Mount Clemens superintendent to stay on for five years

MOUNT CLEMENS — Three years after being hired to lead the Mount Clemens Community School District, Superintendent Julian Roper has signed on to stay for another five years.

“Mount Clemens is home for me now,” Roper said. “These first three years have confirmed what I felt in my spirit initially coming here, and that is that was where I was supposed to be. For the board and this community to see and appreciate the work that is done and the efforts that have been made by my team and confirming that with extending a new contract for five years just shows great faith and belief in me, and I appreciate that.”

Roper was awarded a new five-year contract as superintendent at a special meeting of the Board of Education on April 29. Board President Dontae Walker said the decision to retain Roper was unanimous and that the main point of contention was whether to offer a three- or five-year contract.

“We increased it to five years because of the results from the academic and fiscal sides of things,” Walker said. “We wanted to give Roper more time to improve things for the district. We think that there is a great working dynamic with the board and the superintendent.”

Hired in May 2023, Roper’s initial years with the district were spent improving upon old habits. He noticed a lack of data-driven decision-making from prior administrations and an attitude of doing things certain ways out of inertia. That lack of data-informed decisions and administrative inertia led to decreases in enrollment and academic performance along with increased expenditures.

In 2026, there are visual improvements both in the classroom and on the administrative side. Enrollment has increased with the mischooldata.org website showing 804 K-12 students in the district for the 2025-26 school year, as well as increases for every school year since the 2022-23 year where 729 K-12 students were enrolled. The district has an attendance rate of 82.94% with decreasing chronic absenteeism.

“In the climate and state of education across the United States and seeing a decline in enrolment in most districts in general in traditional public schools, for us to have increases for three years consecutively in a community that, frankly, I know some of the stereotypes when I first got here,” Roper said. “People thought that this place was going down the drain and closing, and kids weren’t coming here. We’re just very proud and prideful that we’ve created something that’s gotten people’s attention and made some people want to come back or join for the first time.”

Roper says there have been improvements in education performance, though further improvement is needed — mean SAT scores are up from 2022-23’s 746.3 to 747.9 as of 2024-25, which is below the national average mean of 1028 and down from the 842.1 mean that students were achieving in the 2015-16 school year.

“We’re very happy and proud of the direction we are headed in,” Roper said. “(We are) not near where we need to be academically, but we have gained from an academic perspective in certain areas.”

On administrative matters, Walker said the board was happy with the district’s healthy fund balance (the district had a $20.76 million available to appropriate as of its proposed 2025-26 budget), the rate of students graduating and the working relationship between the board and Roper. But one thing all members of the board kept in mind when voting on the new contract was a desire for stability.

“In the past years we have had multiple superintendents who have come out of retirement,” Walker said. “They (community members) wanted a stable leader at the helm of the district. That is what myself as the board president and the other members were thinking when we agreed to this five-year contract. We wanted something long term, not short term, to show partners that we were invested in the district for the long term and clearly stamp that Mr. Roper was going nowhere and that he was staying with the district.”

If there is anything from Roper’s first three years that did not go to plan, it was the failed attempt at securing a $91.8 million bond from voters in 2025 to fund capital improvements in the district. Even still, Roper has worked to make improvements to buildings like the old Mount Clemens High School — painting and refurbishing old classrooms and making repairs to the roof.

A running theme of Roper’s time as superintendent had been serving the whole child, not only making sure they are getting an education but that the environment they learn in is amenable to the task and that they have opportunities to pursue subjects that interest them. Both Roper and the board plan to keep on the “whole child” mission to improve academic results, as well as continuing to increase enrollment and attract talented faculty members to the district.

Partnerships have been a notable part of Roper’s time as superintendent, from working with city of Mount Clemens contractor Hunch Free on its renewed broadcast career-technical education program to working with groups like Code313 and Everybody Vs. Detroit to develop classes and programs for students. Continuing partnerships and building new ones remains a shared goal of the district and superintendent.

Much has been done over the past few years and much has yet to be done over the next five. But in the weeks that followed the new contract’s approval, Roper was still grateful of the decision to keep him in the role he loves.

“I love it and I’m grateful, just as I was from day one, to get this opportunity,” Roper said. “I’m grateful to be here right in the middle of the work. I appreciate the community believing in me and supporting me and I appreciate my school board who make up our community, who have seen value in me and have allowed me and supported me to lead our district in the positive direction that we’re going in. Without them, nothing would be possible. I just extremely appreciate them.”