The new MCPS superintendent Joshua Starr visited Whitman for the first time Jan. 4 to observe some classes.

Starr toured the school for an hour in the morning with principal Alan Goodwin and community superintendent Chris Garran, a former Walter Johnson principal who now oversees Whitman and 35 other schools in the area.

“Whitman is a great, comprehensive high school, and it seems to be serving kids really well,” Starr said. “I’d like to be able to spend more time to get to know it better, but from what I’ve seen, this school is certainly doing great work.”

Whitman is the 51st school Starr has visited as part of his effort to tour all 200 public schools in the county this year, which will help him get to know the area. He said he’s trying to visit five schools per week, but other issues, like the recent budget proposal, have kept him busy.

The goal of the tours is to get a sense of the county’s schools as a whole, Starr said.

“I’m not really scrutinizing individual schools because we have such competent administrators like Dr. Garran who do that,” Starr said. “I’m thinking about our overall strategy, how we’re going to make the dots connect within the system to make sure that we’re doing the right things to help schools and kids.”

Starr spent the majority of his time at Whitman observing classes and talking to students and teachers. While many students were surprised and somewhat intimidated by his presence, Starr kept the tone light. In one of chemistry teacher Sean Reid’s classes, Starr asked a group of students which level of chemistry they were studying, and when they answered “AP,” Starr jokingly replied, “Of course, everything’s AP here.”

Reid said Starr’s approach to observing the class impressed him.

“Sometimes when these visitors come into a classroom and the students are doing work and the teacher isn’t presenting information, they lose interest because they want to see a teacher dog and pony show,” Reid said. “But even after Dr. Starr came in and saw that my students were working on a practice test, he was still interested in asking them questions and watching them work.”

Many students in the classes Starr observed said they were pleasantly surprised by his visit.

“It’s nice that he took the time out of his day to visit Whitman,” said junior Anders Maraviglia, one of Reid’s students who spoke briefly with Starr. “The position of superintendent is a pretty high pedestal, so it’s cool he actually came down from that and put a face to the name we’ve all heard about.”