Working at the federal level, this former neighborhood resident is in public schools’ corner
Kevin Sullivan was sitting in his Manhattan office — his senior vice president’s office — when the phone call came. Which is how a fellow who used to live in a 1950s-style ranch house near Lovers and Abrams, and whose son attended Dan D. Rogers Elementary School, became an assistant secretary of education.
The woman on the other end was Margaret Spellings, who was about to be named secretary of education. Would Sullivan, then working for NBC-Universal after almost 20 years as the Mavericks’ public relations guru, come to Washington to work for her?
“This is about the last thing I would have expected to be doing,” Sullivan says. “I didn’t know anything about education. But when someone who is going to be a member of the president’s cabinet tells you they want you to work for them, how do you say no? I was really intrigued.”
Sullivan is being modest. He is not only a first-rate PR man (anyone who had to deal with the cranks and misfits who covered the Mavericks in the 1980s and 1990s is at least that, probably some sort of saint), but he does know education. He might not know it from the “I have a PhD, test score” expert’s perspective, but he knows it from the “local school, I’m in the neighborhood” perspective.
When Sullivan was with the Mavericks, there was almost nothing he wouldn’t do if Rogers — or any DISD school, for that matter — asked. Bring a player by? Not a problem. Donate something for a fund-raiser? Be happy to.
He did this not out of duty or obligation, but because he thought it was the right thing to do. He even helped a fledgling magazine put together a neighborhood school benefit, complete with Mavericks players, and we haven’t forgotten that, either.
“Mr. Carter always used to say: ‘If you have a chance to do something people are going to remember for a long time, then you should do it,’ ” says Sullivan of then-Mavericks owner Don Carter. “And I can still remember Jim Jackson, and he wasn’t more than 22 or 23 at the time, telling the kids, ‘What kind of life you’re going to have, you’re going to decide here.’ And the kids listened to him.”
Sullivan’s title is assistant secretary for communications and outreach, which means he oversees everything the education department does in getting its message out, from press releases to its web efforts to its weekly television show. (And yes, for all the constitutional scholars out there, he had to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.) In this, he says, it’s a pleasure to go to work every morning. This is a man who understands what it takes to make the world a better place to live.
“I know this sounds corny,” Sullivan says, “but when I was at NBC — and I loved the job, don’t get me wrong — what I missed the most was I really didn’t run into real people.
“When I was with the Mavericks, we could walk into a school with a player, and it didn’t matter whether it was a guy who rode the bench or Jason Kidd or Jim Jackson, and the kids just appreciated it so much. You could tell just by the look on their faces.
“They were excited that someone cared enough to come to their school.”
So Sullivan doesn’t want to hear that public education isn’t a priority, that it’s something that doesn’t concern each and every one of us, regardless of where we live and whether or not we have kids.
“One of the No. 1 communications challenges we’re going to face is why people should care about public education, why someone in McKinney or Frisco should care about what happens in the DISD.” he says.
“What they need to understand is that those third graders you came into contact with at Dan D. Rogers, how cool it would be if in 20 or 30 years those third graders owned a business or managed a business because of something you did.”
Spelling couldn’t have picked a better person to send that message than Sullivan.
