Martin to take Michigan post
As most of you have already heard, Dr. Dale Martin will step down as superintendent of District 58 in July. He announced Monday that he has accepted a position as superintendent of the Coldwater, Michigan, Community School District.
Martin was unanimously chosen by the Clearwater school board April 3, according to a story that ran the next day in the town’s Daily Reporter newspaper. Board members had heard the three finalists for the post discuss their goals for the district over the previous three days, the paper reported.
“I have known Dale Martin for about twenty-five years,” said Michael J. Bitar in a comment on the paper’s Website. “He is a phenomenal educator and leader. The Coldwater schools and community are fortunate to have attracted such a veteran school leader to cary on the good work Milli Haug has done.”
Martin has eyed a return to Michigan, where he spent more than 30 years of his 44-year career, for at least a year. He was a finalist for the position of superintendent of the Kalamazoo Regional Education Service Agency in 2007.
Martin’s decade of service with District 58 has been bumpy, particularly in recent years. While people who have worked with him consistently and uniformly praise his dedication to the district’s children, Martin’s brusque style of dealing with parents was greeted with less enthusiasm.
The failure of the 2007 referendum and the subsequent departure of the assistant superintendent for business, the election of maverick school board member Scott O’Connell, and greater public scrutiny may have contributed to Martin’s decision to return to his home state, where he and his late wife had bought a Clearwater Lake home. I’ve also heard rumblings that his support among the board has deteriorated.
The District 58 board will now embark on a superintendent search. Among the qualities residents may wish to find in a new superintendent? Martin’s dedication to children, certainly but also, perhaps, a bit more public relations savvy and a more humble understanding of the public servant’s role.
The issue of pay should also be open for consideration. Martin earned $216,938 last year, which was considerably more than District 99 Superintendent David Eblen earned — $187,239 in 2005 — before his pay spiked in advance of his retent later this year. By way of comparison, Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan earns about the same.
He gone!
I wonder if there will be a going away party?
As the saying goes Scott, if you will hold it, they will come and come and come! I would be there celebrating the departure of Mr. Ego. My longest lasting memory of Martin will be his absolutely disingenuous comment at the first board meeting following the failed referendum when he unabashedly lectured to the audience that “the taxpayers turned their backs on the children of this district”. No, I don’t think so Dale; rather it was the board and the administration who failed in their fiduciary responsibility to get the facts straight.
Let’s hope this board will now hire someone with some degree of humility and a complete understanding of the financials of a public school. It’s obvious Martin does not (ditto the former business manager) which is probably the reason neither will be with us much longer. I think the heat he has felt from that failure along with his lack of decorum with the taxpayers convinced him his time is up here. Now he takes his act to another stage and all I can say to Coldwater is “good luck”.
That is an extremely unfair and unkind description of Vickie Nissen. Obviously, you don’t know her in any capacity except her role in the failed referendum. She gave many years of great service to this district other than that, and to call her egotistical and incompetent is ridiculous and shows a complete lack of knowledge and perspective.
We don’t need more money we need better financial managment. PERIOD.
Can we get one for half, say $108,000? How about one of our principals that already knows the deal here?
My vote for the next superintendent is for the Pierce Downer principal, Dr. Lisa Mondale. She turned that school around in just two years – encouraging some to find the exit, recruiting, reshuffling, and reinvigorating the remaining staff. She has a PhD, and I understand that she would be interested in greater responsibility. From what I hear, Dr. Martin’s bully tactics haven’t engendered great morale on the part of the professional staff, and a leader with a more deft (but firm) touch would be welcome.
The last time we spent time and money on a national search, all it got us was a wet kiss from the search firm and Doc Martin … ’nuff said. However, if we don’t put the board on notice that we don’t want a replay of a futile and costly national search, they will do the safe thing, covering their butts by hiring ‘experts’ who are nothing more than an extension of the good ole boy network that Bruno rails about.
The pragamist only reads what he or she wants to hear. I did not call Nissen egotistical; that comment is reserved, and rightly so, for Martin. But I stand by my opinion that the business manager did not possess the knowledge to do her job properly. The only other explanation for the failures of forecasting the financials of the district (which Scott O’Connell and others did as outsiders!) was that she lacked the courage to stand up to Martin and the board and voice her opinion that the referendum was not needed. Either way, her job to capably report the financials of a district that spends tens of millions of taxpayer monies, was not performed properly, regardless of how nice of a woman she is.
…she lacked the courage to stand up to Martin and the board and voice her opinion that the referendum was not needed.
Likely. Martin’s a hot headed bully.
Caribou Coffee Drinker posted these comments at the old site:
A few links to hold us over until the new and improved site comes up:
All regarding Dale Martin the dictator.
He didn’t get this one.
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080210/CHAR09/802100545/1163/CHAR09
Dr. Martin’s salary last year was $216,938. See http://www.championnews.net/teacher.php?tid=240350&year=2007
Coldwater, aka middle of nowhere. I doubt his salary will be 60% of what he got here.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&q=Coldwater,+MI,+USA&um=1&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title
And finally, the well dressed Martin is introduced to Coldwater, MI. Love the gree/blue plaid shirt with the yellow tie?!
http://thedailyreporter.com/articles/2008/04/05/news/news01.txt
Just for accuracies sake-
Wes Jaros said, “Let’s hope this board will now hire someone with some degree of humility and a complete understanding of the financials of a public school. It’s obvious Martin does not (ditto the former business manager)”
He followed a statement about humility and financial understanding with the notation about Martin, and parenthetically included Vickie Nissen.
I don’t think I “only read what I want to hear”. I believe I read what you wrote and interpreted it quite correctly.
I just ask that you get it right, Wes, not say something and then try to say you didn’t say it.
Par for the course.
Pragmatist, you’re not the only one that interpreted Wes Jaros’s comments as you did . . .
Since there may have been a misunderstanding of my comment about Vickie Nissen, let me clarify that I did not mean to imply that Ms. Nissen lacked humility. My statement only referred to the miscalcuations of financial need by D58 which she either did not understand or was coerced into agreeing with Martin and the board.
I am humble enough to correct any inferences the readers may have had. Unfortunately, there are some amongst us who will not do likewise when they are in error.
Okay, Vickie Nissen is a sweetheart of a lady and Dale Martin needs to work on his people skills. Whatever. Either way, their projections were WAY off. How can that be?
Through the wonders of copy and paste, I will repost my questions. To the best of my knowledge, they’ve never been answered and, frankly, I’m surprised more people aren’t clamoring for it. I would think the things listed below fall within the responsibilites of Ms. Nissen. Once again, I ask Pragmatist to weigh in because he/she seems to know a lot about how D58/SB work.
-Did the District have interim projections for the 2006-07 budget as it went along?
-If so, what were the projections in Nov of 2006 and Jan, Mar and May of this year? If no, why not? Did they have projections in previous years?
-When did the District get money from the four areas that reportedly produced more revenue than expected: Special Ed funds, tax revenue, investment income and block grants?
-When did the Bd/D58 first know the District was getting appreciably more money than anticipated from those 4 areas? I find hard to believe this money was just dropped in their laps a month or two before the end of the fiscal year.
-Weren’t budget projections amended as the additional money became apparent? Even if nothing else was known (which I doubt to be the case), investment income had to be known before the end of the year.
I’m sure these, once again, won’t be answered, but posting them at least help me to vent.
Does anyone else find it curious that Niessen leaves, Martin leaves, and we hire an outside company to explore health insurance options for the first time in 15-20 years, and all of this happens after O’Connell starts sniffing around? I suppose it could all be an amazing coincidence. Uh huh. Just like the coincidence of Drew Peterson’s wives’ propensity to disappear or dye.
You can’t have an educator run a district. An educator is not going to look out for the tax payers.
AM:
I did get some answers to your questions from Jim Popernik the district’s interim financial guy. They were posted in November 2007 in the post entitled “For the Control Freaks Among Us.” Sorry, but I’m having trouble posted the link here.