Latest news, weather, high school sports for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

IRONWOOD -- Friday evening there was a special meeting of the Ironwood Area School District Board of Trustees. They used the marathon session to interview candidates for the Superintendent position currently occupied by James Rayner. Jim will be retiring this year after and embattled tenure with the teachers at IASD. While the IASD board failed to renew Rayner’s contract for one more year, Rayner has apparently found a more receptive school board at Ewen – Trout Creek.

The three finalists for the superintendent’s position are Tim Kolesar, currently Ironwood’s High School Principal, Mike Gault current superintendent at Chassell School District and Greg Jones formerly of Niles Michigan where he was the Principal of the Brandywine High School.

Jones is currently unemployed after disagreements at with the teachers union and his former school board.

Gault on the other hand is effectively eliminating his own job at Chassell. While employed at Chassell, the district has gone from three administrators, to two administrators. Gault believes it is time for the district to go to a single administrator. He is either going to find another position in another district or buy into his early retirement. Mike started his career as a music teacher.

Kolesar came loaded for bear, it is his job to win or lose. The principal brought along many reports which document the effectiveness of his tenure as the principal of Luther L. Wright. He covered his resume in great detail from the time he graduated from LL Wright to this very semester.

He also returned several times to his current standing as Trustee at Gogebic Community College. Tim is also a grad of GCC and NMU. Kolesar received a degree from NMU in 1977 where he majored biology, chemistry, marketing and management. He later proceeded to earn his master’s degree. Kolesar told the board that at GCC the board members there receive a monthly overview report which includes information on many facets of the colleges operations. Jim Lorenson has created an atmosphere of open communication at GCC and Kolesar stated that he would do so at Ironwood Area Schools.

While discussing collective bargaining Kolesar also alluded to the system of interests based bargaining currently used at GCC, and how well it has worked at the college. Many other schools and municipal governments use a collective bargaining system called “Adversarial Bargaining”.

In answering the question on budgeting Kolesar stated he would form a team for that process, which would include:  Bruce Kerkove, Linda Pisani, Tina Carlson, Teri Maki, the H.S. Principal and the Superintendent’s Secretary.

The IASD asked 16 questions of the three candidates, which were followed by questions from the audience. The entire interview process took nearly five hours. By the end of the interviews everyone was ready to run for the doors.

The board did not make a decision Friday, nor will it make a decision at its Monday board meeting. Instead, the board will create a committee to check the candidate’s references.

Guest article written by Lou Bonagura of IronwoodInfo.com 

For more pictures and video to go along with this story, and for more news around the clock from the western U.P., visit IronwoodInfo.com.