That change begins and ends with relationships, according to Smith.

“Back from when I first started to now, I have started to focus a lot more on relationships,” Smith said. “Students and staff relationships are what drives us every day.”

Smith began his career in education in 2004 at Don Bosco Catholic High School in Gilbertville.

Later, he would go on to be principal at Nashua-Plainfield High School in Nashua. He served in that role from 2009 up until he took the job in Clarion.

-Messenger photo by Chad Thompson Madison Kubly, left, a sophomore at Clarion-Goldfield-Dows High School, gets some help from Principal Erik Smith during biology class.

A native of Sumner, Smith began his duties as principal at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year.

He succeeds Dennis March, who was the school’s principal for 14 years.

One of Smith’s goals in creating a culture change is to improve upon the interactions that take place at the school.

“I think a big thing is looking at our culture and climate and how we interact with each other here, and how can we continue to improve our culture and climate,” Smith said. “How teachers interact with students, how students interact with teachers, how we all interact with each other.”

Student involvement is one particular area Smith plans to address.

“I want students to love being at school, and that’s something I am not sure we always get,” he said.

To help with that, Smith said he plans to develop a student leadership group, similar to a student council.

“Right now our student council is not a major factor in the building,” Smith said. “So we want to transform that into a leader group.”

Students will apply to be in the group rather than being voted in, Smith said.

Staff members will then go through a selection process.

Once selected, those students will meet with staff to talk about various topics to improve the school.

An issue that is likely to be discussed is how to better recognize students.

“We will meet with these students on a regular basis and talk with students about what we can do and provide opportunities for recognition,” Smith said. “A big part of it will be how do we recognize more than just our athletes? How often do you see something at a school and it’s strictly tied to athletics? I tell you what, I love the sport side to school, but I also feel that it sometimes consumes. So we want to recognize other groups as well. Group speech competitions, plays, musicals — just more opportunities for recognition.”

Community involvement will be another area of focus, he said.

The school building itself could see a face-lift, and Smith wants students to be involved in that also.

“The other thing is taking a look at our building,” Smith said. “What does our building look like? Is it outdated? Does it need to be this or that? I think when you update the look of the building and put a little money into some paint or something like that, and give students a chance to be involved in decorating or planning, they take more pride in where they are at. That translates to respect for the school environment. I am all about students being a part of that, not it being forced from the top down. I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it.”

Student involvement in extracurricular activities correlates to more success in the classroom.

The student body is awesome,” Smith said. “We just need to tweak a few things to get more people involved in things to make sure that everybody has a tie to the school.”

“When kids are tied to the school outside of just coming to school, it has shown that they will be much more successful,” he added. “Their achievement is a lot higher rather than if a kid comes here from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and leaves.”

CGD High School enrolls approximately 300 students.

Documenting student behaviors is another task Smith believes will better equip staff to help students.

“We need to look at our approach as a school to student behaviors,” Smith said. “Right now each teacher kind of individualizes their classroom. In this classroom, something might be allowed, but in another classroom it’s not. We want to have more consistency across classrooms and across the school. And then have documentation of student behaviors, so I can pull out a record and point specifically to a behavior to better help them. Once we get a system that will get better.”

Smith hopes that a change in culture will translate to better academic performance as a school.

According to the Iowa Department of Education’s state report card, CGD High School was identified as a priority school in 2015.

That classification was improved upon in 2016 when CGD was classified as acceptable.

CGD Elementary School was also rated as acceptable and the CGD Middle School was rated as high-performing.

The Iowa Assessments began again Feb. 6.

“We will hopefully see our progress and continue that upward trend,” Smith said. “It’s been a lot of talking to students and explaining this is what it means and being up front and sharing with them that it may not be important to them personally, but this is what it means for us as a school and as a district. We still have a lot of work to continue to do, but we have made some great strides in our proficiency.”