School Chief Drops Controversial Plan He Had Wanted To Combine Superintendent, Principal Jobs

Tue., Feb. 23, 1999

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

New Chewelah School Superintendent Garn Christensen has abandoned a controversial request to be both a superintendent and a principal.

Christensen asked the school board to combine his new job with his old one as principal at Gess Elementary, but teachers and some parents objected.

“The only person it serves is the superintendent,” said Dede McAuliffe, a former substitute teacher who has two children in the school system.

There would have been no cost reduction because acting Principal Gary Spencer would have become an assistant principal under Christensen’s proposal, Mcauliffe said.

Christensen said he missed the “personal satisfaction” of being principal and wanted the greater job security principals enjoy.

“If you look at the longevity of superintendents, it seems like it’s getting to be less and less each year,” Christensen said. “This is my seventh year here, and I’m the fourth superintendent in that time.”

Christensen, 36, was a principal in the Rexburg, Idaho, area for three years before he was hired as principal at Gess Elementary.

School Board Chairman Dale Bundy said he thinks the board was prepared to grant Christensen’s request. He believes opposition was limited to “mainly a few of the teachers” who feared turmoil if the new arrangement didn’t work out.

“The reason we were willing to give it a try is because he has done everything the board wanted and then some,” Bundy said. “I can’t blame him for wanting some security. We’re going to try to do that for him.”

Bundy said the board is now considering extending Christensen’s current one-year contract to three years. The board will take up the issue at 7 tonight in a session that had been scheduled to deal with Christensen’s job-combining proposal.

Christensen was appointed last July after Superintendent Marcia Costello Ross resigned to take an assistant superintendent position in the Vancouver, Wash., area. He was given a year to decide whether to stick with the new job or reclaim his old one.

Now, Bundy predicted, Spencer’s tentative appointment as principal will be made permanent.

Under current salary schedules, Spencer would be paid $61,598 a year; Christensen, $75,663.

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