More ‘bandwidth’ is goal of district project manager

A month into his new role as Weston Public Schools’ first district project manager, former Executive Assistant Derrek Joyce is eyeing initiatives big and small.

From the ongoing exploration of the Middle School and High School building project to potential changes to the school website, Joyce, 33, has spent time meeting with team members and is starting to build connections to the community as he settles into the position.

Prior to his promotion, he joined the district as an administrative coordinator under former Superintendent Midge Connolly in 2023, a position that morphed into the executive assistant role in which he served for the last several years. Before joining the district, Joyce worked in guest communications in the travel industry throughout the pandemic.

The new position, he said, has similar responsibilities to the executive assistant role, which has allowed him to ease into it.

“It was work I was already doing at a slightly lighter level,” he said. “I’ve been privileged working in the superintendent’s office for the past several years because I’m coming in with that sort of global view already. It’s more getting into the weeds with my colleagues.”

The district project manager position was created through a restructure of Case House, in which two administrative positions were consolidated into one and the project manager role was added. The School Committee adopted the position on March 23. Joyce reports to the School Committee and Superintendent Karen Zaleski. The salary is $102,000.

Zaleski said Joyce “distinguished himself as the top candidate in a competitive hiring process,” with unique experience that will be a “tremendous asset to our district.”

“Throughout his career in Weston, Derrek has demonstrated a proven record of success in education, effectively communicating and supporting complex projects while collaborating with and supporting administrators, staff, students, and families,” Zaleski said. “His experience working in an educational setting, combined with his strong organizational skills, collaborative leadership style, and commitment to service, positioned him as the outstanding choice for this promotion.”

His position, Joyce said, will allow school administrators to focus on running the district on a day-to-day basis while he monitors projects, creates the foundation for communication plans and supports the School Committee.

“Our administrators wear so many different hats, and they need the bandwidth to actually run the buildings, to run the district,” Joyce said. “This level of support should help free up some time for them, while also keeping momentum going on the things we need to do as a district.”

Although he is a familiar face to those who work in the schools, with the School Committee or with administrators, Joyce said people around the community, especially those without children in the schools, are less likely to know him, and part of the role will be becoming a more public-facing figure.

“I have great relationships with a number of people in this community, but a lot of people don’t know who I am,” he said.

Connected to that, he added, is the desire to improve Weston Public Schools’ communications, which has been identified as a priority by the community, in superintendent evaluations and in an external communications practice review the district had ordered.

“It’s been flagged as one of our big focus areas by the community. It has been that way for many, many years,” Joyce said. Part of that communication effort includes potentially overhauling the website and fixing issues, such as creating fillable PDF forms.

On the other end of the spectrum, Joyce will be the go-to person for big district initiatives, including the Middle School and High School building project currently in the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s pipeline.

With several years of experience in the district already, Joyce said the real challenge will be taking on a leadership role. That said, he emphasized the core of the district project manager position isn’t so different from an executive assistant: it’s about supporting the team around him.

“One of the potential challenges is shifting that vision of who I am as an employee, as a coworker, from strictly support to supportive leader,” Joyce said. “I want to make sure our team is adequately supported and has the resources they need to do their job. One of those resources is time, it’s bandwidth. Taking some of the stuff off their plate and putting it on mine, so they have the bandwidth to do what they need to do.”