St. Paul’s first public school superintendent, the Rev. E.D. Neill, also served as secretary and treasurer of the fledging board when it was established in 1856. Neill resigned in 1860, beginning two trends, not lasting very long in the job and leaving for a better pot of gold, although his successor, the Rev. John Mattocks, rode it out from 1860 to September 1872.
Records are incomplete. Mattocks doesn’t hold the record for longevity. The longest serving super in the modern era was George Young, 1969-1985.
Edward Duffield Neill, a Presbyterian minister, was, post-super, a Civil War veteran, U.S. commissioner of education, consul to Dublin and president of Macalester College in 1873-74, thereafter a professor of history and literature.
Most predictably, supers come and go, much like parish priests or country club golf pros. Our newest super, just approved, is Stacie Stanley, who edged out Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, the current super in Hopkins, and Brenda Cassellius, former super in Boston and a former Minnesota commissioner of education.
It is absolutely not meant to be uncharitable at all, but you could have put those names in a hat and picked one. The school board said as much, but Stanley got the nod, possibly because of St. Paul roots and her graduation from St. Paul Central High School before she traveled the road to superdom, first as associate super in Eden Prairie and then super in Edina.
They all get a doctor in front of their name along the way, they all thank the same people, they all promise the same things, they all have the same boilerplate vision of inclusivity and community involvement and they all promise to push the same rock up the hill just as they all have done going to back to Neill and Mattocks.
But do they deliver?
They are all good people and we can certainly presume their good intentions, but where are the soaring test scores, the reading and math literacy to age, the discipline and love of learning? That’s quite a bit to put on the shoulders of a new super, but one of these days a super is going to have to distinguish himself or herself with results.
It was understandably impossible to reach Stanley during this Christmas break. A fellow wanted to bounce a few things. Stanley inherits 33,000 students, a number declining every day. She also inherits a staff of 6,000. Aren’t there too many redundancies at the administrative level? Too many assistants and associates and assistants to the associates? And do all those jobs deliver meaningful achievement or measurable results that actually help a super push the rock up the hill? Not likely. Like the government, public school administration has become too big with too many opportunities for grift.
Joe Gothard – who served not quite seven years — left for Madison, Wis., under the shadow of federal COVID funds allegedly being misused.
Become known, Stanley. Supers too conveniently disappear into a shell of bureaucratic isolation, followed around by attendants with iPads and spokespeople with sanitized gibberish. Gothard was unknown, except to his barber. Meria Carstarphen – August 2006 to June 2009 – lived on Summit Avenue near Fairview. I have a friend who lived just two blocks or so from her. He knows everybody. He did not see Carstarphen once. Not once, at the gas station, at a restaurant, at church, at the hardware store or supermarket, on a walk or a jog, not on a bicycle or in a car.
Don’t be that person, Stacie. Don’t assemble acolytes. Go to the game.
There’ve been 12 supers since 1968. Maybe Stanley will be the one who distinguishes herself.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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