Minnesota man is pick to lead PW-S District

After deliberating for hours during three closed meetings, a divided Port Washington-Saukville School Board on Monday offered the job of superintendent to David Watkins, one of several administrators who are second in charge of St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota.

Watkins, 51, accepted the job on Tuesday and will take the helm of the Port Washington-Saukville School District in July.

“This is a very strong school district,” he said, referring to the Port-Saukville school system. “You take a look at test scores across the grade levels and you see students performing well. It’s the type of school district I want to work in and help advance.”

The board voted 6-3 to offer a contract to Watkins, with Brian Stevens, who is vice president of the board, Matthew Uselding and Danielle Mayer voting against the offer.

Uselding and Mayer said in interviews they voted against offering the contract to Watkins because they objected to the way in which the board conducted the hiring process.

“For me, this was kind of a protest vote,” Uselding said. “I was frustrated with the process and disappointed with the way the board conducted itself over the last month.

“I thought we just didn’t do our best work during our closed-session meetings.”

Uselding said he favored the other finalist for the district’s top job — Joe Koch, deputy superintendent of the School District of Waukesha and a 1997 Port Washington High School graduate.

“I preferred Joe, but I think Dave will do a great job,” Uselding said. “They were both really good candidates, and I will 100% support Dave.”

Mayer said, “Dave is a wonderful candidate and I’m confident he will successfully lead our district, but due to my personal objections to the process, I voted no.”

Neither Uselding nor Mayer would elaborate on their criticisms of the process, citing their desire to keep closed-session proceedings confidential.

“It has to do with how the board conducted itself,” Mayer said. 

Stevens said he thought Koch was the better candidate and that he best matched a superintendent profile based on feedback from 150 people representing various groups in the community and school system who participated in 13 focus groups, as well as 758 people who responded to a survey asking about the district’s strengths and weaknesses and the ideal attributes of the next superintendent. 

“We had two really strong candidates and it wasn’t an easy choice,” he said. “I will support Dave in any way I can and help him be successful here.”

In a surprise twist, it turns out Koch withdrew from consideration ahead of Monday’s meeting but board members weren’t aware of that when they voted to hire Watkins.

Koch said he sent an email to School Board President Brenda Fritsch over the weekend explaining he no longer was seeking the job, but Fritsch said she didn’t see it until after Monday’s meeting.

Koch, who after graduating from Port High taught at the school as his mother Mary and late father Fran Koch did, said during the interview process that it was his goal to return to the Port Washington-Saukville School District and spend the rest of his career there as superintendent.

But in an interview Tuesday, Koch, who lives in Waubeka, said he is well aware of the scrutiny superintendents inevitably face and did not want to subject his children that.

“As I got further into this process, I reflected on how this would affect my family,” he said, noting his children are between the ages of 4 and 10 and attend St. John XXIII Catholic School in Port Washington. 

“I’ve been in education for 20 years and I know what being a superintendent involves,” he said. “I want my children to be in a position where they can be kids and not have to hear about their father.”

Monday marked the end of a hiring process that began in February shortly after Supt. Mike Weber announced that on June 30 he will retire from the district he has led for 21 years.

After briefly considering an internal candidate, the board hired School Exec Connect to facilitate a search that ultimately resulted in 36 applications for the job.

Two of the company’s consultants, Gerald Freitag and Joe Sheehan, pared the applicants to six semifinalists from which the board chose four finalists. Two of the finalists quickly withdrew from consideration, leaving Koch and Watkins vying for the job. 

Fritsch called both candidates “highly qualified,” but said Watkins in particular met all her expectations. 

“He’s calm, comes with a wealth of experience and is very student oriented and very staff oriented,” she said. 

Fritsch said she likes Watkins’ approach to collaborative decision making, adding that in that sense “he has some of the qualities and characteristics of Dr. Weber.

“I see him (Watkins) as being very organized and stable, but also as someone with a flexible leadership style focused on including all groups — students, staff members, administrators, parents and the community — in decision making,” she said.

Watkins, a Wisconsin native, is chief of schools for St. Paul Public Schools, a district of about 38,000 students and more than 60 schools. But he began his career as a teacher in the one-school Princeton School District west of Ripon in 1993 and considers his move now from a large, metropolitan school system to the Port-Saukville District as an opportunity to be closer to students, the teachers who educate them and the community, he said.

“This is definitely a return-to-my-roots move for me,” he said. “The size of the community and the size of the district are very attractive to me.”

After working in the Princeton School District, where he served as interim principal for a year,  he was an assistant principal and athletic director in the North Fond du Lac School District and a middle school principal in the Waupun School District before working in the Madison Metropolitan School District. There he served as a principal and college preparatory program director.

Watkins held administrative positions, including assistant superintendent for 18 months, in Minnesota’s Burnsville-Eagan-Savage District 191 before being hired as chief of schools for St. Paul Public Schools in January 2019.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Marian University in Fond du Lac.

He will be paid $185,000  a year as superintendent of the Port Washington-Saukville School District.