by Ben Overby
The Paducah Sun
July 24, 2026
Used with permission.
“What I love about it is that every day is completely unique,” Donald Shively, superintendent of Paducah Public Schools, said of his role. “On the front end of being a superintendent, the focus is to help children, and then the focus is to help the adults that are in the building to help children. Everything’s constantly focused on how you help other people, so that’s a huge passion of mine.”
Shively said he believes the most important thing a superintendent can do is get the right resources to the right place to make sure children and staff throughout the district get that help.
“In the summer, it is a combination of conversations with our principals in the building,” Shively said. “It’s conversations with our central office leadership. It’s conversations with the board about successes we had last year, and areas of improvement early on. Where are areas of growth? How do we build on those successes, and how do we prioritize those areas? How do we get the right people together to have the conversations collaboratively on how we move those things forward that we want to get better?”
Shively said while every day during the summer is unique, the common thread is being able to effectively prioritize what needs to be completed. That can range from parent, finance and strategic planning meetings to safety meetings, leadership events and working with legislators. He said one of the top priorities going into a new school year is school safety.
“I think that’s in every parent’s thoughts across the United States,” Shively said. “Just being blunt, I hate that we live in that world. We’ve invested significant amounts of money in school safety, but you’re always kind of fine-tuning how you’re monitoring. How can we do something better? How can we make kids, or adults that work for us, safer so families at home know that their children are safe?”
He said other major focuses include overseeing construction projects in the district and maintaining an emphasis on social and emotional learning — making sure the needs of children are being met regardless of what they are
.
“I think our biggest strength as a district is our diversity,” Shively said. “I think the biggest challenge of our district is diversity. How do you meet the needs of each and every child? Each child is unique, so how do you continue to refine, develop, improve and strengthen that school experience for that child and have the resources available to meet those very vastly different needs?”
Shively said another challenge is listening to all levels of leadership within the district, and synthesizing it into a cohesive plan to follow through with. He said he thinks many people don’t realize the amount of work and thought that goes into public education during the summer.
“I still get asked, ‘Hey, do you have summers off?’ ” Shively said. “I’m like, ‘No, I can’t wait for the start of school because it gets into a rhythm.’ In the summer, it is lots of thinking, lots of planning, lots of collaboration with either the team or groups of the team on how we can better the experience for children and experience for our staff.”
Shively said there is always a level of excitement in the preparation for a new school year because it’s a “rebirth,” building on the success of the previous year.
“Each year is unique; it’s new,” Shively said. “So there’s always excitement about that, and you really see it in the little kids. That’s one part that gets you excited. But two, the successes we’ve seen when you look at them over time and growth of kids and groups of kids at schools, and you just see how that’s stacking. We know our improvement cycles are working.”
Shively said while fulfilling the superintendent role is demanding, particularly in summer, he is driven to do the work by a perfectionism in delivering what the community expects and children deserve, and a passion for helping children be successful.
“I think extremely highly of the profession of being in public school, whatever your role is, because we’re helping children achieve their dreams,” Shively said. “It’s vastly important. There’s not a lot of sleep, but I asked for the job, and I like to do it.”