Salary and site visit discussed at shared superintendent meeting

Committees from the Rogers City and Posen school districts had their first meeting to discuss a shared superintendent since conducting public forums and answering lingering questions from staff and members of the community. ?What we are doing now is re-gathering the troops and starting to make a plan to move forward,? said Posen interim superintendent Mike Murch of the two-hour session Monday night. ?I have been directed to gather information about the superintendent position itself, to start looking at tying up the loose ends.?

One of the loose ends is what type of salary will be offered to a shared superintendent who will oversee students in two communities. ?I, in fact, have some calls out today to the people who deal with that regularly,? said Murch on the telephone Tuesday. ?Our concern is we want to put a package out there that is going to attract the kind of a person who would be interested and has the ability to do this kind of a job.?

ROGERS CITY board president Mike Marx believes the meeting Monday went well and the process is ?proceeding cautiously. I feel both committees are still dedicated to the idea. We are continuing with the process of realizing that this is somewhat a new situation.? Murch said no commitment has been made to advertise the superintendent position yet, ?but we are trying to find out, are we even in the right ballpark in looking at the salary.? The districts also have to decide what share of the superintendent?s salary will be paid by each respective district.

?Although we haven?t come to a point of recommending anything, we have had some discussion on it, and we talked about it for quite a length of time,? said Murch, ?The way that the school districts are and the way that many of the things are common between both school districts — a split may not be exactly like the student split. There are going to be times when whatever the superintendent does, he may be working for both schools at the same time. ?We don?t know where we are going to end up. It?s in discussion and both sides are very serious about looking at something that is fair and equitable for both sides.?

ALONG WITH deciding the salary of the shared superintendent the committees are looking at having the Michigan Association of School Boards assist in the search. Committee members are also planning a site visit to Maple City Glen Lake/Sutton Bay, which started sharing a superintendent at the beginning of the school year. ?We have a great deal of information from the school districts that have been doing this for six or seven years but we also want to know about the school districts just starting because they are going through exactly what

we may be going through next year at this time and we feel that they can give us some insight and help us along the way so we are trying to set up a sight visit there,? Murch said.

If the boards from each district decide to officially hire a shared superintendent they would like to have July 1, 2006 as a targeted start up date; each district would then be expected to operate under the leadership of an interim superintendent through the end of the school year. Murch has offered his services until Christmas break. He said the Posen board is already in search of his replacement and has three applicants to consider.

?There is still a lot of work to be done but they are ready to move forward,? said Murch. Committee members form Rogers City include Marx, along with board members Scott McLennan and Jo Bush Glenn, while board president Ken Wozniak, and board members Andy Stone and Connie Krajniak, are serving on the committee in Posen.