The work, across roles

Dr. Fields returned to the district where he attended preschool and completed his student teaching, this time as its superintendent. The first year confronted financial, operational, staffing, facilities, academic, safety, culture, and community-trust challenges at once.

By year's end, the district reported a projected unrestricted fund balance near 14%, up from a projected 2.06%, and a projected $3.3 million surplus in place of a projected $5.6 million deficit, its largest projected surplus since 2018. Alongside the fiscal reset: more transparent budgeting and Board meetings, more candid community engagement, the passage of Proposition S, elevated student voice, shared data review among administrators, and 30-, 60-, and 90-day plans aligned with district priorities.

These results are district-reported projections and shared accomplishments of the Board, administration, employees, students, families, and community. The academic, facilities, safety, culture, staffing, and trust work continues.

Human resources is often treated as backstage work. At Kirkwood, Dr. Fields treated it as the operating system of a district: retention, recruitment, labor strategy, belonging, and organizational culture.

Official accounts credit his tenure with the district's strongest staff retention in recent years and labor negotiations shaped around long-term fiscal sustainability and workplace equity. During that tenure, Kirkwood's first certified-staff collective-bargaining agreement took effect (July 1, 2024), and the district adopted a paid parental-leave policy of up to 40 calendar days for all staff.

In his first year as a principal, Koch Elementary, the school Dr. Fields himself attended, sat near the center of the Ferguson unrest, with a single access road on Canfield Drive. The school stayed open. When neighborhood grocery access was disrupted, it created a food pantry.

The team paired trauma-informed support with academic focus after five consecutive years of declining MAP results. Students produced Koch TV, a school news program that asked them to research, write, interview, listen, and lead. Fifth-grader Myauna Hayes put the leadership approach simply: “Mr. Fields steps back and lets us do what we're capable of.”

The same reporting connected the school's gains to Riverview Gardens being named Missouri's most improved district for 2014–15. Stability and ambition were not competing priorities; the school met immediate human needs while protecting academic purpose.

The question at Webster Groves was not what new resources to request. It was what students could gain access to with the capacity already present. Students gained Computer Science, Foreign Language, Drama, and Art and Design, taught by existing district-certified staff, as a response to access gaps affecting students of color, low-income students, and students with learning disabilities.

The gifted-assessment process was rethought so that historically underrepresented students were no longer screened out by the mechanics of identification. And through Passion Days, teachers, community members, and students successively taught interest-based classes (archery, DJing, painting, rocketry), putting knowledge from the whole community into the school day.