Robert Westbrook is retiring, so he can go back to work.
Well, sort of.
Westbrook announced earlier this year that this school year would be his last as superintendent of Milano Independent School District after nine years of leading the district.
But his retirement plans don’t include a life of leisurely golfing or fishing or a lot of seeing the good, old USA.
“I have a couple of opportunities I’m exploring,” he said. “Including hanging out my shingle and doing a little accounting.”
Before Westbrook began his career in education he was an accountant and he recently updated his CPA license.
“I might look into financial audits for school districts,” he said. “But not that 12 to 14 hours a day routine.”
After graduating from Sam Houston State University, Westbrook was an accountant for a corporation’s Dallas office.
After a couple of years there, he was feeling like he needed to be closer to home as his mother’s health was declining and his father had died during his senior year at college.
Ted Hubert was Milano ISD superintendent then and I told him I was thinking about coming home to teach at some point.
Hubert surprised him asking him when can you get here, he said.
He said Hubert told him the district could put him on an emergency permit and he could start now rather than later.
“I quickly discovered that teaching was my passion,” he said. “I was teaching primarily junior high math and was assistant football, basketball and track coach.
That was in 1988.
“I did that for six years, then I became the junior high and high school principal,” he said.
But his career goal of becoming a superintendent took him away from Milano.
In the early 2000s he got a superintendent job at a tiny district in Ward County of Grandfalls Royalty out in West Texas between Monahans to the north and Fort Stockton to the south.
“There were 130 kids in the whole district,” he said. “We would have to drive two and a half to four hours to play sports.”
From there he went to Brackett Independent School District in Brackettville, where for each year of his three years there the district produced three consecutive National Merit Scholar Award winners.
“I will always be fond of Brackettville,” he said.
But in 2012 the superintendent’s position in Milano was open and “like a bad penny, I turned up,” he said.
“At the end of the day, it was what I needed. To come back home to family. This is always going to be home,” he said.
During his tenure at MISD, voters passed a $3.28 million bond to build a new junior high, a vocational ag building and an elementary cafeteria and classrooms.
The district also improved student performance via targeted staff development, became a data-driven district and hired a director of curriculum and instruction, he said.
In all he has spent 32 years of his career in some aspect of education, and that has made him realize that wherever one goes in live whether near or far from home there are good people wherever one goes, he said.
“I have made lifelong friends along the way,” he said. “I am most proud of the relationships that I have built with students, first and foremost, with staff, teachers, the community and parents.”
There have been many moments that make him satisfied by his career path.
“Over the years the most important is seeing the kids and what they do with their lives. To see kids who may have struggled academically or behaviorally become productive and successful in life makes me extremely proud,” he said.
His upcoming retirement won’t be all work with very little play, he said.
He plans to spend time visiting his son and daughter-in-law in Kansas.
He also has a closer destination in his travel plans.
“Time will be built in for trips to Needville to see my daughter and son-in-law and most important my five-month-old grandson.”
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