Board interviews next 3 of 6 candidates

By Tim Engstrom | Albert Lea Tribune

Published Friday, February 6, 2009

The Albert Lea school board Thursday afternoon interviewed the second three of six candidates in a search to fill the superintendent position.

The first three were interviewed Wednesday evening. The interviews were held in the Board Room at Brookside Education Center. A handful of educators attended both rounds. The six finalists, selected from 17 applicants, were announced Monday.

The board narrowed the field of six to four in a meeting Thursday evening (see accompanying story). Even so, here are what the finalists said Thursday and a slice of their background:

Mike Funk

Soldiers at the Albert Lea Armory unit likely know Funk because he is a lieutenant colonel in the Minnesota National Guard. He commanded a battalion deployment from July 2007 to July 2008 in a NATO peacekeeping mission to Kosovo. He has been superintendent at Bird Island, Olivia, Lake Lillian School District, often called BOLD, for four years.

He has five years of experience as a principal in Pepin, Wis., and has taught in the Dover-Eyota and Rochester districts. He possesses a doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

He said he grew up in Rochester and attended Lourdes High School.

He said one strength is his leadership skills and ability to focus on what is important. He said he understands big systems and is a skilled communicator.

"I’ve got a good idea for drawing the outline of the picture and having the other people color in the lines," Funk said.

He said a weakness is that he has not been as visible as before the Kosovo deployment because he has been spending time with his family as a result of being gone for a year. He said he it is important to be seen and be approachable. He said he attends events his children are in and gets perspectives he doesn’t find in the school building.

Community relations, he said, are vital, particularly as districts receive fewer state-aid dollars and need to go to their voters. He said he is on the diversity council at BOLD and is a member of the American Legion.

He said he gets frustrated with people who have preconceived notions.

A key to leadership, he said, is integrity — doing the right thing.

"Make the hard decisions and do what’s best for kids," Funk said.

Without a strategic vision, an organization becomes stale, he said. He said vision is vital for operations, curriculum and the budget.

"It puts down on paper where the district is headed but more importantly are the aims," Funk said.

He said he motivates through relationships. He cited a James MacGregor Burns book called "Transforming Leadership" about finding what intrinsically motivates people.

"In Kosovo, it was a key to developing relationships, even though the soldiers had all this weaponry," Funk said.

He said the school-funding system has been in place since the early 1900s and needs revision but added he hasn’t had much experience with alternative teacher compensation, such as Q-Comp.

"I like to suggest things are research-based," he said, noting a Star Tribune story that more or less said the jury is still out on Q-Comp’s success. It said 90 percent of Q-Comp districts are getting more money than they were as districts under the usual formula. Funk said Q-Comp has unique components but worries that the funding stream will shift the tax burden to local voters as more districts sign on.

Albert Lea uses Q-Comp. He added he looks forward to being part of the model.

He said his district is looking at cuts but all-day, everyday kindergarten is not on the chopping block.

"I think it is a crime that the state of Minnesota is funding it at 55 percent," Funk said, adding that studies show its effectiveness.

He said he has shown the ability to make hard choices. Albert Lea is four times the size of BOLD, yet BOLD has lost 200 in the time that Albert Lea has lost 500. He said the focus is on what is best for children.

Funk talked about diversity in terms of America, Greek and Armenian troops he led in Kosovo who didn’t always share the same languages.

"The key there to diversity is shared experiences," he said. "You try to find things people have in common and build on that."

He said it is good that Hispanics are migrating less and staying more. He cited community get-togethers he has held to talk about diversity and shared experiences. He said it is good for non-Hispanic kids to get exposure to Spanish.

He said many people point to race when it comes to discrimination but poverty is where discrimination happens.

Funk said the staff development at BOLD is coming in line with the aims of the district. Staff development at BOLD requires teachers to visit other schools "to see how they do it."

When levies are on the table, the school board "really comes into play" because they grasp the community history and can be honest about how to approach the situation. He said it also pays to talk to business leaders and see the threshold for taxes within the community.

He said evaluations will be goal-focused, rather than putting a number in a box.

Funk said he admires the school-improvement goal of No Child Left Behind and Annual Yearly Progress, but the real value is identifying where the problems are.

Funk said he wants to be superintendent because he wants greater opportunity for his daughters and said Albert Lea has a "dynamic system."

He said he has commanded large groups overseas and seeks the next level of leadership.

Jamie Skjeveland

He has been the superintendent at Crosby-Ironton for three years. He has five years of superintendent experience from West Salem and Niagara schools in Wisconsin. In Marshfield, Wis., he spent four years as a principal and as an assistant principal.

Skjeveland holds a doctorate from William Howard Taft University.

He started off by saying it was great to be back. He grew up in Austin and once taught in New Richland.

"I would like to challenge assumptions about public education," he said.

Skjeveland said he would recruit people to work for change rather than have them be resistant to change. He said a strength is bringing people a voice through meeting with them.

"If your superintendent is not listening, you probably possess a PR problem," he said.

A weakness is he doesn’t spend enough time reading progressive journals and said he hates talking about himself. A frustrating trait in others, he said, is support staff who don’t believe they make a difference in the lives of kids.

Crosby-Ironton was below the student achievement across the board and he told the public. When staff members said they didn’t like him putting it in those terms, he said "let’s change the story."

Visibility is key because taxpayers need someone they can confide in, reaching beyond just going to basketball games. He said he is the president of the Crow Wing County Family Services Collaborative and vice president of the local snowmobile club. He connects with the faith, business and overall communities.

He said he is familiar with Q-Comp but Crosby has not done that.

"Teachers are professional and deserve to be paid as such. It’s just that simple," he said, adding that they also need to understand when the funding isn’t there.

"We need to stop protecting this agronomist model that’s been in place for two centuries," Skjeveland said.

He said he facilitates communication when making hard funding choices such as biology or chemistry and basketball or band. Crosby-Ironton cut funding for sports and the community stepped up to find alternative funding.

He said districts need to seek out minorities and make them feel welcome.

"They don’t show up because they don’t feel comfortable being in this environment," Skjeveland said.

The staff development at Crosby-Ironton has parent involvement and support staff involvement.

"It’s been a real team effort and we have made pronounced changes and continue to look at the data," Skjeveland said.

When it comes to levies, he would work hard to have stakeholders share their vision for the community and school district. He said he values the positions of the naysayers.

"You need to tap into the naysayers, the people who say no. They are not negative," he said. "They support education and kids. They say no because of the way it is being delivered."

He asked, if the superintendent is not part of the strategic plan, then who is?

"Where are we going and how will we know we’ve arrived when we get there?" Skjeveland asked.

He said the Crosby-Ironton board approves goals for staff evaluations.

Skjeveland said the districts he has been in has shamed AYP. He said the children are important, "not some federal program that has unrealistic goals that all school districts will be proficient by 2014."

When Crosby-Ironton failed AYP, he received zero phone calls, he said. The people there care more about the MCA-II test scores, and it was insulting to have AYP coaches tell them goals they already had set.

He consistently says personal priorities for his leadership team should be health, family, then job. He told an anecdote about the Dvorak typewriter keyboard that was too fast and keys became stuck. The present-day Qwerty keyboard was created to slow typists down, yet it remains in mass use in the age of computers. He said he would bring ways to do things more efficiently to Albert Lea.

Mary Smidt

She has been the superintendent at Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley in western Minnesota for seven years. She presently also serves as elementary principal in Clinton. Smidt has four years of experience as an elementary school principal in schools in Arizona and in South Dakota. He worked for 17 years as a counselor in Chisago Lakes.

She has a specialist degree in educational leadership from Minnesota State University.

Smidt said her favorite job from her career is teacher, but noted she remains one.

"We all teach. As a superintendent, I am a teacher every day," Smidt said.

She said her strength is as a real go-getter but it can be a weakness, too. She said a trait that frustrates her is when people are unwilling to deal with problems head on.

She has been able to lead Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley through tough salary negotiations but now the district is having a good year. She said it helps to explain change is not to make life hard for teachers but to make life better for kids. She emphasized research and data in decision-making and motivating people.

Smidt said it allows patterns to develop and people can see the gaps.

She said visibility builds community trust and said parents can tell if you care about what you do. She attends school plays and other events "as much as I am able."

Smidt said she would work to make people feel like they are part of the district and would attend meetings held in the community — not a one-way situation.

She had exposure to alternative compensation models in Arizona and had to come up with expectations for student achievement. She said sometimes schools focus too much on student achievement and not enough on what’s important, allow the achievement then to follow through.

CGB does not have Q-Comp because it isn’t seen as a stable funding source. As for budgeting, she aims high. She said starts with salaries and then goes from there to see what the district doesn’t have. The board gives direction on what the district cannot live without.

Smidt spoke about a Hutterite colony in her district and used it for examples on diversity. She also talked about diversity of many kinds she faced in Arizona.

"I quite enjoy working with all of them," she said.

She said there is not much diversity at CGB.

Smidt presently delegates staff development to the high school principal, and they watch for effectiveness.

"You really have to zero in on your curriculum cycle," she said. "You need a narrow focus so you can get more bang for your buck."

Data is needed when asking the voters to pass a levy, Smidt said, and it needs to be looked at carefully before recommendations are made.

"People have a lot of opinions and you need to rely on people who have a history in the community," she said.

She said closing a school has been tough and can cost at the ballot box but her district will need to get under one roof in the next 10 years, but first start with closing some of the school and sharing facilities, particularly gymnasiums.

The strategic plan should deal with buildings, she said.

"I’ve said we need to do this but we need to back off this year," Smidt said.

She has an administrative team of one person and writes an evaluation in a manner that won’t be counterproductive. At a bigger school, she would be a proponent of job targets, personal goals and identifying goals of the administrative team.

CGB is not on the AYP list but partially because of the small sample size.

"We have a lot of growth needs in the district, particularly mathematics, but it is hard to sell because we are making AYP," Smidt said.

The district began targeting the needs and finding programs for students, she said. They implemented AIMSweb, which monitors student progress.

Building trust is different for different people, Smidt said, and it helps to ask: "What do you need from me to help build trust as a team?"

She said she wants to be superintendent at Albert Lea because she feels a bigger school district would better suit her skills and her place as a female administrator. She said she took the job at CGB to get back to Minnesota and the district has been great to her, particularly after seeing the lack of quality education in Arizona.

"But now I’m ready to make a career advancement," she said.

She spoke highly of Albert Lea, Lakeview Elementary School and Albert Lea High School.

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