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Caledonia, FC school boards discuss sharing superintendent
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By Craig Moorhead
Special for the Argus
On Wednesday, Nov. 18 the Caledonia School Board met with members of the Fillmore-Central Board of Education. Directors from both schools discussed the possibility of a shared superintendent position. Both districts will need to hire a new superintendent or re-configure staff duties by July 1, 2010.
The hour-long session was held at Caledonia Elementary School. Board members outlined their needs, citing similar expectations from their superintendents. Both districts are of a similar size, with two school buildings in each district. Fillmore-Central currently has 565 students, while Caledonia has 775.
Fillmore-Central board member John Torgrimson said, “We want someone who’s going to be strong on finance, strong on facilities, (but) we don’t expect them to be at the basketball game on Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday.” Currently, Fillmore-Central combines the K-8 principal and superintendent job, but Myrna Luehmann, who holds that post, has said that she will only be available for half-time work next year. “We’d probably restructure a little bit around our principal,” Torgrimson said. “I think we’d be looking for a half-time superintendent.”
Caledonia director Charlie Wray asked, “How would you like to see that happen? The superintendent in your district two or three days a week, or half a day every day or something else?”
Fillmore-Central Board Chair Sue Sikkink said that the superintendent would need to be flexible, going where he or she was needed. She gave an example. “The main thing we would need them for, of course, is when, say, auditors are there.” Sikkink noted that Caledonia schools have more students, and asked the boards if they thought they could share a superintendent on a half time basis. She echoed Torgrimson’s assessment. “We still need a part-time superintendent, so we’re thinking 50/50.”
Fillmore-Central Director Jim Love asked, “Would we need to have a superintendent in the building every day? I would say it’s probably not a necessity.”
Love said that the fact that the districts aren’t too close together might actually be an advantage. “When you have one district bordering another district and they’re both sharing (administrators), with open enrollment, there’s too much of an issue of allegiance.” Love said that the state had began an effort to help districts share jobs last year, but it had died for lack of funding. “I think that this is probably the path that the state’s going down,” he concluded. “Our rural communities are going to be that way.”
Caledonia Board Chair Naomi Fruechte suggested that a superintendent could spend one week at one district and the next at the other. “With e-mail and cell phones, technology allows a person to keep in contact with any place,” she noted.
Sikkink agreed. “We have two very good bookkeepers/business managers, that could hold up their end if they weren’t there for that week,” she said.
Fruechte said that ideally, a superintendent should be hired to cover two districts from the first day of their contract, rather than having extra job duties thrust upon them.
Wray noted that doing double duty might not appeal to some candidates. “You’ve got two staffs to negotiate with,” he said. “You’ve got to be at certain events times two. That may narrow your pool.”
Love said that might be true, but added, “I think they’re out there.”
Both boards said they wanted an experienced candidate. Both boards also said they would like a long term commitment.
Fillmore-Central Director Craig Britton said, “Districts that share superintendents have some kind of an agreement in place. It’d be nice to take a peek at that just to see how it’s configured, what the arrangement is.”
Caledonia Director Michelle Werner noted, “You’d have to have strong leadership. You’d be putting more duties on to the principals.”
Torgrimson replied, “We’ve already embraced that paradigm. We’ve moved to a part-time superintendent/principal and I don’t think we’d be going back to a full-time superintendent any time soon.”
Sikkink asked if a superintendent sharing decision by the Fillmore-Central board by Dec. 1 would be adequate. Fruechte said that it would, since the Caledonia school board intends to make a superintendent decision at a special meeting Dec. 3.
Fruechte thanked the Fillmore-Central board for coming. “I’m so glad we could get together and talk about possibilities. Somebody’s got to forge through and do something different because the way it looks with state money and everything, we can’t continue doing the same thing we’ve always done.”
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