Campbell County Superintendent Adam Ritter poses with students at Campbell Ridge Elementary School when he was there to distribute t-shirts to kindergarten students. As a special tradition in the district, kindergarten students receive a t-shirt to celebrate the beginning of their educational journey. Photo courtesy Campbell County Schools
As a long-time employee of Campbell County Schools and graduate of the district, new Superintendent Adam Ritter, has been around long enough to see the impact of the work his district has done.
“I think my favorite part about working in this district is that I live in this community,” Ritter said. “I just love everything about it, and I think that it makes the work of a superintendent truly meaningful, where I can see the direct connection between what we do every day in school and the community that I live in and how our school community affects the broader community.”
Ritter started his career as a business teacher and guidance counselor at Newport Independent in 2000. He moved to the Campbell County district to be assistant principal of Campbell County High School in 2008, then became principal in 2015. He became assistant superintendent in 2022 and superintendent this year.
He has a bachelor’s degree in business and secondary education from Northern Kentucky University, a master’s degree in school counseling and Rank 1 certification from Xavier University, and a superintendent certification from Northern Kentucky University.
As superintendent, one of his priorities for Campbell County is helping students figure out what they want to do in the future. One way the district is doing this is by making sure schools are instructionally meeting students’ needs no matter where they’re at and receiving grade level instruction.
The district has career cluster clubs at the elementary school, classes at the middle school that explore careers and career clusters, as well as destination pathway classes at the high school.
“I’m trying to help them to work through that kind of career continuum to make sure that they have what they need to be successful and that whatever they think they want to do, they have the ability to do that; and there’s no limits on what they can do when they do those,” Ritter said.
Ritter said the types of career classes students get to take often involve vibrant learning. He said the middle school has a lot of unique classes, including engineering, app creating, biomedical science, construction trades, business and law.
“In all of those classes at the middle school, those are vibrant learning experiences where they are making connections to the things that they’re learning in the classroom and what that looks like, applying it to real-world skills and real-world jobs,” Ritter said.
The district is also implementing a new school-improvement model this year for staff members at all schools, which Ritter believes will also help students.
“We really feel like when we’re talking about that kind of career continuum and helping kids to be able to do the things they want to do after they leave us, we really feel like this is a big part of teaching them how to be a leader, how to advocate for themselves, how to make the decision of what they want to do and create a plan for how to get there,” Ritter said.
The district also has a well-established profile of a graduate, which Ritter said started seven or eight years ago to create a profile of skills they want students to have when they graduate. He said the district is currently using that profile to develop their local indicators of quality.
“We’re taking our profile of a graduate and kind of molding that into a local accountability model of how do we talk to our community about that?” he said. “How do we tell them what that looks like? How do we take all those great experiences, those vibrant learning experiences our kids are getting at the middle school and high school, and how do we inform our community about that?”
Ritter said he looks forward to continuing that work with his long-time staff.
“I’m very proud and humbled to be the superintendent of Campbell County Schools,” he said. “I take the job and the work very seriously and want to continue to make Campbell County a great district for our community.”
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