The Crookston School District will have another familiar face taking over the Superintendent position this summer, as former Crookston High School teacher, coach, and Activities Director Todd Selk has agreed to serve as the interim Superintendent next school year following an interview on Monday afternoon. It will become official at a Special School Board meeting on Thursday, March 26.
He started his career at Crookston and said 42 years later, he is looking to end his education career in Crookston. “I’m excited to return to Crookston and kind of come full circle. I started my student teaching there back in 1984-85 and then moved on to a teaching position there and eventually an athletic director position left the district for quite a long time, and now to come back and very likely this will be my last stint in education,” said Selk. “To come full circle back to Crookston feels really good. I think it’s going to be a challenge, certainly, but it’s a challenge that I’m looking forward to taking on.”
Selk originally applied for the job but withdrew before the interview process due to wanting to remain as the Superintendent of the Fosston School District. After the Crookston Superintendent search was suspended, the school board reached out to Selk and made an offer that was too good to pass up. “Foston has been really good to me. It’s been a great fit for me. A great place for me to start in the role of superintendent. I’m surrounded by some really, really quality people here,” said Selk. “The community has really welcomed me four years ago and has continued to support me both professionally and personally. And so, Fosston is a great community and it is with a certain amount of concern, I guess, or anxiety that I’d leave this district and leave this community, but we are only 45 minutes apart, and so some of the relationships that I’ve been able to develop here in Posse will remain for sure.”
Selk, an East Grand Forks Senior High School graduate, attended the University of North Dakota and began his teaching career in the 1984-85 school year as a student teacher for Betty Ann Johnson, a Business Education teacher in Crookston. After graduating from UND, Selk continued at Crookston as a Business Ed teacher from 1985 to 1992. In 1992, Selk replaced Les Drechsel as Athletic Director and held the position until 1999.
“I grew up in East Grand Forks as well, so it puts me right back close to home for me. I don’t have a large family, but the family I do have pretty much resides in Greater Grand Forks. But yeah, coming back to Crookston, even when I put my name in, and I’m sure everyone’s aware that I put my name in initially and then pulled it out, and part of that was my allegiance to Fosston and the good position that I had here,” said Selk. “But there was something that, through that whole process, kept drawing me back to Crookston and when things didn’t work out for their official search, and when the board decided to suspend their formal search and go with an interim, I stayed on top of that and we connected with some of the board people there and on Monday it all happened pretty quick.”
Selk didn’t expect it to happen so fast, but he is happy it did. “I’ll be honest. I didn’t know that we’d walk out of there with an agreement last night, but we were able to do that, which I guess I appreciate because it shows the urgency and the importance that the board is putting on getting a person named for that position going forward,” said Selk. “I think that brings, hopefully, a calm to the district a little bit, and the draw to Crookston has been there, and this is just a great way for me to come back to a place that was really good to me back in the 80s and early 90s and a really quality district at that time and hoping that we can continue to get ourselves in that position again.”
After his time in Crookston, Selk served as the Brainerd Activities Director from 1999 to 2011. He then moved to Spokane, Washington and worked there from 2011 to 2015 before taking the job as Principal at Valley Middle School in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He then moved back to Minnesota, where he took the Superintendent job at Fosston High School in 2022 and will finish the school year in that role before returning to Crookston this summer. He said he thinks he can do a lot of good things in Crookston. “I’m not ready to be done with work,” said Selk. “And there are just some things in the Crookston situation that I think my strengths draw me to and will be able to help the district just overall increase our place in the community and the support that we will be able to provide families and students within the district.”
Like every district across the state, Crookston has financial issues. Selk believes all school districts relied too heavily on ESRA (Covid relief funds from the government), and that state funding hasn’t kept up over the years, which has hurt many districts. “We lived on the extra dollars, probably falsely. A lot of school districts did so in those years right after COVID, when a lot of money was being infused into public school education. And now that money is gone, and that sustainability piece is really what’s coming back to haunt a lot of districts,” said Selk. “And you made some financial decisions at that point in time when there was an abundance of money, and without that funding, now sustaining some of those decisions that you made back then are really challenging. I think the state needs to continue to look at school funding, too.”
Selk added that he wants to make sure Crookston High School graduates are ready for the real world. “I think just staying cutting edge, staying up to date, is always a challenge. Staffing can be a challenge. I think that in a district the size of Crookston, hopefully, there’s enough draw there to give us options when we’re doing some hiring there as well. But staffing can be an issue as well,” said Selk. “And really just providing opportunities for kids. How are we getting the biggest bang for our buck? How are we being responsible to our taxpayers? All those types of things play into the decisions that a district needs to make. But we have to stay grounded in really what we’re in business for, and that is to educate students.”
Selk said he is excited to see familiar faces and get back to work in the Crookston School District. “I’m anxious to see some faces that I have familiarity with, and then to meet some new faces and then meet some new people as well. I am looking forward to this,” said Selk. I’ll be spending some time in the district between now and my official start on July 1st. And hopefully have the opportunity to meet some community members. But additionally, meeting staff and those that I’ll be having the opportunity to serve and lead.”
Selk’s first official day will be July 1.
