Part of a series.
In the booklet of directions to schools from North Tama (the PDF, as always, is downloadable in the sidebar on this blog), I made it a point to include the names of school officials — superintendent, principal, and athletic director — at the top of each listing. But in the nearly two decades since I started, those positions have turned into a game of musical chairs.
This is where the booklet overlaps with another interest of mine — charting the transitions of rural Iowa schools in an era of declining enrollment and state funding challenges.
There is, at least in my perception, more turnover in the ranks. It wasn’t unheard of for a name I had with one school to move to another as people changed jobs. But then, as schools started sharing superintendents, a name would be in two places and not be wrong. Moreover, a replacement for one two-year period might not even last that long.
The most recent example is also an interesting story — The superintendent at Johnston, one of Iowa’s largest districts, quit that job, only to get right back into education as principal at Collins-Maxwell. But he doesn’t know if he’ll be back for the 2019-20 school year.
Complicating things further, the increase in turnover has resulted in positions not being finalized until weeks before the school year begins. AGWSR hired its new superintendent at the end of June. That means that even relying on the directory for a just-completed school year runs the risk of sending an e-mail to someone who isn’t there anymore. While the administrators’ names can be considered the least essential component, there’s value in knowing who’s there.
Whatever the reason, the response rate for e-mails I’ve sent athletic directors asking for updates hasn’t been great. I resort to finding what I need online (despite the clunkiness of some schools’ websites). And that issue is where this monologue is going next.