Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The recent selection and final decision made by our school board is concerning to me. First of all: Why the rush? A current board member shared a current statistic that the average lifespan of a Minnesota public school superintendent is 3.5 years. Could part of the reason for that short tenure be that other districts in the state are also not doing the searching themselves but instead are hiring the MSBA to do the lion’s share of the work for them? And can we please stop with the surveys. These online surveys are a token effort to get feedback from the primary stakeholders. Does our school board really want to know what their stakeholders want? Then create a committee with us — teachers, board members, administrators, parents and taxpayers. A true collaboration between the Albert Lea school board and Albert Lea Area Schools’ stakeholders. Not a collaboration with the MSBA.

The cost of hiring an interim superintendent will pale in comparison to the cost of having to go through the possible replacement of our most influential position in our district every 3.5 years — not to mention the disruption and loss of continuity as we go through each transition. One of our sitting board members shared with me within the last couple of weeks that they had concerns with both of the final two candidates. To be fair, those “concerns” were before the final round of interviews. But this board member also shared that the timing of the posting of our superintendent position was such that it produced a minimal number of applicants. Again, why the rush? We are barely two months out from the time we learned of our need to search for a replacement.

We are Independent School District No. 241. How can we be truly independent when we are not willing to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work ourselves? I am referring to the majority of our school board members’ reluctance or unwillingness to create a collaborative committee made up of a cross-section of stakeholders from our community. We should hire an interim superintendent to buy us the critical time it will take to come together for the district to be transparent and for all stakeholders to reach a consensus.

Tony Hill

Albert Lea