The Manitowoc Public School District is going to start this school year without a superintendent.
Board Member Kerry Trask tells Seehafer News that the special meeting held yesterday afternoon was for the resignation of Superintendent Jim Feil.
Trask says this meeting was brought forth very quickly and Trask says the board and Feil agreed this was best for the district.
“Jim Feil said alright, I’ll agree to go,” he explained. “Let’s just make an agreement, a fair agreement. There was discussion and some negotiation. A lawyer was used to kind of mediate.”
Trask says both the school board and Feil reached an impasse.
“Especially on the building project and a few other things,” he described. “And there was a real disagreement about style. In Trask’s opinion: “Jim is very much of a central administration unilaterally making policy and then having the board kind of ratify it. But, you know the board right now is much more engaged of making policy ourselves.”
Trask says projects like the possibility of closing schools will be discussed, but the district isn’t going to panic.
“There’s a lot of things that need to be fixed,” he stated. “And there’s been a lot of neglect for quite a long time now, and things that are dangerous. We’re going to have to triage it, and we’re going to have to take care of the things that need to be taken care of right away, right away.”
He says they must also work with the Success for All program since the district has already bought into it.
An interim superintendent will be appointed to help run MPSD, but it’s unknown when that will happen.
Trask also says the board isn’t looking for a new superintendent right now, with students returning to school in two weeks.
The board could start looking in February.
There will be a special executive committee meeting sometime next week to talk about what the board will do next now that Feil is leaving. His last official day is August 25.
