Hunt begins for new superintendent, schools strategize future goals

Wrangell Public Schools will begin searching for a new superintendent.

Meeting Monday, the Public School Board approved moving forward with a search for candidates. Superintendent Patrick Mayer had since last month's meeting submitted his letter of resignation. Mayer has been in the post since 2014, and will finish out the 2018 school year. When asked about his decision or future plans after Wrangell, he declined to respond. However, a notice put out by Valdez City Schools last month listed Mayer as a prospective candidate for a superintendent vacancy there.

Wrangell Schools will seek assistance in its search from the Association of Alaska School Boards, through which Mayer had been referred. In a budget revision for the district's current fiscal year, an increase of $17,000 to the professional technical line item was requested to cover expenses for the effort. Business manager Pam Roope explained it had cost over $12,000 in 2014 when searching for a replacement to Monty Buness.

Board President Georgianna Buhler said the needed amount would be a fixed sum of $8,750, after speaking with AASB staff about its internal processes. The budget revision was amended to that amount and approved in a 5-0 vote.

"In my perspective you did a fantastic job, and I'm sad," Vice President Tammy Groshong told Mayer at the meeting's end.

Monday's meeting followed an hour-long session overviewing upcoming strategic goals for the school district. Board members, staff and faculty making up its planning committee sat in at five stations – each focused on a particular goal area, these being student learning, stakeholder satisfaction, employee development, financial responsibility and support systems.

The session's goal was to take public input on setting an outlined strategy, in particular finding out what parents and community members either liked, disliked or perhaps wanted to see more of from the local school system. Using this information, the committee will draft a new set of strategic goals to guide its decision making for the coming three years.

A similar process saw to the school's current strategic plan, which expires after the current academic year. One of the drawbacks of that model board members had found had been a lack of measurability. Goals had been aspirational in a more general sense, which in turn made it difficult to gauge whether the district was on track or not.

Buhler had commented as much during January's meeting of the board, when Monday's session was scheduled. Looking ahead, the district will have a number of challenges to meet. One is the continued budget problems of the state, which while not expected to bring cuts to the base student allocation this year, will also not be adjusted to meet other rising costs the district expects through salary and benefits increases.

In a presentation Monday overviewing the district's draft budget, Mayer explained the state BSA accounts for around 72 percent of Wrangell's educational funding. Local taxes provide another 12 percent, but another 16 percent comes from federal sources. Most of that comes from Secure Rural Schools money, a program whose continued status remains uncertain.

Reductions to either state or federal sources could pose financial troubles to local schools. Which is why having a strategic plan is important, Mayer explained, as it sets priorities for programming.

"There are only so many resources. So where does the group want to put those resources?" he had stated, responding to a question from one of the planning session's participants.

A setback to setting the strategic plan in itself has been a lack so far of input from the community. Perhaps due to icy road conditions or the Presidents Day holiday, only one parent and two members of the press attended Monday's evening meeting. Board member Dave Wilson had hoped for a better turnout, for a more robust conversation about the future of Wrangell's schools.

"What we want is input from the community," he said. In the area of stakeholder satisfaction, for instance, which seeks to redress communication concerns between school administrators, the board and the wider public, Wilson said it was important to know what people expected.

"If we need to bring brownies, tell me, I'll bring brownies," he commented.

Suggestions can still be lodged with the district office, at the Evergreen Elementary School campus. The district has also hired on Anchorage-based consultant Jerry Covey to help coordinate the upcoming process. He is due to arrive in town tomorrow for a planning committee meeting.

In other board business, maintenance director Fred Angerman presented a list of capital improvement needs at the various school facilities. The estimates vary in scale, from a $5,000 replacement of the middle school's pneumatic control compressor to a $1,000,000 project to replace the high school's exterior walls. Many of the items are still serviceable, but older features are becoming more difficult to find replacement parts for.

Students were given an opportunity to update the board on some notable activities. Spanish Club members Jing O'Brien and Scythia McQueen demonstrated a YouTube video they created showing their conversational progress in the language. Not a Spanish speaker before, McQueen attended a Spanish immersion course at Vermont's Middlebury College to get up to speed for Spanish II, while O'Brien is preparing for a class trip to Spain planned for next year.

Jean Luc Lewis also delivered a brief presentation outlining his participation in last week's Youth Advocacy Institute and the Legislative Fly-In activities in Juneau. The program offers high school students from around the state the opportunity to see firsthand the legislative process, meet and discuss topical issues with lawmakers, and practice debate and delivering testimony with fellow students.

"I thought it was a really good experience," Lewis told Wrangell's board. "It's kind of encouraged me to pursue advocating for education."