Russo sworn in as Henrico superintendent

The judge joked about being a Hermitage High School graduate, joshing Patrick Russo about the kinds of students he'll now be responsible for as Henrico County's new school superintendent.

"You're going to find, working with the county, we really are a family," Judge L.A. Harris Jr. told Russo after the new superintendent took his oath of office yesterday morning. The county's three other Circuit Court judges looked on, smiling.

Russo apologized that his own family missed the ceremony -- the first time in a 24-year career as a superintendent during which he's taken similar oaths in Hampton, Hopewell, Georgia, North Carolina and New York.

It was a matter of a 10-year-old's midnight stomach bug, he explained.

"I'll be going into [my twins'] fifth-grade class, and their sixth-grade and seventh-grade [classes], and hopefully they won't be too embarrassed to have me there," said Russo, who said that he hoped his having had children later in life would keep him focused on his most important job as superintendent.

Russo, 58, formally started working yesterday, succeeding Fred S. Morton IV, who is retiring but who will also take over as principal of the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School in the fall.

"This is a wonderful school system, and I hope I can do my small part to leading it on to the next level of greatness," Russo said.

He said he sees his role as more leading a continuation of what Henrico's been doing, rather than steering the district in a new direction.

Russo said he's organizing a community meeting in October and would launch a process in the schools to ask teachers and staff to identify what they are doing well and what needs to be improved. At the same time, he is setting up meetings with PTA groups around the county, hoping to hear from them about schooling needs and strengths.

Russo comes to Henrico from Hampton, where he had been superintendent for five years.

He said he's particularly proud that Hampton won state accreditation for almost all its schools during that time, with 97 percent fully accredited, up from 74 percent when he started there. In Henrico, 92 percent of schools are fully accredited.

He said he's also proud that Hampton is building its first new schools in 35 years, and that it moved to innovate with two schools that each will have students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in the same facility.

"Sometimes," he said, "you want -- as they say -- to think outside the box."

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .