Montezuma schools community:
At a special meeting held on Monday, April 13th, the Montezuma School Board accepted the resignation of Superintendent Dave Hoeger from his position in the district.
At that same meeting, Trent Grundmeyer from Grundmeyer Leader Search, presented his firm’s proposal for hiring a new superintendent. The School Board voted unanimously to hire Mr. Grundmeyer to conduct the search for the next superintendent for the Montezuma School District.
Over the last few years, Mr. Hoeger has worked with the School Board and has presented several options regarding the superintendent position at Montezuma.
Our district has faced declining enrollment and approximately 2% in new money from the state for a number of years. While we are doing fine financially right now, the above-mentioned factors continue to affect our district, which will present the need to make some tough financial choices in the future.
We believe that researching different superintendent models that could possibly provide savings to our general fund money is in the best interest of the district.
Mr. Hoeger and the School Board agree that it is very important to keep as many teachers working with our students as possible, and we agree that if it is possible to save money with this administrative position, then this idea should be given serious consideration.
There are three options we have researched and they are as follows: 1) Sharing with a neighboring district; 2) A combined superintendent/principal position, and; 3) A part-time superintendent.
We studied the option of sharing the superintendent position with a neighboring district but that is not a viable option at this time.
We also discussed the option of a combined principal and superintendent position. We are not interested in that model because we want our principals to always be available to students, parents and staff.
The ability of the principal to always be available will be hindered with the addition of the superintendent duties.
While Mr. Hanna and Mr. Hoffman are excellent principals, neither have their superintendent degrees, which results in the combined position not being an option for our district either.
If we were to share a superintendent with another district, that superintendent would be at Montezuma approximately 50% of the time, which would, in turn, be a reduction in salary.
This option helps ease the strain on our general fund budget. As I stated, a shared position isn’t an option at this time, but one way we can accomplish this same result is by hiring a part-time superintendent.
Our plan is to search for a superintendent who would be at Montezuma 50-60% of the time with the salary being adjusted accordingly.
We plan on trying this for one year where we will then evaluate the effectiveness of the position and make any changes accordingly.
Our goal is to start interviewing candidates in early May and have a new superintendent in place by the middle of May.
In the coming days, we will be asking our district stakeholders to help us define the skills and traits we are looking for in a new superintendent.
This will be done through an online survey that Grundmeyer Leader Search has developed. The results of the completed surveys will be compiled and shared with the school board.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the search and interview process may look quite a bit different from what we have done in the past, but our hope is that we can include our stakeholders as much as possible in this process.
On behalf of the Montezuma School Board, I wanted to share this information with our school and community to keep everyone updated with our plan.
The entire school board is deeply committed to making decisions that will keep our district financially stable while providing the best education possible for our students.
Sincerely,
Stacie Cameron, President,
Montezuma School Board