Wayne Township schools will have a new superintendent next year

“Dr. Butts, will you be part of my anchor spot?” 17-year-old Hannah Waltermire jumped to ask when her superintendent dropped in.

It was the first week of school and seniors in Dennis Goins’ BDTV classroom at Ben Davis High School were working on their first newscast of the new year. The teens’ reaction to their superintendent’s unannounced visit was typical, according to people who’ve worked closely with Butts.

He’s made getting to know students and their teachers a priority over his 15 years leading Wayne Township schools. And, his backing of programs like BDTV — which give students firsthand experiences and prepare them for life after high school — doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Because of his support, we’ve been able to give them state-of-the-art equipment,” Goins said. “That’s the thing about Dr. Butts. He’s always been supportive.”

The 20-year Wayne Township veteran, who spent the first five years as an assistant superintendent, announced in June that he plans to retire from the district this winter. He’ll begin a new role as executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents in January.

For Butts, 55, the BDTV classroom is where things all began. It’s where he first workshopped with students the district’s popular mantra: We Are Wayne. It was also where the superintendent laid the groundwork to improve communication and incorporate student voice.

“I can remember 20 years ago, I was talking about how do we make a big school small?” Butts said. “How do we make sure that every student has a connection to the school?”

The superintendent said he worked hard over time to foster those connections. It took getting to know a once unfamiliar community and building up the support of a publicly elected school board to usher in the Wayne Township that students know today.

Getting to know Wayne Township

Butts knew he wanted to be a superintendent since he was a junior in high school. Before joining Wayne Township as an assistant superintendent in 2006, though, he wondered if his background would be too different from the district he was walking into.

Butts is from rural Illinois. Like his family, he grew up training standardbred horses. He was a teacher, bus driver and principal in a couple of smaller school districts before moving to Indiana.

“I really had to ask myself when I was applying for this assistant superintendent job, ‘Am I a good fit?’” Butts said. “I grew up differently than many of the children in our district. My lived experiences are different than what a lot of our children are going through.”

One of the biggest differences is the sheer size of the district. Wayne Township today serves more than 16,000 students across 25 facilities, operating 130 buses as well as two nonprofits. Ben Davis is the second largest brick-and-mortar school in Indiana, behind only Carmel High School.

Once hired, the young assistant superintendent said he made a handshake deal with his boss — former Wayne Township Superintendent Terry Thompson — that he wouldn’t look at any other districts before applying to one day lead Wayne. Butts was just 40 when he became the district’s fifth superintendent.
 

He made a point of meeting with westside groups early — the West Side Chamber of Commerce, the Girl Scouts and Lions Clubs of the west side, and any church that would have Butts and his wife for service on Sunday.

“We’d go in, we’d set up a table, we’d go to service and have the pastor introduce us,” Butts said. “The beginning of the school year was always kind of the church tour for us.”

Gaining community trust, however, wasn’t without its learning moments.

Learning from “no”

The superintendent recalled his only lost vote from a school board. It came during a proposal to move to a balanced calendar with shorter summers and longer breaks during the school year.

The idea drew the ire of some parents who feared the calendar would affect summer camps and force some families to look for short-term child care at unusual times of the year.

The Wayne school board at first voted the idea down, but later approved it after the superintendent went back to families, scheduling additional meetings to explain the idea and answer questions.

“That was a humbling experience,” Butts said. “I was too early in my superintendency and not understanding kind of what my role as a superintendent was with the board. I thought, ‘I’m gonna propose it and they’re going to pass it.’ They reminded me that that’s not how this works.’”

It was an early test for far larger challenges that would come throughout the superintendent’s 14 years.

Allowing student voice to drive change

When Butts first stepped into his role as superintendent, Wayne was grappling with big changes in school funding.

Tax reform that capped the amount of money districts could collect from homeowners led school corporations across the state to tighten up their spending. Under Butts’ leadership, Wayne Township experienced multiple rounds of budget cuts and passed two successful tax referendums, which allows the district to collect more money from homeowners beyond the state-imposed caps.

When Mike and Carla Moulton sent their kids through Wayne Township schools, they initially worried about the district’s large size. But, the parents said Butts’ presence across the district quickly put them at ease and showed students that even the educators at the very top care.

“He was always there,” Carla Moulton said. “He shows up to the ball games, all kinds of events. The band stuff. He supports all the kids no matter what they’re doing.”
 

Butts and district leaders have thought outside of the box too. When a group of students in the district’s Area 31 Career Center conducted an analysis of Wayne Township’s energy use, administrators used some of the teens’ recommendations to create a new energy plan.

The district installed new LED lighting and solar panels, put lights on sensors, and invested in propane school buses. Wayne Township currently saves about $1.2 million through its energy savings projects.

There’s been other student-driven changes, too. The west side’s shifting population has led Wayne Township to invest in immigration welcome center classes and adult education programs that help both students and their families learn English and adjust to a new community.

Wayne Township’s English language learner student population has more than doubled since Butts began as superintendent. Today, more than one in four Wayne Township students are English language learners.

“Those kinds of things are really, really important because our families don’t always know where the resources are,” Butts said. “They don’t know how to navigate some of our systems, and so we just need to try to make that easier for them.”

One of Butts’ greatest challenges, however, came through navigating the coronavirus pandemic.

Pandemic years ‘the hardest period’

After schools closed in spring 2020, the district leader set up a home command center at his dining room table. Butts said he found hope in the staff who delivered meals on school buses and from the families who sewed masks for their neighbors.

But, anxiety grew for some when it came time to reopen schools. Some teachers expressed concern about returning to an unknown environment and, Butts said, guidance from public health officials changed faster than administrators could keep up.

Wayne schools returned in a hybrid setting at first, with mandatory coronavirus testing and quarantines. The superintendent still has the screenshots of weekly COVID-19 cases confirmed in buildings after the district came up with a public-facing dashboard to help families at home navigate the ever-changing state of their child’s school.

“People lost contact with other humans and we lost a little bit of how to engage with each other,” Butts said. “It was probably the hardest period of time.”
 

Despite the challenges, Butts said students are now back on track academically.

Wayne Township’s third grade reading scores have nearly returned to their prepandemic levels. And, Butts said, Ben Davis University just celebrated for the first time all of its graduating seniors earning an associate’s degree while in high school.

“Our kids are doing remarkably well,” Butts said. “We quit mentioning the pandemic a while ago. It’s no longer an excuse. It can’t be utilized as a crutch.”

This success, in part, helps Butts leave Wayne Township feeling the district is in a good place as he prepares to leave.

What’s next for Jeff Butts and Wayne Township?

There’s still a few things the superintendent plans to wrap up before he leaves in January: adopting a new strategic plan, passing a balanced budget and putting in an application for a large grant from the Lilly Foundation.

With those details accounted for, the superintendent says, his successor can have a little time to get settled.

“I’m probably a little biased, but nothing is broken today,” Butts said. “And nothing needs to be fixed right away.”

Wayne Township launched a search for its next superintendent shortly after Butts announced his plans to leave the district. An application window was open through mid-August, and board members have met several times this month in executive sessions.

An announcement on the board’s selection could come as soon as Oct. 6.

In his next position, Butts said he’s excited to advocate on behalf of superintendents across the state. According to the Indiana School Boards Association, more than half of Indiana’s superintendents have turned over since the coronavirus pandemic, making mentorship for new district leaders one of Butts’ early priorities.

It’s not an unfamiliar role for him. Butts has already served as a president, committee chair and mentor for the association he’s set to lead next year.

He said he expects to spend a lot of time at the Indiana Statehouse during the legislative session — but he plans to avoid taking neighborhood streets during his commute.

“My route downtown will be down Ronald Reagan to I-70 and across just a little bit so I’m not driving by the schools and by the office,” Butts said. “I think it’s fair for the next superintendent that I not be holding court at the grocery store.”

At the same time, he says the next superintendent will have the full support of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents.

“I hope that some of the things that I’ve done over the last 15 years as superintendent have made this a better place for children and a better place for our employees,” Butts said.

“I want to leave Wayne better than when I arrived.”

A correction was made Sept. 2, 2025: A previous version of this story misstated the number of years Jeff Butts has served as assistant superintendent and superintendent of Wayne Township schools.

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Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.