Gilbert Public Schools Superintendent Shane McCord has announced the 2025-26 school year will be his last.
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I love education, but I also think it’s important that leadership continues to move through new ideas, new perspectives, fresh eyes on things and how things are done.”
Shane McCord, Gilbert Public Schools superintendent
McCord's Big Six
Jill Humpherys is Gilbert Public Schools’ longest serving school board member and the only remaining from the time of Shane McCord’s hire as superintendent. The Gilbert Independent asked Humpherys to list McCord’s biggest accomplishments in his superintendency.
Dr. Shane McCord has been a wonderful superintendent for Gilbert Public Schools. He has a big heart for students, staff, and families. He is a collaborative hands-on leader who knows the Gilbert and Mesa community well. I was serving on the GPS Governing Board when Dr. McCord was hired. It was obvious from the community input the board received that Dr. Shane McCord was the preferred candidate.
1. He has built a collaborative culture of trust where the district and the community focus on student learning and achievement as the priority.
2. He has used data strategically to increase student achievement and rigor through district training, teamwork and impact checks. GPS has 14 A+ Schools of Excellence and two Blue Ribbon Schools. Many more students are taking AP courses. GPS has been recognized as one of eight Districts of Innovation in the nation by Model Schools.
3. Because GPS has been prudent and transparent in its use of fiscal resources, McCord has been successful in gaining community support for the 2019 15% override and $100 million bond election and the 2024 15% override continuation and land sale. This has allowed for staff pay increases, additional counselors and social workers; the purchase and maintenance of buses, technology, and security; and the maintenance and updating of school buildings and playgrounds.
4. To protect students and staff, McCord has enhanced school security through creating a district department, providing secure entries and doors at every school, installing security cameras, and rolling out weapons detectors at the high schools.
5. McCord led the district through the unprecedented COVID pandemic. Using a hybrid model of education, GPS was able to keep schools open and students and staff safe while continuing to educate students.
6. Using his deep community relationships, McCord increased GPS participation in the Gilbert Days Parade so that every school and the Governing Board are represented every year.
Shane McCord is sitting at a round table in his office in the 108-year-old Gilbert Public Schools building, which once served as a classroom in the original Gilbert High School.
Not just any classroom, but the first classroom for someone as formidable in GPS history as Sheila Rogers Uggetti, longtime district employee whose final act in life ended last year with her serving as the governing board’s president.
It is a fitting place for McCord, who counted Rogers Uggetti as a mentor and who has carved his own niche in GPS history, leading a district out of perhaps its most turbulent period from nearly a decade ago and into one of stability and success.
“Gilbert Public Schools has been fortunate to benefit from the leadership of many exceptional superintendents over the years, and Shane is certainly among them,” Gilbert Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Sarah Watts said. “He led the district through challenging times with a steady hand and helped breathe new life into its future.”
Watts is hardly alone in heaping praise on McCord as he enters the final year of his superintendency. Mayor Scott Anderson says he has left a lasting legacy in the district that assures it will continue to be one of the state’s top districts.
Town Manager Patrick Banger jokes that he called McCord after news broke in May of his impending retirement and threatened him to stay on, but then grows serious about what an exceptional superintendent he is.
Similarly, current Board President Chad Thompson calls him the model for superintendents in the state.
Though it was a poorly kept secret that McCord would soon retire — he told the governing board a year ago — the public disclosure nonetheless sent shockwaves through the community.
But for McCord it was simply time for him — and the district — to move on.
“I always said, I think people need to change and need to move on and continue on with other things in their life,” he said. “I think this has kind of defined me pretty much my whole career, and I’m excited to go find something else to do.
“I don’t know what — I love what I do. I love education, but I also think it’s important that leadership continues to move through new ideas, new perspectives, fresh eyes on things and how things are done.”
In the beginning
For a guy whose name has become as associated with Gilbert as anyone’s outside Anderson, McCord is not rooted in the town. His family lived in several places — Phoenix, Prescott, Paradise Valley, Mesa.
His father worked for Dolly Madison and Hostess Cake, driving a delivery truck servicing Circle Ks and grocery stores in the Valley. During summers, his father would sometimes come home for lunch and let Shane and neighborhood kids enjoy treats from his truck.
Eventually, the family bought a TV store and converted it into a bait-and-tackle shop in Mesa near Crismon Road and Main Street, “McCord’s Kiss My Bass.” Hard work was instilled into McCord there.
The shop had a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment without a door in the back. Mom and dad stayed there.
“I slept on the couch,” McCord said. “We were open 24 hours, and I was a sophomore at Mesa High. And so there was a bell. We closed at 10, and after that, if you wanted service, you’d ring the doorbell. Well, the bell was behind a pipe pan about five feet above my head on the couch. And it was a metal, not a tin, metal. That thing would go off. I’m up serving customers, giving ‘em night crawlers, water dogs, minnows.”
Eventually, he graduated to a mobile home behind the shop before the family traded an old green van for a down payment on a house near Signal Butte and Broadway.
Though he lived closer to Apache Junction High School, McCord would catch a bus at 5:30 a.m. to attend Mesa High, where he played football for legendary coach Jim Rattay as well as baseball.
McCord said he was an ‘80s kid, influenced by the “glitz and glam” of MTV to be looking for the dollar. He majored in marketing for three and a half years at Arizona State University. Then came the day he stepped into his wife’s kindergarten classroom.
“I was like, ‘I want to be with kids,’” McCord said. “And that’s what did it.”
It was an unlikely choice for a guy whose father only completed through the sixth grade and mother the ninth grade. It also delayed his graduation two and a half years and took the dollar signs out of his eyes.
“I made that choice then knowing that financially my life would be different,” he said. “But you got to weigh that with happiness.”
A lifetime in education
McCord’s career in education spans three decades, much of it spent in Gilbert. Starting as a fourth-grade teacher, he later worked as a teacher, principal, community education director, human resources executive director and assistant superintendent.
McCord did leave the district for three years in 2014, a time when a divided board caused a lot of unwanted attention on the district and sparked a large exodus of talent.
He went to Mesa Public Schools and worked as executive director of college and career readiness for a year, then assistant superintendent of east area K-8 schools, overseeing about 35 schools.
Gilbert Public Schools Superintendent Shane McCord reads a poem to Gilbert Elementary School students before winter break.
Courtesy Gilbert Public Schools
He returned in October 2017 to be the district’s top administrator. In all, he has been an administrator for 26 years. His superintendency is the longest job he has held in education.
His early years in administration were influenced by a group of mentors he still holds in high esteem.
“The way we were raised as young administrators here by (former Superintendent) Wally (Delecki) and by Sheila (Rogers Uggetti) and by (former Superintendent) Dave Allison and (administrator) Paul Huston … we worked,” McCord said. “There was no question about our work ethic.”
McCord said those values helped shape how he approached leadership — and how he balanced the long hours of school life with raising a family.
“My first year at Gilbert High, I was probably gone three or four nights a week, and I had a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old at home,” he said.
Despite those challenges, McCord found ways to blend work and life and later applied that philosophy in supporting staff across the district.
Steadying leadership through change
McCord’s tenure as superintendent has been marked by both turmoil and resilience. He led the district through the COVID-19 pandemic and oversaw a realignment of priorities when in-person learning resumed.
Responding to change while always keeping kids as the No. 1 priority is his biggest source of pride, he said, more than any program or policy.
“I think we’ve really done a great job of after COVID resetting our priorities in the sense of truly focusing on academics and what kids need,” he said. “It’s about how we treat each other and the respect that we have to show.”
Gilbert Public Schools Superintendent Shane McCord speakers with then-Mayor Brigette Peterson at the Girls STEMpowered Event in 2024.
Courtesy Gilbert Public Schools
McCord also does not dwell on his legacy or accomplishments.
“Anything that’s accomplished in this district is not by one person,” he said. “It is by a collective group of people.”
McCord believes his successor will inherit both strengths and challenges. Declining enrollment will remain a significant issue.
He also pointed to changing technology — especially artificial intelligence — as an area that will shape how schools operate.
“I think AI will be impactful in the future, and I’m not nearly as versed as I need to be or should be,” he said.
While not citing AI as a reason to leave, McCord acknowledged it will require a new generation of leadership with the energy and insight to navigate its complexities.
What comes next
As he eyes retirement, McCord admits he does not know exactly what the future holds.
“I won’t be able to sit still and I don’t sit well, so I’ll find something,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s in higher ed. I’d love to teach at the higher ed level, probably ed leadership type courses.”
He already teaches a graduate-level course annually as an adjunct instructor for Northern Arizona University and said he finds the work deeply fulfilling.
At the same time, he has joked with friends about other possibilities.
“Home Depot’s a great place to be too,” he said. “I always told the guys down (at Big Two Toyota), ‘Well, I’m going to probably come sell cars for you when I retire.’”
Gilbert Public Schools Superintendent speaks to new teachers at an orientation.
Courtesy Gilbert Public Schools
But no matter where he lands, McCord said he intends to keep one foot in education.
He does offer advice to younger educators facing the pressure and uncertainty of the job and encouraging them to be humble enough to own their mistakes.
‘If you can go to bed saying you did what was best for kids,” he said, “then you’ll be fine.”
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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