YOURschools out of 3,000 who applied. You look back at that and shake your head and say what a wild ride,” he recalls. Bright also takes pride that all that expansion was handled without the use of portable classrooms, which were widely used at many other growing districts. Mason was also able to develop a rarely employed “bigger is better” infrastructure plan that saw it become the first in the region to partner with a city recreational center when it constructed an attached high school in 2002 and expanded the high school by 49 classrooms in 2009. Moreover, most of Mason’s schools are located on a sweeping, main campus area on Mason-Montgomery Road. Those grounds are shared by the Mason Municipal Building. Nearby Mason Intermediate and Mason Middle School straddle the road and Mason High School is connected to the Mason Recreational Center. Bright also led the region in privatization agreements – primarily with Middletown’s
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Atrium Medical Center – that saw the first public school sports stadium paired with an on-site, free-standing medical center. The state-of-the-art complex, which includes privately paid for artificial turf, serves both students and residents and would be the envy of many small colleges. Veteran Mason Board of Education member Marianne Culbertson was a part of the board that hired Bright as superintendent in 1998. She says there is so much more to Bright’s legacy than bricks and mortar. “In those days the board referred to him as ‘Dr. Data’ due to the amount of information and statistics he would present to us on growth potential and student achievement. Under his leadership we utilized information from many different resources to successfully predict the timing of new school buildings so that we built what we needed when we needed it. We never had to resort to housing students in temporary trailers, thus saving the school district taxpayers added financial burden,” explains
Culbertson. “I believe there are three areas that Kevin’s leadership will have a lasting impact on for our district and our community. They are successfully managing and forecasting our growth, outstanding student achievement and staff development,” she says. Mason Mayor Don Prince praised Bright as an “excellent leader” who was “well organized.” Former Mason Vice-Mayor Peter Beck calls Bright a “tremendous asset to the city and the city schools.” “We both grew, but if it wasn’t for his leadership we wouldn’t have grown so successfully,” says Beck. Bright stresses he had plenty of help. “I feel like I was part of something very special here. We built a school district from the ground up,” he says. “It has been a wonderful experience, and I will carry only fond memories of my time here.”