task.

“As I came to visit and started investigating a little more, that was even more motivation for me, the fact that people had given up on this community,” Roper said. “There are kids here. At the time there were 700-and-something souls here that needed somebody to believe in them. From day 1, as if I have been here forever, I take offense to any negative connotation or conversation about Mount Clemens Community Schools … These kids deserve a quality education and quality opportunities. The fact that people, whoever they are, have written off this district, that means you’ve written off these kids.”

His first year in Mount Clemens made Roper familiar with the district. He said the district had many “unhealthy practices” and that a cultural shift in operations was needed.

“There was a lack of data-driven decisions,” Roper said. “It was a culture of, in my opinion, a culture of feelings. We’re doing things because it’s comfortable, because we’ve been doing it like this and not necessarily that the data shows it’s impactful. I didn’t feel it was a culture of data-driven decisions, which means it can’t be in the best interest of our students … It’s not what Mr. Roper thinks, it’s not what you think. It’s about what we can prove and what the evidence shows.”

From 2014 to 2023, data shows enrollment steadily fell from more than 1,200 students to 753. According to the state, the mean SAT scores for Mount Clemens High School went down from 842.1 in 2015-16 to 746.3 in 2022-23.

One statistic that was going up was expenditures — $15.07 million in 2014 to $15.21 million in 2023.

Roper spent his first year developing a strategic plan for the district.

“My team and I were able to lead this strategic planning process throughout this first year,” Roper said. “It involved over 100 community members and stakeholders and people from students, staff, alumni, business owners, city officials all took a part in developing our strategic plan. We finally have a finished project with measurable metrics that we are going to implement and are going to be the pillars of this district going forward.”

District enrollment has gone up to around 810 students, which Roper contributes to word of mouth surrounding developments of his first year. He has high expectations for his second year in the superintendent’s office.

“They can expect us to be better,” Roper said. “They can expect us to be open, honest and do what’s best for the kids and deliver on the promises that we’ve made to this community … I want people to know that they can trust us and I want them to trust us based on what we do and what they see.”

Getting the community’s trust and delivering on the district’s promises is a financial necessity as much as a reputable one. Roper says the district will try for a bond some time in 2025, though details of the bond will be discussed in meetings over the course of the 2024-25 school year. Classes in the district begin on Tuesday, Sept. 3.