Paul is the assistant commissioner for the Office of Educator Quality for Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). He has been an educator for 35 years. In his work for DESE he has garnered much experience in education policy and has been instrumental in bringing SAMs to Missouri for over a decade. SAMs is a part of a large, comprehensive leadership development system that is available to all principals in the state.
He has been on the board of NSIP since 2011 and has served as vice president since 2018.
Paul spent over 12 years as a school principal. In that position, he was charged with managing and controlling all aspects of the school and making sure all students were learning what they should be learning—when they should be learning it. Given the fast-paced and often chaotic nature of the job, he felt very challenged to control all of the details that were required in order to have a successful school. Although SAMs was not available to him when he was a principal, he is very supportive of anything that helps an individual do the job of school principal as well as it can be done. Serving on the board is his way of continuing to support school principals in the challenging work they do.