On July 1, Greg Schwartz was elected by fellow board members to serve as president of the USD 489 board of directors. Since then, two members of USD 489
Administration have announced their retirement. Superintendent Will Roth will leave on October 1, and Deputy Superintendent Richard Cain will be leaving September 1.
Schwartz told Hays Post today, “As for Dr. Roth, the board in fact did ask for him to move up his retirement date and he did that. I cannot go into any details as far as why that happened or the timeline of that.
As to Richard Cain, the board had no involvement in that. I received a call from Will Roth at 11:30 a.m. (Tuesday). He advised that he had received Richard Cain’s letter of resignation. He inquired as to whether, as board president, I wanted this added to the agenda next week or announce it at a later date. I advised that we needed to go ahead and put it on the agenda as we do anything else.
In my discussion with him (Roth), he indicated that Mr. Cain had been contemplating this for 3 or 4 months. That was the only thing, I had not seen his letter of resignation. I do understand that there is a letter but I have not seen it at this time.”
Are there other USD 489 administrators who will also be announcing retirement plans?
“There are no plans that I’m aware of or any others going to resign or has the board asked for any other resignations.”
What is the next step for the School Board and the District going forward?
“Well, we’re going to have to look at filling those positions. My understanding is that the board is going to look at interviewing and exploring the option of a search firm to assist in finding the full time replacement of the superintendent.
I sent a request to Will today requesting that that this item be placed on the work session a week from Monday (July 22) and to provide me the information of the names we had considered previously when we replaced Fred Kaufman.
At that time we explored the option of using an outside firm. There were three of them. One was the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB.) I want to contact them to get some information on what our options are. I have spoken to KASB about assisting in finding an interim Superintendent. I will be presenting that information to the board at a later date.
I assume the board will discuss at Monday’s meeting the Richard Cain resignation and how the board wishes to go forward in filling or handling that position.
On the timeline to fill the Interim Superintendent’s position.
We don’t have any timeline but personally I hope we do it sooner rather than later. What KASB does is they have a pool of resumes and they are going to search those and find those that they think meet our needs. We can explore all of our options in and outside the district and then decide which way we want to go.