Two Left in Search for School Chief Yeager, Swensson Final Candidates

By JOHN MARTIN, Courier & Press staff writer 464-7594 or martinj@courierpress.com

The search for Evansville’s next school superintendent has come down to two candidates, Jeff Swensson and Robert Yeager.

Yeager has been acting superintendent of the Evansville- Vanderburgh School Corp. since June, and Swensson is associate superintendent of Warren Township schools in Indianapolis.

The candidate field officially has stood at four candidates for the last several days, but School Board President Dana Willett acknowledged Monday the search has centered on Yeager and Swensson.

Board members have been speaking by telephone and in person to administrative colleagues, parents, teachers, political leaders and business leaders familiar with Yeager and Swensson, Willett said.

The other two finalists, Yvonne Bullock, director of teaching and learning with a Hazel Crest, Ill., school district, and Philip Knight, former superintendent in Alamogordo, N.M., were telephoned Monday evening and told “that we are moving forward and these are the two candidates we’re focused on,” Willett said.

The board will discuss the search Wednesday in an executive session.

Yeager is a former high school industrial arts teacher, department head, assistant principal and central office administrator who has spent his career in EVSC. Swensson has been associate superintendent with Warren Township schools for 10 years.

The School Board dealt with numerous other matters during a lengthy meeting Monday, including a recommendation for a reading program that might pit the school system’s teachers association against Congregations Acting for Justice and Empowerment (CAJE), a group of churches that has joined forces to advocate local causes.

Reading programs

During last year’s School Board election campaign, CAJE asked all candidates to promise they would vote to adopt one of five elementary school reading programs recommended by MGT of America’s study of the school corporation. All candidates said they would.

But the reading program for kindergarten through fifth grade being recommended by committees of teachers and parents is not on the MGT list. It is called Treasures, published by Macmillan/McGraw Hill.

Some of the programs listed in the MGT study no longer exist or have been updated in recent years, said Don Travis, president of the Evansville Teachers Association.

He said the reading program that committees have recommended has a good track record, and it keeps with MGT’s call for a new corporationwide early reading initiative.

Teachers who served on the reading textbook adoption committee, such as Lizabeth Chang of West Terrace Elementary School, told the School Board hours of research went in the recommendation of Treasures. “We took this assignment seriously,” Chang said.

EVSC has high mobility rate

EVSC has a high mobility rate, and “as students move it is important their progress in reading not be interrupted. This is specific literacy framework for all students,” said Brenda Scheidler, EVSC reading supervisor.

Joseph Easley, co-chairman of CAJE, told the School Board education is one of the group’s priority issues.

“We know all schools do not come to school with the same readiness or progress at the same rate,” Easley said. “There are approaches to reading that take these differences into account.”

CAJE wants to see a program adopted that is “scientifically based and research proven in independent studies,” Easley said, adding the group has written to the teachers’ group requesting a meeting about the issue. Travis said he would welcome a meeting.

School Board member Chris Kiefer said he has received numerous e- mails about the reading program matter, and some have been angry in tone.

“It’s not us against you,” Kiefer told the meeting audience, which included many teachers. “We’re all in this together. I think this is critical for the direction this corporation’s going. I was a little upset over a couple of the e-mails I received. I’m always going to listen to the teacher community, the parent committee and community groups that are out there.”

Board member Mike Duckworth said EVSC needs an overall strategy in reading, and “what I’m interested in is reaching kids who aren’t proficient.”

Other business

In other business, Fred Hassman, a Bosse High School chemistry teacher who says he was forced to resign effective at the conclusion of the school year, asked the School Board to let him stay on.

Many Bosse students have spoken out in support of Hassman, who is in his second year at the school.

The School Board has not commented on the matter, and members gave no reaction to Hassman’s remarks Monday.

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