The Superintendent Search has entered the final stage. Final interviews will take place on February 3 and February 4. Photo courtesy of hastingspublicschools.org.
The decision for a new superintendent involves many people: teachers, staff, administration, community members, and more. However, what do the students want in a superintendent?
Students participated in the HPS superintendent search in the Hastings Senior High School library conference room on January 14, 2025.
The meeting was led by the Norris High School Superintendent, Dr. Derrick Joel, the head of McPherson & Jacobson, L.L.C., Executive Recruitment and Development. Joel interviewed students about the Hastings environment, the HPS District, and the superintendent replacement. Except for the senior class, four students were randomly selected from each grade level at HHS to be a part of the superintendent search student panel.
“[Dr. Derrick Joel] runs an organization… They’re [national], so they’re connected to superintendents all over the United States. What they do is basically look for superintendents for school districts and try to help find the best one that fits,” junior Ezekiel Verhage said. “I don’t think there [were] any seniors because they’re leaving.”
A focus of the meeting was the qualities students were looking for in a superintendent. One quality mentioned during the discussion was inclusivity with spending and the allocation of funds to various programs.
“A lot of our choir fundraising comes from either the superintendent and Yost trying to ask for it… Also, a lot of it comes from fundraising. How we mainly fund our stuff for show choir is through Tiger Clash, which gets us thousands of dollars each year… ,” Verhage said. “I think it would be nice to just have some spread-out funds.”
For junior Lauryn Boutin, experience is a quality that a superintendent should have. HPS contains a large number of students from many different backgrounds, so Boutin believes experience is needed in order to have a better grasp of this.
“Here at Hastings, there’s a lot of [impoverished] people and there’s a lot of diverse people here… We need someone with experience because [they are] not gonna know how to cover the whole HPS if they don’t know the full background of how [diverse] it is,” Boutin said.
A quality Verhage likes in the current superintendent, Jeff Schneider, and would like the next one to also share is humbleness.
“The superintendent, whenever he’d go to a game or something, he wouldn’t try to get in for free. He would always pay even though, you know, if he wanted to use the superintendent [status],” Verhage said.
In regards to the district, some want the new superintendent to focus more attention on the area of special needs students. Implementing staff who are more sensitive while working with special needs students and accommodations to suit the individual needs of the students is a primary concern. In the past years, programs such as unified bowling and unified show choir have been created.
“This is a heavy topic I think for me… because I have a brother with autism. There was another person that was talking about this… He was like, ‘I wish we had more involvement with the special needs or being more [considerate] to their conditions,’” Boutin said. “There’s so many different spectrums of autism, and the way that [a teacher] handled it, at least in the past for my brother, wasn’t good.”
Something Verhage wants to see in the district with the new superintendent is promptness in change. One of the changes he would like to see is vaping prevention.
“I know there’s obviously processes to go through things, but just trying to get through changes quicker because it takes a while for things to change here at Hastings High School,” Verhage said. “It [has] been said that we’re going to get vape sensors in the restroom to stop people from vaping, and it has not happened in a single one. I don’t want to go into the restroom and smell like ‘cotton candy lavender experience,’ some random chemical. It’s irritating; I don’t like it; I don’t enjoy it.”
When it comes to dangerous weather conditions, the superintendent is the one who decides if it is safe for students to go to school. Schneider was the superintendent who had brought back late-starts and cancelled school during poor weather, and Verhage wants this to continue and improve further in future years.
“He’s really stern about when school actually gets cut out which I think is a really good factor about our superintendent, thinking about, ‘Okay, can people actually get here or not to schools in the district?’” Verhage said.
Many students at HHS are a part of extracurricular activities, whether they are in sports, clubs, or academic-related activities. As a member of the HHS National Honor Society, basketball team, and track team, Boutin believes that the extracurricular activities and academics HPS currently provides is at a good state.
“[The district] is very good with the activities and extracurriculars. Another thing is the classes that they provide. We have a lot of honors, dual credit… We just have overall good staff and good curriculum,” Boutin said.
Others think the academic standard is too lenient and want the students to be pushed more.
“I know it’s not good to always push… I feel like that would be really good for somebody like the superintendent to say, ‘Hey. Your class isn’t performing well or this team isn’t performing well. What’s going on with you guys?’” Verhage said. “…be willing to talk to coaches about what they can do to actually improve themselves.”
Taking part in the superintendent search will allow students to share their viewpoint and can aid in making changes that will help benefit the entire district.
“I think that it’s important to see all sides [and] all perspectives because I feel like there’s a lot of the kids in this superintendent search… we all have different qualities and [are] all involved in different things,” Boutin said.
Student involvement is a large part of the superintendent search, determining the future of the district, and determining the future of the students themselves.
“The goal of the student panel was to sit down with the selection committee and give them insights into what they would like to see in a new superintendent,” Linden said. “According to the feedback that I got from the Selection Committee, our students were the most engaged student body that they have ever worked with and they enjoyed conversing with our student panel.”
