Iowa schools draw fewer candidates for superintendent jobs

When Greg Batenhorst decided to retire as superintendent of Mount Vernon schools this summer, he gave the school board over a year’s notice to find a qualified replacement — reflecting the challenges Iowa districts face in filling their top education job.

About one-third of the state’s school districts will see a change in leadership between the 2023-24 school year and this fall. There are about 50 K-12 superintendents leaving their districts, according to the Iowa Association for School Boards. Many are retiring. Others are leaving after serving as an interim leader. Still others are leaving for another opportunity.

But fewer qualified candidates are seeking the jobs, and those who get it now tend to stay only for a few years, school leadership search firms say.

The challenges make it difficult for a district to find the right person who will lead it through long-term strategic planning, setting goals for student achievement, planning for future facilities and wading through financial quandaries.

Eastern Iowa schools, in particular, have seen a big shift in school leadership over the last three years:

Batenhorst, who also is ending his contract a year early, has been superintendent in the Mount Vernon Community School District for seven years. But the average tenure for K-12 school leaders is much shorter than that — between four and five years for superintendents across the United States, search firms say.

  Buy Photo

Cedar Rapids-based Ray & Associates — one of the largest national search firms for school leadership — has a higher-than average stay for superintendents it has placed, at about eight years. Ray & Associates President Molly Schwarzhoff attributes this to the firm’s relationship-building and “personal” approach.

“We find the right fit for the district,” she said.

Yet the number of people applying for these jobs — which open pay at a six-figure salary — is shrinking. Schwarzhoff said the number of applicants the firm receives for jobs is about half what it was five years ago.

An open K-12 superintendent position receives an average of 20 to 30 applicants, but Schwarzhoff said these positions used to see up to 70 applicants per opening before the pandemic began in 2020.

The majority of superintendents in Iowa originally are from in-state, but many are hired from neighboring states, Schwarzhoff said.

Candidates for school leadership positions also are trending younger.

“I’m 76, so back when I was a kid, the guy who stayed around the longest ended up being the superintendent,” said Rick Elliott, president of the Mount Vernon school board. “Nowadays people who have a career goal of being administrators prepare themselves for that. By the time they’re 40, they already have the education and have gone through several administrative roles — activities director, principal, associated superintendent.”

The Mount Vernon board used Ray & Associates to guide the search process to replace Batenhorst. The board hired Matthew Leeman, associate superintendent of the Clear Creek Amana Community School District, as the next leader in Mount Vernon. He begins July 1.

Elliot said Leeman will be tasked with difficult budget decisions, as many schools struggle financially amid declining enrollment and per-pupil state aid that fails to keep up with inflation. Elliot said there will be some “creative budgeting” in the coming years in the district.

“I sincerely hope we don’t have to cut any staff,” Elliot said. “We are very proud of our teachers, our administrative staff, supporting staff — nearly all of them who live in our community. We don’t want to lose jobs because of budgetary problems.”

Profile of a leader

In seeking a new superintendent, the Cedar Rapids Community School District initially hired interim superintendent Art Sathoff for about six months during the 2022-23 school year to give time for a more “robust” search, said David Tominsky, vice president of the Cedar Rapids school board.

  Buy Photo

Grover, who had been superintendent at Grand Island Public Schools in Nebraska, in her first year has led the district through a bond referendum, which voters overwhelmingly rejected; shepherded a new strategic plan to approval by the school board; and begun a new facility planning process with large community engagement.

Tominsky said choosing a new school leader was a “big decision.” The district hired an Illinois-based search firm — Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates — to assist with the search process.

Search firms often begin by developing a plan with the school board, interviewing school board members individually and as a group to create a profile for an ideal candidate.

School staff and community members also are interviewed to build a profile for the kind of leader they want for their schools. Often, a survey is available to help gather more input from the community.

School boards then receive a list of top candidates from the search firm and have the chance to interview them.

The cost of these searches can be between $8,000 to $35,000, depending on the size of the district, Schwarzhoff said. Ray & Associates, for example, bases its fees off enrollment and location of the district.

Trent Grundmeyer, founder of Grundmeyer Leader Services, a national school leader search firm based in Iowa, said a newer trend he’s seeing is that school boards are searching for a superintendent who can help to recruit and retain staff amid a teacher shortage.

Tominsky agrees this was important in the Cedar Rapids school district’s search for a new superintendent last year.

Grundmeyer said the firm is hired for about 80 percent of school leader searches in Iowa that use a search firm. About 8 percent of the candidates they place are from out of state, and about 35 percent are women, he said. Most recently, Grundmeyer Leader Services assisted with the Linn-Mar superintendent search.

Over the last few years, Grundmeyer Leader Services has assisted to replace two superintendents who had been in their leadership positions for almost 30 years. These were in the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows school district in Northern Iowa and Bedford Community School District in Southern Iowa.

“You’re not going to see that much anymore,” said Grundmeyer, talking about the longevity of some of the school leaders.

It’s “not good on the system” when a new school leader comes in, changes the district’s culture and moves on, he said.

Grundmeyer said he’s beginning to see some school districts make efforts toward “succession planning” — coaching internal candidates for the job of superintendent in the future. That could be a good strategy for creating continuity in school leadership, he said.

He cautions school boards away from trying to find someone completely different from the last school leader. “That can be a shock to the system,” Grundmeyer said.

Linn-Mar school board President Barry Buchholz said the search for now-Superintendent Kortemeyer was his third superintendent search in his 16 years on the board.

Buchholz reflected fondly on former Linn-Mar Superintendent Katie Mulholland, who retired from the school district in 2014 after more than a decade as the schools’ leader. Having a long-term leader like that “makes life a lot easier,” Buchholz said.

‘Late to the show’ in searching for a new school leader

The Central DeWitt Community School District in Eastern Iowa is searching for a new superintendent. Current Superintendent Dan Peterson announced in March his plans to resign after 16 years.

Central DeWitt used Grundmeyer in its searches earlier this year for a curriculum director and high school principal. Hiring search firms to fill other district-level leadership positions — like chief finance officer, chief academic officer and a human resource officer — is becoming more common, leaders of search firms say.

Many superintendents are hired as early as November before their July start date of the next calendar year. Central DeWitt school board President Mike Zimmer said the district is “late to the show.”

The district hired Grundmeyer Leader Services to help with the superintendent search. It had 11 candidates, which Zimmer said is a “reasonable” number, especially for this time in the year.

Zimmer said the district of 1,600 students is a “steppingstone” for superintendents seeking experience. “If they could stay 10 years, we’d be counting our blessings,” he said.

If the school board doesn’t find a winning candidate this round, it will look to hire an interim superintendent and begin the search process again this fall, Zimmer said.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com