At Boulder’s Casey Middle School, a new principal lowers the temperature — and raises expectations

Dr. Bryant Shaw, Casey Middle School’s principal, has eyes in the back of his head. 

“Damian, quick question,” he called to a student quietly walking 10 feet behind him, his face swallowed by an oversized hoodie. “Tell the truth, would you describe me as a mean principal?” 

The student shook his head. “A really cool principal,” he answered. 

“Hey, thank you. Keep crushing it in math. I saw your numbers. You’re doing a great job,” Shaw said, sending the student back to class. 

Encounters like that follow Shaw through the halls. Students look up to the 6-foot-3 former pro football player, with his easy rapport and commanding presence, with a mix of respect and curiosity. Between classes, a group of boys asked if he does wheelies on his Harley. A whole class eagerly explained the TikTok meme “6-7” he planned to dress up as for Halloween. 

“There’s something about him,” said PTA treasurer Ellie Geilhufe. “He is extremely positive, but no one’s going to walk over him … The kids can like him and respect him at the same time. I just feel so lucky that someone like that came in.”

At Casey, a central Boulder school in the Boulder Valley School District, the overall temperature has changed. The divisive bullies and bathroom vaping that once defined the school’s reputation have largely faded.

Geilhufe’s older daughter, who started at Casey in 2021, experienced the chaos firsthand: racist slurs yelled at her in Spanish, kids roaming hallways, fights and constant vaping.

Her son, who started two years later, encountered none of it. “A totally different experience,” she said.

Casey’s reputation in the community had suffered for years, and behavioral issues shaped nearly everything. Enrollment dropped as families steered their kids elsewhere.

Three years later, that concern has eased, and a more complicated but hopeful story is emerging. Under Shaw, academic growth has rebounded, and in math it is at its highest level in nearly a decade for all student groups.

Yet the gains also expose widening gaps. Students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch (FRL) remain farther behind their peers than before the pandemic. 

The FRL population has surged to 65%, up 20 points since 2021, a dramatic shift that has reshaped daily classroom realities. Shaw said students facing attendance challenges or fewer resources at home often have slower growth trajectories.

“As the FRL rate rises, so does the complexity of instructional needs within classrooms,” said Shaw. Teachers are trying to close foundational gaps while also delivering grade-level content, a balance that can widen disparities when student needs diverge. Partly for these reasons, Casey was the only school in BVSD to move backwards in state rankings this year, even as it has rebounded significantly from its nadir in 2022.

For Geilhufe, this isn’t a deterrent. Her son is bused to another school for geometry, which Casey doesn’t offer. But for some parents she knows, concerns about academic rigor remain a barrier to enrolling. 

Forget the office

Shaw, who is energetic and youthful at 47, grew up in a military family with two older brothers and a younger sister. His father, he said, taught him the value of clear systems and the idea that discipline is a process. When he got in trouble at school, he knew exactly what would happen to him. After eight years in professional football, including time with the Dallas Cowboys, he started his career in education. He began teaching science in Illinois before moving into administration, later earning a doctorate in educational leadership. Before arriving in Boulder, he spent a decade leading schools in Colorado and New York, including a 1,000-student middle school in East Aurora.

Shaw models his leadership after his father and the high school football coach he still calls for advice 35 years later.

For him, it starts with presence. 

He doesn’t sit in an office — in fact, he gave his office to the assistant principal and instead roams campus with his laptop. He fist-pumps students through hallways, is comfortable walking into classrooms, and easily quiets the cafeteria for pep talks.

At his previous middle school in East Aurora, older high school students sometimes wandered over from next door to “be knuckleheads.” Shaw planted himself on the corner every day until they stopped. 

“Kids want to do well for the right people,” he said. “You just gotta be the right person.” 

Shaw considers himself a systems thinker, and whenever possible, he slips sports analogies into the conversation. 

He explains that his approach at Casey is to build a team-like camaraderie and establish those clear systems for accountability his father taught him. By being transparent about expectations, he makes sure everyone knows what team they are on and what they are working toward. Just as the Dallas Cowboys have their own playbook, Casey now has its own.

The struggle at Casey 

Before he arrived, Casey had struggled for years. Its state evaluation score in 2022 — 41% — was its lowest in recent memory. Suspensions spiked, hallways unraveled, and the school entered a state-mandated improvement plan. 

According to Assistant Superintendent Robyn Fernandez, many students returning from Covid had a hard time adjusting, and adults were unsure how to respond.

“I was a middle school teacher, I was a middle school assistant principal, I was a middle school principal. So I feel like I have the context to understand that the students that came to us post-Covid … were developmentally different than students prior to that,” she said.

But the climate at Casey had been deteriorating even before the pandemic. The school’s ranking began slipping in 2018, dropping eight points from the prior year. In 2020, Gabriela Renteria took over as principal and struggled through the pandemic era. By the time she left in 2022, Casey had logged 47 suspensions (the highest on record), one student was arrested after threatening gun violence, and another was found with an airsoft gun in their backpack the same week. 

Teachers also reported deteriorating conditions, with fewer than half saying the school was a good place to learn, according to the state’s Teaching and Learning Conditions survey. As of 2024, that number is back up to 78%, similar to before the pandemic but still lower than the district average of 94%, as well as the state average of 88%. 

“We’ve had a couple leaders previously, not always with the same amount of focus on structure,” said BVSD Communications Director Randy Barber. “Kids were kind of doing what they wanted to do.”

Under Shaw, suspensions dropped sharply to 13 last year, down from 37 in 2022. Restorative practices have increased as well.

While suspensions are down, behavioral incidents are up. 

Madeline Hallahan, a substitute teacher who worked at Casey in 2023, said students treated her worse than any she had taught in Chicago or elsewhere in BVSD. After one student fell onto her, and she later learned he had slapped a sticker on her back, he joked they must be the worst kids she had ever had. She didn’t disagree.

The data may reflect more low-level disruptions being logged, or simply more students acting out, even as interventions keep situations from escalating. Either way, it signals the work ahead as Shaw tries to rebuild a culture that had been fraying long before he arrived.

Moving with purpose

From the start, Shaw was ready to rein in the chaos. One of his first decisions was eliminating the use of lockers. 

Longtime math teacher Lori Miller balked at first. “It’s a rite of passage,” she said. “These kids have to carry their crap around. This is nonsense.” 

But the benefits became clear quickly. Hallways were cleaner, students stopped getting hit by swinging locker doors and fewer kids showed up late to class, saving learning time. “The big thing is that our learning in the building has been maximized probably by 10 minutes,” Miller said. 

Shaw frames it as part of a systemwide shift: Every student is moving with purpose. No more wandering. 

And he would notice wandering. Spotting two students heading upstairs, he commented, “I know they’re office assistants and they’re running an errand right now.” 

Hyper-focused on growth

Shaw’s love of data runs deep. He tracks student academic growth metrics like a coach tracking a game. 

He brought back IXL, a diagnostic learning tool that offers real-time analytics. Geilhufe credits it for her son’s advanced skills in math because he uses it to learn on his own. 

Everyone talks about growth, literally. In the halls, Shaw peppers students with questions: “How many points have you grown in IXL?” Students answer instantly.

Every Friday, he pulls reports for the students he’s monitoring. If a student’s numbers suddenly spike or crash, he digs in. Maybe a student had a death in the family or a streak of missed days. Or maybe the student has been putting in an extra 20 minutes of math practice a day. He can then work with staff to triage support based on what they find.

“I look at trends, I look at progress, I identify obstacles. And then if there’s an obstacle that I can control, I remove it,” said Shaw. 

While academic achievement still factors into the Colorado Department of Education’s school ratings, growth — how far students move from the previous year — is increasingly seen as a more equitable way of ranking students.  

For instance, at Casey in 2016 and 2017 — the last time the school was highly ranked — FRL students posted the same growth score in reading as the overall school average, even though their achievement lagged well behind state expectations. This meant FRL students were working just as hard as anyone else, but compared to kids with more resources, they faced steeper challenges.

As the school transitions into a more stable era under Shaw, numbers and anecdotes alone can’t capture what’s happening. School culture is complex and shifts with every cohort.

For Shaw, the story of Casey is one best understood in person. He invites any taxpayer who’s curious to come for a tour. 

“I couldn’t be more proud of these kids. And you can’t capture that in words.”