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Is she or isn’t she?
That was the line one hair product manufacturer once used to promote a women’s hair color product.
For the past week, that question could be asked in the Logansport Community School Corporation Administration Building.
Superintendent Julie Lauck didn’t attend Monday night’s board meeting. Speculation about her future and questions about her status with the corporation are the buzz in the community. That’s apparent by checking out the Pharos-Tribune blog. Yet the board remains mum on her official status, and who knows why: To buy her time to use up existing vacation time, serve out a suspension without pay or give her or her attorney time to determine what move she makes while under contract with the corporation?
For the time being, what can be said is that if Lauck stays, it will probably be because:
A. She hasn’t done a poor job of administrating the financial side of the corporation and/or allowing the corporation to fall into the abyss of state educational purgatory and/or B. She hasn’t found a better job, though she has been a candidate for positions in Plymouth and Michigan.
If Lauck is gone, it’s probably because:
A. She hasn’t maintained a public role as the corporation’s de facto ambassador to the community, and/or B. Some moves that she has made have been controversial.
There are some that would criticize her for not living in the community, though she did when she first accepted the job four years ago. It’s ironic that her predecessor, Dr. Jerry Thacker, split his time between Logansport and suburban Indianapolis where his wife was a music teacher and had been for years. That makes the residency issue at least somewhat moot.
But Lauck, unlike Thacker and his previous two predecessors, Steve Kain and Ted Hughes, has not been known to show up at sporting events. That’s understandable if she’s not a sports fan, but she’s not been as omnipresent at school events as Thacker was. There are other occasions such as the Pillars of the Community ceremony earlier this year when Lauck was a no-show. It’s not exactly commencement, but the Pillars, a traditional ceremony created by Hughes to recognize adults who support the corporation’s top achieving students, was created as a superintendent-driven initiative.
The politics of being a superintendent also come under scrutiny from time to time, and in her case, there are decisions that have raised questions. During her first year, she opted to hire former Marion High School Principal Jack Gardner to assume the reins at Logansport High School, foregoing the candidacy of then acting Principal Greg Grostefon. Faculty members wore buttons supporting Grostefon, but Gardner was clearly her choice and the school board supported her recommendation. While Marion had improved academically during Gardner’s tenure, it was on the state’s probation list for academic progress.
More recently, a decision that raised eyebrows was the exclusion of assistant varsity basketball coach Bill Champion from the list of basketball coaches retained by the corporation. It was unusual in that Champion, a former Logansport player whose three sons have all played varsity basketball for the program, had been with the program for 10 years. Coach Mark Victor’s squad had just completed one of the school’s most successful seasons in 30 years, yet Champion was not retained. Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, Champion also had taken an active campaign role for board candidate Tony Campbell, who lost in May to Milt Hess.
Was the deletion of Champion from the basketball coaching staff a Lauck payback, or just a way of cutting back at a time when budgets are tight? We may never know.
Lauck also represents the first female superintendent in Logansport history, and with an all-male board since the departure of former member Lynne Ness, there will probably be skeptics who claim gender bias. But the board has done something it rarely does over a four-year period: All five members who were on board June 30, 2006, are gone. Times change and priorities change with boards and board members. Maybe the changes were too dramatic in this case and experience for Lauck and the board are the best teachers.
Whatever the case, Lauck or her successor need to continue to negotiate the school corporation through difficult times for most all public schools in Indiana, and for that matter, nationwide. The corporation plays the pivotal role in area special education and vocational agreements with surrounding schools. It has opportunities with a burgeoning new Ivy Tech State College and now Trine University to promote educational attainment at the college level without ever leaving the city limits.
To a great degree, education is about expectations. For Lauck or any educator to succeed in a six-figure position in a rural city in northern Indiana, expectations have to be met or exceeded.
• Dave Kitchell is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com.
