When superintendents are hard to find, South Dakota school districts can turn to CEOs

Dec. 15—MITCHELL — Superintendents are a critical piece of the educational infrastructure in school districts throughout South Dakota.

They essentially manage the school district as a whole, making sure day-to-day operations run smoothly, handling general administrative duties and performing tasks like teacher evaluations. While publicly-elected boards of education handle the top decisions — including approving staff hires and finalizing the district budget — a superintendent is the district's boots-on-the-ground leader.

But what happens when an administrative leader like a superintendent leaves a district and a fully-certified candidate to replace them is hard to find? One answer could be to hire a district CEO, or chief executive officer.

District CEOs are typically, but not always, individuals from outside the traditional education career track who have leadership and organizational skills suited to manage an entity as complex as a school district but lack specific certifications that qualify them to be officially called a superintendent.

"When you look at a school district, it is a business," said Rob Monson, executive director of

School Administrators of South Dakota,

an organization whose purpose includes promoting and providing leadership for the improvement and advancement of education for pre-K-12 schools in South Dakota. "So if you had someone who was coming from the business world and had that kind of knowledge and wanted to lead a school, but they don't have an education or administrative degree, they can be afforded that opportunity with the CEO moniker."

Those individuals can also come from within the school district itself, Monson said. When a superintendent leaves a district, a board of education may wish to put an employee into the position until either a certified superintendent can be hired or until said employee can gain the required credentials to become a superintendent themself.

Eric Denning, who recently

resigned as the top administrator at the Mount Vernon School District,

was listed as a CEO for the district. Denning had served as a principal with the district and had replaced departing superintendent Clint Nelson, who had been with the district since 2021 after replacing longtime superintendent Patrick Mikkonen in the role. School officials at a recent board meeting said Denning had been working to gain his required certification to be a fully-fledged superintendent.

Denning is expected to continue to serve as the CEO and several other leadership roles for the school district until the end of the 2024 school year, as outlined in the terms for his resignation. He declined to comment to the Mitchell Republic at the meeting on specifics for his resignation. Following the newspaper's reporting on the topic, multiple readers asked how a district can employ a CEO, rather than having a superintendent.

Qualifications to be a full-blown superintendent are laid out in professional standards and state codified law and are specific.

According to a statement from the South Dakota Department of Education in response to a Mitchell Republic inquiry, to be a superintendent in South Dakota, a candidate must go through a rigorous program laid out in the

National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) Program Recognition standards.

In addition to mastering the pedagogical and professional knowledge and skills laid out in the NELP standards, a superintendent must complete an education specialist or doctoral degree, obtain at least three years of verified experience on a valid certificate in an accredited K-12 school, and complete an internship under a cooperating district superintendent, during which the candidate must participate in all job responsibilities of the cooperating superintendent.

A CEO carries many of the same responsibilities as a superintendent

but must renew that particular certification every five years.

"To be a CEO of a school is less intensive; however, such a position must also be renewed every five years," the statement from the department of education reads. "A school district may employ a CEO as superintendent or principal when a candidate for that role is not available. The CEO serves in a leadership role for the school but often comes to the position from outside the traditional educational model."

As is often the case with teachers, small or particularly rural districts can sometimes have a hard time attracting fully-qualified or experienced administrators.

In those cases, a CEO can be an attractive choice.

"We may see this in the area where you have struggled to recruit an educator or someone to a district. Maybe they're at the end of the line and they don't have anyone who is applying or anyone they can offer a contract to, but they have to have somebody who is willing to take over and run the district," Monson said. "We can't call them a superintendent, they don't have the rights of a superintendent for the most part, but we can give them a CEO title."

In lieu of attracting a certified superintendent, a district may opt to promote someone from within, perhaps an employee already on the payroll who has years of experience and a deep familiarity with that particular district. That could be done on a temporary basis until a superintendent can be hired, or that employee may take the role with the intention of becoming fully certified themselves.

Districts may choose to help pay for expenses that would go toward a candidate obtaining their certification, as well.

"You might have someone internally they want to elevate within the district, but they weren't certified at the time. But you have to take some sort of action to put someone into that seat to operate the district," Monson said. "That would be an option as a district, that they want to elevate that person up, but because that certification isn't there (yet), here is what we can do."

The South Dakota Department of Education statewide school district directory does not specify exact titles for those acting in a superintendent role. All top administrators share the same collective title of "Superintendent/CEO/Administrator" in the database.

Monson said he was not aware of exactly how many administrators in the state were operating under the CEO title, but he estimated it was very few. In addition to Mount Vernon, he said he believed only one other district in the state had an administrator acting as a CEO. A request to the South Dakota Department of Education about whether they track the number of CEOs working in school districts in the state was not received prior to publication of this article.

Operationally, there are a few differences in the roles the two titles can perform. Monson said the biggest is likely the fact that CEOs cannot perform teacher evaluations, whereas that duty is part of the superintendent skill set.

But Monson said the CEO option can have benefits for both aspiring district leaders and the districts themselves in achieving their goals of a smoothly-running educational system.

"I would look at it as an opportunity. Maybe you had someone in the district thinking about taking the next step to being a superintendent. This would give them the chance to take over for six months, and then the board can see — well, this person did a fine job, let's work toward getting them certified," Monson said. "It's a great opportunity."