Oskaloosa schools welcome new superintendent
Jun. 21—The Oskaloosa Community School District will welcome Mike Fisher on board as superintendent starting July 1.
Fisher is succeeding Paula Wright, who announced her retirement in October 2021. Formerly the superintendent for Charles City Community School District, Fisher is a graduate of Oskaloosa Senior High School and is looking forward to having the opportunity to serve as an educator in his hometown.
"It's a wonderful community. It's a wonderful part of the state," Fisher told The Herald. "We have so many great things going on economically — livability and growth, and just seeing the schools, they've done so much amazing work recently to grow and become very healthy.
"So I'm excited about taking the work I've done in both school improvement in terms of the core business of our teaching and learning, then also culture and climate, making sure we have a safe, welcoming inviting culture and climate because one of the things I'll say is that people don't invite to average. We want people to invite to exceptional."
Exceptional seems to be one of Fisher's words to live by — and he plans on rolling up his sleeves and digging in to achieve it.
"One thing I think is unique in my leadership is that I'll be visible in classrooms," said Fisher. "I'll be with kids, I'll be in lunch rooms, I'll be at recess because it not only gives me joy and energy to remember why we do this, which is to serve children, but also you're only as effective as you understand what's actually happening in the day to day operations, being a servant-leader and meeting the needs of frontline staff, which is our teachers and especially our para-educators."
Service as a life-long value is particularly important to Fisher, who said that his faith was a guiding factor when he chose education as a career. He now seeks to empower Oskaloosa's youth to live lives defined by service and humility, even as they go through their school years in a time of global conflict and upheaval.
"'Intelligence plus character is the goal of true education,'" Fisher said, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"How can we build people that are going to be humble, be gracious, be kind? Not think less of themselves, but just think of themselves a little less?"
Fisher wants to focus not just on making good students, but on making good people.
"It's in every major religion in the world, from what I understand, it's the golden rule: Treat others as you want to be treated, and I think we've lost that," said Fisher. "If I can get two things out of every kid when they walk across our stage, one, that they know how to shake my hand well, and number two, that they treat others as they'd want to be treated."
Of course, Fisher is committed to excellence in academics as well as character. Citing statistics from a Gallup poll, Fisher explained that one of his biggest concerns for the future of education is a lack of student engagement.
"It concerns me that so many kids are bored or not engaged, because this is their voices. They're saying this, right? And then we look at discipline issues. We look at attendance issues, and we look at, you know, post-secondary readiness, how kids are like, 'I don't know what to do with my life,'" Fisher said.
"As you look at our certified apprenticeships, as you look at our work-based experiences, you look at a lot of leadership initiatives that are happening, you know, even at the elementary levels and the different things we're doing, you're seeing us make a big effort in education to move the needle on making sure students are engaged."
"I call it 'value beyond the classroom,'" Fisher said.
Fisher's wife, Sarah, will be joining Oskaloosa Community School District's team as a kindergarten teacher. Their son, Josh, will be in second grade in the fall.
In short, he's ready and excited to hit the ground running.
"We have to be exceptional, which, we already are. But we want to level up to that to really tell our story and let people know that. Oskaloosa's already one of the best school districts in the state. We just want to be the best."
Channing Rucks can be reached at crucks@oskyherald.com.
