The Crookston Public School District held a special School Board meeting in the District Office Conference Room in the Crookston High School this morning to discuss the resignation of Superintendent Jeremy Olson and the plan moving forward for replacing him.
After the call to order, the meeting began with School Board Chairperson Frank Fee presenting the motion to accept the resignation letter from Superintendent Jeremy Olson enacting on June 30. The Board approved the motion unanimously and wished Olson luck in his work in Bemidji.
The Board then moved to discuss the plan for replacing him. Chairperson Frank Fee reported that the Minnesota School Board Association said that many Superintendents were moving or leaving schools throughout the year. Board member Dave Davidson made a motion to hire an Interim School Superintendent to allow the school to run a search and advertise for a new one, and that the search may take up to at least mid-June or July. “The Minnesota School Board Association recommended that we get an Interim Superintendent because the search might not be contusive to us with so many replacements going on with Superintendents around the State,” Chairperson Frank Fee explained. “So, if we hire an Interim for a year, that’ll give us time to start the search next year, and hopefully, there will be a lot more candidates out there,” he added.
Olson told the Board that they needed to decide how long it would take them, decide on a salary, level of the desired experience, and begin advertising for it with a contact person people can send information to and send it to the School Board Association. After some discussion, the Board chose to begin a 2-week advertising campaign today for the new Interim position with the Minnesota School Board and Association of School Administrators and chose Business Manager Laura Lyczewski to be the contact person for any of the applicants. “As a Board, we will then take a look at all of the candidates and see who would fit our criteria and our needs and hopefully find somebody out of that. If not, we’d have to redo the search or start looking internally, but hopefully, the search will get us hooked up with somebody for an Interim position,” Chairperson Fee explained. “That Interim could also turn into a full-time position if he or she did it for a year, and we were excited about that, and they wanted to stay for longer. That’s our process, and hopefully, we’ll get some good candidates starting today,” he added.
Chairperson Fee reminded the Board that whoever they chose with the advertising wasn’t locked into the position and could make a change if they did not believe they would work out. The Board approved the motion unanimously.
Chairperson Fee then told us some of the qualifications and qualities they are looking for in their Interim Superintendent, “We’re looking for somebody that has experience for that year. Crookston’s currently in good financial shape, and we want somebody that will keep us in that position for the year, especially since we have new building projects in Highland School, and they’ll have to help us accelerate that as we go forward,” Chairperson Fee explained. “We also have the referendum for the football field and track & field facility coming up in August, and for a month or two, they’d be the lead person on that campaign. So, we’re mainly looking for someone to keep the ship steady,” he added.
The Board will close applications for Interim Superintendent on Monday, May 16, and have a regular Board meeting to decide which applicants they will choose on Monday, May 23.
