The Board of Education for the West Bend School District announced today that Erik Olson will serve as the Superintendent of the West Bend School District starting July 1, 2016. Olson replaces Ted Neitzke, who will begin his new role as Chief Education Officer at CESA 6. Neitzke has served as the superintendent since 2011.
“The school board conducted a very thorough recruiting process, with significant community input, and Erik Olson stood out as the candidate considered best qualified to lead the West Bend School District as Superintendent,” said Rick Parks, School Board president. “He brings extensive classroom experience which complements his deep administrative background. I’m excited to begin working with Erik.”
The Board approved a two-year contract for Olson with a salary of $155,000.
Owen
Everything but tech support.
Here’s hoping he knows exactly what he is getting into
As with the districts sports programs , no experienced person ( i.e. An active , successful Superintendant ) will want anything to do with the dysfunction that the district has experienced in the last decade
I wish him well
He should know what he is getting into – candidates typically do extensive due diligence. He lives close enough that he probably came to a few public events at the school – good way to gather intel on the ground by chatting up parents, students, and staff. There are also newspaper articles, social media (like this site), online recordings of the meetings, and of course, the “network” of other administrators. In the Daily News he cited being familiar with the West Bend School District for the past 5 years, and for the past 3 years consulting with the current superintendent so that he could replicate West Bend’s successful practices at the Sun Prairie School District.
Fellow certainly has extensive expertise in the area of continuous improvement. Serves on a few committees and acts as a consultant.
Sun Prairie has an extensive backlog of building projects that must be approved by referendum ($160 – 180 Million plus+) due to growing enrollment. They are also going to be hitting a wall due to revenue caps. Plan is to do a referendum this fall for one school and an operations referendum. They did a survey about the building referendums and felt that there would not be enough community support to do all the projects at once. Found that about 80% of the electorate do not have children in school or are district employees. According to Ballotpedia, most of the time the Board votes are unified. The only time there was not consensus was on upping administrative pay – that was voted down. So, in some ways, a lot of the challenges are the same.
Hate to see the current superintendent leave, but a 5 year run is pretty typical. This guy certainly looks well equipped to carry on what has been started. Hopefully he gets full support – from those who wanted a change and those who did not.
The last thing this district needs is someone who consulted with Neitzke 3 years ago about the “successes” of the district. Exactly what successes is he referring to? It’s well documented the district has been in shambles for the last 5 years under Neitzke. Let’s hope he’s bringing something much different than Ted, but I won’t hold my breath.
Mark,
Dysfunction?
I thought you denied public schools are dysfunctional when it came to vouchers.
You are admitting a suburban school district is dysfunctional like MPS?