Leadership Lite
School Administrator, June 2019


Dining in Separate Quarters
“I have been telling my 7th-grade son that I planned on eating lunch with him the entire first week of school in the cafeteria, because, you know, middle schoolers love that type of thing,” Matt Thompson shared via Twitter. “2nd day when I visited the cafeteria, he hid from me behind his lunch box.”

Thompson is the superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in Mount Sterling, Ky.




Home on the Hardwood
As if Luke Kloker needed an additional challenge to pile atop his superintendency duties, he picked something where his performance would be measured a couple of times each week in the sports section of the local newspaper.

Kloker, in his fifth year serving in the top leadership job in the Fairview, Mont., school district, returned this winter to the head coaching post of the boys varsity basketball team in Fairview.

The after-school and weekend extracurricular role comes with plenty of high expectations. Kloker led the Warriors to a state championship in 2012 and a state runner-up finish in 2015 and compiled a 221-67 won-loss record during his 11 seasons as varsity basketball coach before stepping away. His successor coached the Warriors to the state tournament during the last two winters.

Kloker’s team advanced to the consolation game of Montana’s Class C boys basketball tournament in March and finished fourth in the state with a 23-5 record.
 

A Royal Whipping
John Johnson made the most of his limited resources during his days as superintendent in the Nebraska community of Royal (population 193) back in the 1950s.

Johnson doubled as the high school’s basketball coach and because his school lacked its own gym, he routinely took his team an hour early to the opponents’ gym “to give his players a chance to get used to the court so they could get in some practice,” according to an account on Dec. 13, 1957, in the Omaha World-News.

Practice must make perfect. The newspaper account reported that the Royal High quintet blistered Petersburg HS, 134-33. Royal’s top scorer contributed 79 of those points.

 
 
 
Short, humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration should be addressed to: Editor, School Administrator, 1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Fax: 703-841-1543. E-mail: magazine@aasa.org. Upon request, names may be withheld in print.