Roy Getchell was offered a job as Haines’ new school superintendent in February. (Berett Wilber).
The Haines Borough School District’s new superintendent attended his first school board meeting while on the job yesterday.
The board hired Roy Getchell in February. Most recently, Getchell worked as an elementary school principal in Avon, Colorado.
He started work at the Haines School at the end of June. Getchell said he wants to work with the board to establish goals.
“I think the more time we can spend together talking about expectations, how we’re going to operate as a team,” said Getchell. “The big ideas for the district that we want to achieve together. Those types of things. The beauty in having a new superintendent is we can do it differently if you want.”
Getchell worked with interim superintendent Rick Carlson to help his transition into the district. He’d like to continue with that mentorship.
“The minute that I was hired, which was a great day for me by the way, it was an awesome day, I was standing right there. The topic of mentoring came up and immediately as we went back to discuss in detail what my transition was going to look like…really at that time, it was really meant to be a think-about. What would an effective mentorship look like,” said Getchell.
Carlson worked as the interim superintendent during the 2017-2018 school year. It was his second stint in the position at the Haines School. Getchell said he’s excited about the opportunity to learn from Carlson.
“The opportunity here is, as a new superintendent, I’m open,” said Getchell. “I haven’t done things a certain way every time I’ve done them before and I’m willing to try something new. As I started working with Rich on a regular basis, I realized that he and I really worked well together, for a variety of reasons. Number one, he’s super experienced and I have a lot of respect for him. He’s done a lot of good things and he’s done them well. We do things differently, we think differently. And I think that’s important whenever you’re working with a mentor so that you have someone that’s bringing up things maybe that you hadn’t thought about.”
Getchell says Carlson is interested in the mentorship. But, it’s still being worked out. The board offered it’s support, but didn’t vote on the program at this meeting.
