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Superintendent on the job for South Gray districts
Published 7/22/2008 in News : Education
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
COPELAND -- It's been a tough month for Jay Zehr.
If learning the education laws and jargon for a new state, anticipating the groundbreaking of a new school building project, adjusting to new school board members and getting to know new faculty and staff weren't enough, Zehr also has another challenge. He's the leader for not one, but two school districts.
He began July 1 as the shared superintendent for USD 476 Copeland and USD 371 Montezuma. He was hired at a $95,400 salary split evenly between the two school districts.
Zehr is returning to his original childhood home of western Kansas after spending most of his life in Oklahoma, most recently in a six-year tenure as superintendent at the Sterling Independent School District in Sterling, Okla.
Before moving to Oklahoma during elementary school, he and many of his eight siblings spent time in Spearville. Their father taught and coached there, as well as in Ingalls and Protection.
"Education has just been in my family for years," he said. "That's all I've ever known."
Now with a 23-year education career, a wife, Angie, who will be the English as a Second Language testing coordinator for the Copeland and Montezuma school districts, and a daughter, Baylei, who will be a junior at South Gray High School, Zehr said he is trying to get used to Kansas' way of doing education.
"A lot of it is the same, but it's called different things," he said.
He and other Copeland district leaders also are preparing to break ground on a replacement junior high school to be funded by a bond issue voters approved in April.
The $4 million bond issue was to be used for construction of 10 classrooms (each at 900 square feet, more than twice the current size), five administrative offices, a work room, a counselor's office and a gym. According to supporters, the project was proposed because the junior high has been too crowded since USD 476 entered its interlocal agreement with USD 371 Montezuma in the 1991-92 school year.
Under the agreement, the two separate school districts' students stay in their hometowns for elementary school. Then, all go to South Gray Junior High School, in Copeland, for sixth through eighth grade, and South Gray High School, in Montezuma, for ninth through 12th grade. Only Copeland voters are paying for the bond issue.
Zehr said the Copeland district will accept bids for the project next month, and if all goes as planned, workers will break ground on the school in September.
As he deals with the costs of a building project, the new superintendent said he expects to face other fiscal challenges, too.
As in many school districts in Oklahoma, Kansas and elsewhere, teacher recruiting and retention can be a struggle, he said. It might help to raise salaries, but "we're spending all our money on fuel and food and electricity and natural gas -- consumables."
"You take this job home with you and you worry about it," he said.
However, Zehr also said he enjoys working in education and especially spending time with students in the classroom or at extracurricular activities.
Zehr's shared superintendency is a return to the model the Copeland and Montezuma school districts had used until the end of the 2006-07 school year, when Don Grover, superintendent for both districts at the time, resigned late in the year.
J.T. Croft, president of the Copeland Board of Education, said the boards seemed to like the idea of a shared superintendent.
"I think it leads to similar outcomes and keeps everyone on track as far as the educational process goes," he said. "It's continuity of leadership -- we think that's important."
However, Croft said that because Grover had resigned late in the school year, the boards were unable to find a candidate willing to lead both school districts. Therefore, they hired Connie Claborn in Copeland and Demitry Evancho in Montezuma on a one-year basis, then found Zehr to take on the shared position. Sharing a superintendent represents some cost savings to Montezuma, which is paying half a school chief's salary. But in Copeland, Croft said its own superintendent also could serve as a principal for the schools. Now, the district pays a bit more with the new hire of Jim Howard as principal for Copeland Elementary School and South Gray Junior High School, at a salary of $50,000.
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