The Crookston Public School District has recently approved Dave Kuehn to be the Interim Superintendent for the upcoming 2022-23 School Year to replace current Superintendent Jeremy Olson. Kuehn was chosen out of nine other candidates due to his experience as the Superintendent for the Underwood School District, where he replaced Jeremy Olson when he moved to Crookston. Kuehn has worked in the Crookston School District before as a former Activities Director, Dean of Students, and was a football coach that led the Pirates to States.
On Friday, May 20, Kuehn met with Superintendent Jeremy Olson to discuss the contract terms for him coming to the school district and beginning on July 1. When it came to the exact terms of his contract, Keuhn explained that he was working what is considered 75% of the time as the interim Superintendent. “I’m looking at a one-year interim position, so I think I’m just looking for a little bit of flexibility,” Dave Keuhn explained. “I’m kind of at that age where I was looking at retiring, so my biggest thing was just to make sure that I had some flexibility, but I also know that demands a certain amount of time and visibility, so we had conversations about what their expectations were of me and what my expectations were of what I could bring to the district,” he added. He reported that his contract is just for one year, and he will hold a salary of $102,000. He will work with Superintendent Olson before he leaves to be the Superintendent at the Bemidji School District to make the transition as smooth as possible by the beginning of July, but Keuhn believes this will not be an issue as they had done this process before when he replaced Olson as the Superintendent in the Underwood School District. “Jeremy Olson was the Superintendent of Underwood before I took over, so we’ve done this transition before, which is spending time to get to know the financial pieces and issues from his perspective like the referendum,” Keuhn explained. “There’s a variety of things that he will share and walk through with me, like getting to know the people in the District office. A lot of its relationship building, to get to know some of the people I’ll be working with and meeting with staff and community members and working with Jeremy on promotion on the referendum,” he added.
With the contract terms in place and his contract being approved by the Crookston School Board, Keuhn is set to begin as the District’s Interim Superintendent on July 1. While his time is relatively short for a Superintendent, he plans to keep the District moving forward with its academic programming and other staffing transitions for the 2022-23 School Year. “There are some transitions at the High School with the principal and AD retirements, so I think that is something that as a Superintendent I will have to help mentor and work with some new faces at the High School,” Keuhn explained. “The High School could have two different people in that office, but one of them is the new principal, but there will be some other people coming aboard there, so there are some transitional things happening at the High School that are very important to help with new leadership that’ll be in that building,” he added. Keuhn reported that he still has to learn the details of some of the referendum projects in order to help facilitate the planning and bidding process but plans to work with other people that are a part of those projects to help have them ready for the next Superintendent that will be hired for the 2023-24 School Year and the subsequent phases of the referendum project’s construction.
Dave Kuehn will work with Superintendent Jeremy Olson over the summer to prepare him for the 2022-23 School Year before Olson leaves to take his new position as the Superintendent at the Bemidji School District. Kuehn will then fully take over as the Crookston School District Interim Superintendent for one year, beginning July 1.
