Clegg announces retirement
Randy Clegg
He’ll leave District 191, education next June 30
Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District Superintendent Randy Clegg announced his retirement Monday in a letter to district staff and in an interview with Sun Thisweek.
Clegg, 56, will retire next June 30, which is when his contract expires.
He said he’s pleased with his record over four years in District 191 as a reformer in curriculum management, transparent budgeting, magnet schools and widening participation in top decision-making.
But Clegg acknowledged that the School Board, which this month gave him his first mixed job review, wants a “different style of leadership.”
“I think they’d like a warmer style of leadership, maybe not so direct,” Clegg said. Direct with whom? he was asked. “They’d probably say everybody,” Clegg replied.
The board announced this month after its latest annual review of Clegg’s job performance that he met expectations on four of seven standards. He’d met expectations on all standards in three previous reviews.
Clegg said he had “no doubt at all” that the $255,000 buyout earlier this year of Tania Chance, the former human resources director, damaged his relations with the board.
The buyout angered many parents and teachers. It gave Chance the money with 18 months left on a two-year contract. A separation agreement revealed that she agreed to drop charges against the district she had pending with the state Department of Human Rights, and to drop a complaint about Clegg made to the Minnesota Board of School Administrators.
Clegg said he’d like to stick around beyond next June 30 to see through reforms he started. But he said he decided against seeking a new contract and plans to retire from education after 35 years, including four previous superintendencies in Iowa.
“I came here with the idea thinking I was going to see these projects through,” said Clegg, who began work in District 191 in July 2008 and is paid a $180,0000 salary.
“There does reach a point where you just get exhausted,” said Clegg, who lives in Savage with his wife, Linda. “How long can you continue to work 80-hour weeks?”
Initiatives during his tenure included free, full-day kindergarten, which was launched this school year; a “strategic road map” for the district; curriculum improvements; more transparent budgeting; and updating of 17 school buildings.
Sun Thisweek will have a more extensive story later this week.
