Following Robin Kelly’s retirement at the end of the 2023-24 school year, the Danville Independent School District’s new director of data and administrative services is Steve Ely, who is starting his 35th year working in education. 

For the last two years, Ely was principal at Paris High School. Before that, he had several administrative roles in schools in various parts of the country. He was superintendent for a couple of years at Ekalaka Public Schools in Montana. He has also been a principal at Ridge C’ommunity High School in Polk County, Florida. Additional administrative roles he has held in Kentucky were at Middlesboro Independent Schools and Bell County Schools. 

His wife, Melissa Ely, will be a 2nd-grade teacher at Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School this school year. 

About his experience working with data, he said, “I believe that if you’re really trying to be a data-driven district overall, what that means is you have to progress-monitor.”

He emphasized the importance of graduation rate, not just testing, as an indicator of school performance. 

“Our mission from Pre-K to graduating is our graduation rate,” he said. “Our job is, you cross that stage and you get that diploma, and the other things we set you up for give you a chance to be productive in society.”

Something he has experience with is getting community input on what a graduate should look like, in terms of preparing them with the necessary skills to enter higher education or the workforce. 

“That’s where the rubber meets the road, if you’re really talking about using the data,” he said.

A large part of his role will be working as the district assessment coordinator. This will include working with each school in the district on setting students up for success, and having a consistent testing schedule so administrators can plan what to do for incentives and how to approach the assessment. 

“I’ve been very successful as an administrator with raising test scores,” he said. 

Ely will also be involved with federal programs and human relations. He said an important aspect of HR is recruitment, and he thinks Superintendent Ron Ballard is committed to getting good people into roles and building a team that sticks around.