Outgoing superintendent reflects on 4 years at Aspen School District, 4 decades in education

When the Aspen School District Board of Education announced that Dave Baugh would become the district’s new superintendent, it did so on a Zoom call with Baugh calling in nearly 1,800 miles away from Aspen in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. 

The school board, at the time under an interim superintendent, began its search for superintendent in late 2019 after the board voted in 2018 to not renew former Superintendent John Maloy’s contract. The board chose Baugh to helm the district in April 2020 after several online and in-person interviews with district leaders, during one of which he contracted COVID-19. 

“I started on July 1, 2020. The district put me up in a bed and breakfast because the housing wasn’t ready yet,” he said. “Except there was no breakfast because it was the middle of the pandemic.”

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The school district, having to educate its students during the COVID-19 pandemic, did so under Baugh’s new leadership. That leadership led to a successful reopening campaign that coordinated with public health leaders and Pitkin County officials to provide a safe learning environment for students and teachers.

His first six weeks as superintendent involved overseeing setting up hand sanitizer stations, placing “6-feet apart” decals throughout the schools, and installing Plexiglas shields. It also involved working with teachers about how to deliver classes in hybrid settings.

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Despite the unprecedented challenges Baugh and the rest of the district faced during the early days of the pandemic, it was the hard work of his staff that kept him hopeful for his new role as ASD’s superintendent.

“We kept encountering people who were hopeful,” Baugh said. “Everybody kept putting the needs of the kids first.”

But while the pandemic marked the start of his superintendency, it did not define his tenure at the Aspen School District.

The single greatest challenge

During Baugh’s time as superintendent, the school district doubled its housing stock for employees thanks to a $114 million bond measure.

In November 2020, voters approved a bond question for the school district, which leaders said would largely be used to build and acquire affordable housing for its teachers. Since its approval, the district has built or acquired over 50 units of housing.

“It quickly became clear to me that housing is the single greatest challenge to the success of the school district, it was then and it is now,” Baugh said. “It’s the first question every potential candidate asks us.”

The district started working on a bond question for the 2020 ballot before Baugh began with the district.

“It was the first thing besides opening schools that we concentrated on,” he said.

When he arrived, the district began crafting the language for the ballot and submitting the necessary paperwork to submit to the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder’s office. The district also formed a campaign team to promote the bond leading up to the election.

The effort was largely led by members of the Aspen Education Foundation (the school district is not allowed to campaign for its own bond under current election laws). The bond passed handily and the district then got to work on the projects it needed to address.

“We definitely don’t have enough housing for everybody, but we’ve been able to keep a really good teacher in front of every class of kids, and it’s been because of the housing,” he said.

About $49 million of the bond was spent on housing projects. Baugh said those projects were some of the most exciting to see come to fruition from the bond dollars, especially because inflation and growing construction costs following the pandemic meant the district had to abandon some of their improvement plans.

The district’s housing acquisitions required building connections within the community and often jumping on projects quickly when they arose, Baugh said. During the last school board meeting of the academic year, the board approved the purchase of eight new units that Assistant Housing Director Sam Rose found just before the meeting. Rose, who started with the school district in January 2024, said Baugh’s community building has been instrumental in the district’s efforts to acquire more housing.

“He’s incredibly collaborative, but he’s also just a really wonderful community member and really gets Aspen and how this community functions,” Rose said. “He’s built up such a wonderful network that he really attracts community partners who want to work with him and the school district to help our goal of increasing housing.”

Although housing projects took up the lion’s share of the bond, about $37.8 million also went toward deferred maintenance projects at the district campus.

But the district hoped to do more with the bond funds, like building a new childhood learning center and a bus barn relocation. The school board discussed pursuing another bond measure in November, but will likely pursue Debt Free Schools Act funding instead to place less of a burden on taxpayers.

“We were able to address, to some extent, every single bucket,” Baugh said. “Some of the big disappointments was inflation exploded and our buying power just nosedived.”

Colorado’s only International Baccalaureate district

Aspen High School has been an International Baccalaureate school since 2001, but in the past three years the middle and elementary schools received their IB certifications, largely under the leadership of Baugh and incoming superintendent Tharyn Mulberry.

“When we got here, the campus felt fractured,” Baugh said. “Schools were doing different things, pulling in different directions, and IB became a way to have a common language and common vision.”

In 2023, Aspen Middle School received authorization for the middle years programme. Aspen Elementary School was the last piece of the puzzle in making ASD a full IB district, and it is awaiting official authorization for the primary years programme.

Switching the curriculum was one of the largest undertakings of the middle and elementary schools during Baugh’s tenure.

Forging community partnerships

One of Baugh’s proudest accomplishments as superintendent is forging and strengthening partnerships in the community to further student education and make the district run smoothly.

“We have really good working relationships now with the city of Aspen, with law enforcement, with Theatre Aspen, AVSC (Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club),” he said. “If I need to call the mayor I can call the mayor, if I need to call the sheriff I can call the sheriff.”

The district’s partnership with law enforcement became especially important after a series of swatting calls in February 2023 rocked the district and led to a series of security changes at the schools.

It’s the district’s deep connection with the community that makes it stand out from the other districts Baugh has worked in, he said.

“Other districts that I’ve worked in tend to be far more siloed, people will educate the kids and then YMCA will do after school activities. There’s kind of a hand off, but that’s not a collaboration,” he said. “Here we collaborate.”

The district has several community funding partners, including the Aspen Education Foundation, the Aspen Public Education Fund, and the Snowmass Education Fund. It also partners with community institutions like Theatre Aspen, which provides extensive theater education and camps to students, and AVSC.

Always more to do

Despite making great strides in the district as superintendent, Baugh is leaving with some unfulfilled goals.

One of his main goals in the 2023-2024 school year was to address a growing smartphone problem in the schools. The district has been grappling with excessive smartphone use for months and it has disrupted classes and forced teachers and administrators to derail instruction time to address phone use.

Baugh was looking to adopt a district-wide cell phone policy and explored several ways to address the problem. The district conducted a survey among students, teachers, parents, and other community members about cell phone use and hosted a town hall discussing solutions. He introduced several solutions from using Yondr pouches, which lock cell phones in a pouch that can only be unlocked by teachers and administrators, to implementing a full campus ban. 

Students, teachers, and parents have mixed opinions on how to address the problem. But the distractions phones cause and the mental health problems that can arise from social media use necessitates a solution, Baugh said.

“In the last two years, I have become aware of the toxic nature of social media and the access through smartphones,” he said. “Had I stayed, I think I would really be championing the elimination of smartphones from campus one way or another.” 

He suggested implementing a course on savvy internet usage for students as one way to do that. Mulberry will take over addressing smartphones when he assumes the role as superintendent on July 1, and is forming a task force to address the issue, Baugh said.

Baugh also said he would like to see a more robust world languages program in the district and innovation classes where students are tasked with solving real-world problems.

Baugh’s next chapter

Baugh will take over as executive director of AVSC on July 1, after four years helming the Aspen School District, and nearly four decades in education.

It wasn’t an opportunity he was looking for, but after it arose he felt like the district was in a good place to step away.

“I’m excited about continuing to work with kids and continue to work with people whose lives and careers are to help kids become better people,” he said. “They use athletics and snow to do it, but in many respects the missions are similar.”

Baugh’s office will move just 500 feet away from the district offices across the parking lot to the AVSC clubhouse, but he will be leaving the world of education that he has worked in for most of his life. 

But many district leaders said he’s leaving the district in good hands. When Baugh announced his departure in February, the board decided to seek an internal candidate, and ultimately approved a three-year contract for Mulberry.

Baugh and Mulberry have worked on some of the district’s most important accomplishments side by side, including establishing a full IB district.

“We’ve grown in all sorts of ways,” said School Board President Christa Gieszl. “We definitely had the struggles of reopening during COVID, and (Baugh) was a central part of that … He was really able to come in and kind of unify the schools in a way that I’m not sure had that same unification despite the fact that they were all on the same campus.”

Mulberry, who became the Aspen High School principal in 2018 and began leading the district as assistant superintendent alongside Baugh in 2020, will take over as superintendent on July 1. 

After four years with the district, Baugh said it was the families, teachers, support staff, and students that made it some of the best four years of his career. He hopes to continue working with some of the same families as he assumes the executive director role at AVSC.

“It was very bittersweet stepping away because this is what I’ve done most of my life,” he said. “But I’m excited about the challenges and opportunities across the parking lot over there.”