Eastern Iowa school districts face superintendent shuffles

As the school year winds down, it's the beginning of transitions for a few area administrators.

Both the Anamosa and Clear Creek Amana community school districts will lose their current superintendents on June 30.

“I've had a wonderful 34 years in public education,” said Denise Schares, retiring Clear Creek Amana superintendent. “Our youngest child graduated college and we have a new grandbaby in Portland, Ore. Now seemed like a good time to enjoy family and a less-intense pace.”

Schares is in her third year with the district and called her time as superintendent a “truly tremendous experience.”

The Clear Creek Amana district is in the midst of a search to replace Schares. The school board has hired Johnston, Iowa-based G. Tryon and Associates to assist but no formal timeline has been approved.

A new face in Anamosa

On July 1, Lisa Beames will become the Anamosa district's new superintendent. Beames will take over for Brian Ney, who has been the interim superintendent since July 2010. Ney declined to speak with The Gazette for this article because he had not yet determined his future professional plans.

Lowell Tiedt, president of the Anamosa school board, said that Ney was not asked to leave the district. Board members decided to hire a more permanent head administrator and Beames, currently superintendent of the Van Buren Community School District in Keosauqua, was one of two finalists before officially gaining board approval in February.

Beames described herself as someone who doesn't “get into titles.”

“Way too many titles,” she said in response to an inquiry about her professional past. “Let's just focus on the work.”

Initially, Beames' contract for the Anamosa job referred to the position as the superintendent and curriculum director. She sent a letter to the school board asking them to change the title and stating her desire to explore possibly separating those roles in the future because the “the quality and efficient structures, individually and collectively, of curriculum, instruction and assessment are vital to [the district's] current and future success.”

The board approved her request and subsequently amended her agreement.

“Initially, from the outside in, and that's the dangerous part of the conversation, from the outside in, I think we need some additional support in the area of curriculum and instruction,” Beames said. “We need to make sure we have the right structures in place to support our students, to support our administrators and to support our staff… That is a concern that I have, that we don't have that position in order to allow us to do that.”

Beames has spent a portion of her career focusing on curriculum. She was director of instruction in the Marshalltown Community School District and also took a curriculum and school improvement role in the New London Community School District.

Beames currently lives in Mount Pleasant and she pursued the position in Anamosa in part because of the two cities' similarities, but making the final decision to move was difficult.

“My husband [Joe] and I wanted to be closer to a larger urban area yet it was a smaller school,” she said. “[Anamosa] is in a great [area education agency] and it's got a great community college. Those are two things that are really great resources in what we need to do … The school is still small enough to have a more personal feel for it.”

Beames praised the district's “great teachers, great administrators and talented kids” and said she's excited to start her work as Anamosa's new superintendent.

“There's a lot of work to do here. There's a lot of organization things we'll be working on from [Keosauqua] to get to know the district so we can hit the ground running,” she said. “We'll take a whole system look. It's hard to sit here and say, ‘This is what we need to do,' because I don't know the system well enough.”