Update: Principals Will Trade Schools Come Fall

Come next fall four Stillwater Area Public Schools principals will be greeting students at each other's schools.

Principal Andy Fields will leave Lake Elmo Elementary to lead Oak-Land Junior High School while current Principal Derek Berg will take over at which Principal Heather Nelson will leave for while Principal Stephen Gorde will take over at Lake Elmo.

“This is a school district with many outstanding principal leaders,” said Tom Nelson, superintendent. “I think we all understand the desire we feel as professionals to expand our horizons and try new things. It is exciting to see our principals seeking new opportunities, and it is even more exciting that we can allow them to grow professionally without having to leave our district.”

School district leaders say the move is part of a change designed to expand the principals’ leadership skills and allow for career advances.

“Nobody has been moved because they did something wrong or something is broken,” Heather Nelson said of herself and her collogues. “It’s about moving for our own professional development.”

Carissa Keister, Stillwater Area Public School communications coordinator, said among the four long-time principals some had been seeking other employment positions outside the district and shuffling “allowed the district to keep the high-quality principals.”

The change, Keister said, won’t result in any changes to the district’s bottom line as principals’ salary schedules are set for elementary, junior high and high school levels.

Heather Nelson clarified the she and the district's other principals at each level  are on the same schedule and salaries are not based on the number of students in the buildings.

Although Fields’ salary will increase in the change from an elemetary to junior high leader, Berg’s current salary as a junior high administrator will be less when he becomes principal of Stonebridge. Other changes, Keister said, are not anticipated as a result of the shuffle when the principals’ bargaining unit works with administration to develop a two-year contract during the 2011-12 school year.

She added while this shuffle may seem like a new concept to the Stillwater area it has been done many times in other areas across the state.

Stephen Gorde
Gorde has served as Rutherford’s principal since 2001. Some of his self-proclaimed proudest accomplishments while he’s led the school, with a 2010 enrollment of 766, include innovative teaching and learning opportunities.

“I’m proud of the work we’ve done to maintain this school as a real innovator in terms of working through the achievement gap,” he said. “The teachers are not afraid of new challenges and changes.”

Some of those innovations include clustering grade levels and instruction and creating a School Enrichment Model in Reading (SEM-R).

Gorde said one of his challenges next year will be closing the achievement gap at the more diverse Lake Elmo School. Unlike Rutherford, which only has special education and white student subgroups and made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) last year, Lake Elmo Elementary did not make AYP and has 25 subgroups including Asian, Hispanic, black, white, Limited English Proficient (LEP), special education and free- and reduced-lunch populations.

“There are a lot of differences between the two schools in terms of their demographics,” Gorde said.

But the challenges associated with a diverse school are ones Gorde is confident he can tackle. For five years in the early 1990s he taught at a United Nations School in Vienna, Austria where there were students from 95 nations where he learned to embrace the advantages to a diverse school.

“There is so much learning taking place in a school with different cultures and diverse populations represented,” he said. “That kind of environment really drives home the strengths of diverse student enrollments.”

In addition to teaching internationally, before coming to Stillwater Gorde spent many years working for the Tri-District School in Maplewood where he said the “essential mission was to focus on better understanding of multi-cultural education.”

Before becoming an administrator, Gorde taught social studies at the middle school and high school levels. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, as well as a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Michigan State University.

Heather Nelson
For the past nine years Heather Nelson has been the leader of Stonebridge Elementary, a school she said she’s emotional about leaving behind, but is eager to sit in the principal chair at Rutherford Elementary.

The number of students under her, Heather Nelson said, will increase, but the grade-grouping format of the school will be familiar—which will help support a transition. Both Stonebridge and Rutherford have multi-grade classrooms combining students based on like ability rather than age. They’ve also spent this school year as sister schools where teachers work on professional development projects together.

“This year, because we were a sister school with Rutherford, I’ve gotten to know some of the staff there and make connections with them,” she said. “I know there is an exemplary staff there and am eager to start building different relationships with them as well as the community.”

Some of the accomplishments Heather Nelson said she had at Stonebridge, which she said taught her lessons she can carry with her to Rutherford, include creating Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) three years ago.

“Bringing in PLCs along with the value and effectiveness they bring to student achievement is one of the really big things (I’ve) done at Stonebridge,” she said.  “PLCs are very focused on student achievement and that’s one thing both schools have in common.”

In 2010 both elementary schools made AYP and overall, each school tested above 80 percent proficient in both math and reading. The diversity of each school is fairly low, Stonebridge has 13 subgroups, including special education and subsidized-lunch populations, to Rutherford’s 15 subgroups. Next school year, the population of the Rutherford will change as a result of the boundary changes, but the school will remain one of the largest in the district.

“It’s a chance for me to grow and challenge myself in new ways,” she said.

The challenges come with leaving some familiarities behind.

“But on a personal note, I’m really proud of the relationships I’ve built,” she said. “At the end of the day, I hope, I’m remembered for how I treated people, how I interacted with them and how I cared about them. It’s not about the PowerPoints I put together on MCA-II results.”

Those relationships, she said, is what she hopes incoming principal Berg will focus on in his first year.

“I feel like I am leaving a great learning environment. The teachers here are motivated and excited about being at Stonebridge … It’s a little different model and school and the teachers are really passionate about it. I hope to pass off the importance of that,” she said.

Prior to coming to the Stillwater Area Public School District, Nelson served as an assistant principal and classroom teacher in Wisconsin. She holds a bachelor’s degree in early-childhood education from the University of Wisconsin–Stout, and a master’s degree in instructional and educational leadership from Cardinal Stritch University.

Derek Berg
“Elementary is in my background,” Berg said of his transition from Oak-Land Junior High to Stonebridge Elementary next year. He’s led Oak-Land since 2005. "In some aspects I’m going back to my roots.”

Leaving Oak-Land in favor of Stonebridge is “a really unique and exciting opportunity,” Berg said—much like the transition he made in 2005 when going to the secondary level.

That transition, he recalled, was done due to a technology in education opportunity: “At the time that really piqued my interest.”

Part of the appeal, he said was until this fall for the past seven years every student at Oak-Land had a laptop computer for the school year.

“It was theirs 24/7 to use,” he said. “It wasn’t just a research tool or a word processing tool. They did word processing and looked for information but was a way for them to demonstrate how they were learning.”

The change for Berg won’t be limited to a change in grade-levels, but the student body size, population and demographics are all different at Stonebridge.

Oak-Land had just over a 1,000-student headcount this year and did not make AYP last year; students tested at 78 percent proficient in reading and 76 percent proficient in math and there are 19 subgroups, including Asian, special education and subsidized meal students.

Prior to coming to Stillwater, Berg served as an elementary school principal in Barnum and spent more than six years teaching fourth grade students. Berg holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Bethel College, and a master’s of education degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Minnesota.

Andy Fields
Fields will leave his-four year term as principal at Lake Elmo Elementary and go back to Oak-Land Junior High where he previously served as assistant principal from 2005 to 2007.

He said he is excited to get back to the Oak-Land community and reinstate relationships in the school and community he made while he was there as an assistant principal. The value of parental and community involvement in the success of a school is something he learned from a strong Parent-Teacher Association at Lake Elmo, the district's largest elementary school.

“Secondary is my passion,” Fields said. The transitionary period of junior high school students, he said, is what makes him like being surrounded by “mid-level” students. 

“They’re growing academically, physically, socially and emotionally. It’s exciting to watch them grow,” he said.

Also growing will be the number of students under Fields’ leadership.

“Oak-Land has about 200 more students (than Lake Elmo),” Fields said, adding the number of staff is relatively the same. “I have no concerns with the additional students. I’m looking forward to that many more opportunities to connect with students.”

Fields said his contract has not been negotiated yet for terms after the transfer to the secondary level and administration contracts are up for renegotiation.

Prior to coming to Stillwater, Fields served as an assistant principal at both the middle school and elementary levels and worked as a curriculum assistant. He has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Northern State University in South Dakota, and a master’s degree in education from St. Mary’s University.