West Fargo school interviews begin
By Erin Hemme Froslie, The Forum
Published Friday, April 21, 2006
A familiar face greeted West Fargo School Board members on Thursday as they kicked off interviews for the district's next superintendent.
Louise Dardis, the district's assistant superintendent, was the first semifinalist to answer questions from the board.
Scott Staska, superintendent for the Rocori School District in Cold Spring, Minn., also was interviewed.
Two candidates - Dana Diesel Wallace of North Carolina and Todd Hess of Alaska, will be interviewed today. Matthew Wendt of Kansas and Rick Buresh of Bismarck will be interviewed on Sunday. Each interview lasts about two hours.
The board expects to decide Monday whether to offer the position to one of the candidates or to narrow the number of candidates.
Dardis has held several positions in the West Fargo School District since she started in 1979, working her way up from teacher to elementary principal to assistant superintendent. She has been in that job, which focuses strongly on curriculum and professional development, for nearly seven years.
Next spring or fall she will receive a doctorate in education leadership from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
Her strengths include abilities to relate to a variety of people and to look at education as a team process, she told the board.
She also isn't satisfied with the status quo.
";I'm always asking how we can do things better. What's next?"; she said.
Her knowledge of the School District and community members also would be a benefit to the board, she said.
Her management style embraces the philosophy of ";on your feet and on the beat"; - a promise to be visible to staff, students, parents and community members.
When delegating tasks, she likes to make expectations clear and then finds ways for the person to be successful.
That is the best way to communicate and to keep a pulse on what people think, she said.
Staska has been in his current position since 2002. The district has 2,300 students.
Before that, he worked as a teacher and high school principal at Barnesville (Minn.) Public Schools and as a principal and superintendent at Yellow Medicine East Schools.
He received a specialist degree in education administration from the Tri-College University in Fargo and Moorhead.
Staska described himself as a collaborative leader with an open-door policy. The best thing a superintendent can do to ease tensions during conflict is to provide people with good information so they can understand how a decision was made, he said.
To communicate with staff and the community, he writes a weekly column for the local paper and tapes a segment for the local access cable channel.
He and the Rocori board are starting to hold listening sessions in the district's cafes and other community places.
He uses three questions to keep tabs on what the community and staff want: What do we do well? What don't we do well? Where do you want us to be in five to 10 years?
One of the hardest things for him is to delegate, he told the board.
";I like to be involved. That said, we hire good people to do a job. Part of my job is to get out of their way so they can do it.";
Staska also talked briefly about a school shooting at Rocori in 2003 when two students died.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Erin Hemme Froslie at (701) 241-5534 |
