SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) –The Sioux Falls School District is asking for the community’s input on who should be the next superintendent.
The current superintendent, Jane Stavem, is resigning in June and the district has begun the process of looking for her replacement. They’re asking for feedback on the district’s current performance and what areas they want the future superintendent to focus on.
“The idea of the survey is to have the community and have teachers help us to kind of figure out, what is it that we need right now? What’s the personality type? What’s the experience type? What’s the knowledge type? What connections do we need them to have,” School Board President Carly Reiter said.
The survey will be available for parents, teachers, administrators, business owners and community members until November 25. The consulting group helping the district will take the responses from the survey and separate focus groups and create a leadership profile for the district.
The official search for a new superintendent won’t begin until the start of 2025, Reiter explained, but they’re using the survey to understand the current needs of the community.
“We wanna make sure that if there’s things that we need to adjust for, make accommodations for, that we know what those things are so that we can continue those relationships that we have,” Reiter said.
Stavem was hired as superintendent in 2020 during the pandemic. Reiter says the needs for the district will be different now than they were four years ago. Over the last few years, the district has added new schools, more partnerships in the CTE area and with colleges and connections with local businesses.
Although they are still waiting for responses to the survey, Reiter said the school board would like someone who is available to interact with the community and attend school events.
“Really being visible and in touch with the community in order to make good decisions based not just on their own experiences, their thoughts from their office, but actually out experiencing what’s going on in the district.”
Ideally, the district would prefer the candidate to be local but will consider national applicants if they are the best fit based on the survey and focus group responses.
“We could certainly, you know, keep it more of a local search and not do a nationwide search,” Reiter said. “That obviously saves us time and money as well because we’re not paying large moving costs or flying people to interview.”
The survey can be found at this link.
