New job, new husband, new town? No sweat

Kerri Nazarenus will have a busy summer.

She will become superintendent of the South Tama County, Iowa, Community School District on July 1.

On July 26, she will be back in Grand Island to marry Don Nelson in a ceremony at the Northridge Assembly of God Church.

She also is acclimating herself to the South Tama County Community School District.

As director the English language learner program for the Grand Island school district, Nazarenus has responsibility for 2,200 students.

The South Tama County Community School District has 1,600 students, but Nazarenus knows that numbers alone don't make a good comparison. While she could focus on the needs of ELL students in Grand Island, she must look at the needs of the whole spectrum of students in the South Tama County district.

However, Superintendent Steve Joel said skills that Nazarenus has learned as the ELL director will transfer well to being a superintendent. He said she has done well managing a growing ELL program for both students and staff.

"Kerri has hired, trained, developed and inspired people to do good work," Joel said.

Nazarenus has worked well with the Grand Island school board, as well as the administrative leadership team, Joel said. One of her best attributes is that she is "results-oriented. She is able to look at where the organization is, where it wants to go and figure out how it should get there."

South Tama County has about 300 ELL students, many of them Hispanic students whose parents work at a packing plant in Marshalltown, about a 20-minute drive from Tama.

Nazarenus said she has had many good, strong mentors during her career in Nebraska and a strong network of fellow educators who could provide good counsel on various educational issues.

Now that she is moving to Iowa, she has been in contact with former Grand Island Superintendent Lane Plugge, who is now superintendent in Iowa City. Nazarenus said she also is getting to know superintendents and administrators in districts close to her South Tama County district in an effort to form an Iowa network.

Nazarenus said she wants to be a valuable asset to other administrators with whom she networks.

Nazarenus said she also will have retreats with her administrators and board members. Such retreats typically set goals, but Nazarenus said more important than goal setting are concrete action plans to achieve those goals and reliable data that will serve as accurate measurements on whether those goals are being achieved.