PW-S schools name new AD as part of administrator shuffle

A Port Washington-Saukville School District that will have a new superintendent and middle school principal next year has now named a new high school athletic director as part of a shuffle of assistant principals.

John Bunyan, an assistant principal and athletic director at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, as well as head Port Washington High School football coach, will become Port High athletic director, although the title is being changed to activities director to reflect his responsibility for all extracurriculars. He will also serve as one of two assistant principals at the school.

Bunyan will replace Nate Hinze as athletic director. Hinze, who is also an assistant principal, will remain at the high school but strictly as assistant principal.

Dan Solorzano, who with nine years on the job is the longest serving member of the high school administrative team, will become an assistant principal at the middle school.

The changes, which are effective July 1, come during a remarkable time of administrator turnover and as Mel Nettesheim, the district’s director of business services, becomes superintendent.

“There has been a lot of turnover,” she said Monday. “We have a new principal coming to the middle school, a newer principal at the high school and I’ll be new to the superintendent job. There’s just a lot of new in the district.

“We’ve got to start with the right team in place from the beginning rather than wait and make changes later.”

The shuffle, Nettesheim said, is intended to put administrators in positions that best suit their strengths.

“All of these people bring different strengths to their jobs,” she said. “This shift aligns their strengths with their positions to best set them up for success.”

The district’s administrative team and principals decided on the changes and briefed the School Board on them during a recent closed session. Board members offered input but did not vote on the changes, Nettesheim said.

“This was a very collaborative process among all administrators,” she said. “All (of the affected assistant principals) were very supportive of the changes.”

Among the issues that generated significant discussion, Nettesheim said, was naming a head coach activities director, whose job, according to a district letter announcing the changes, is to ensure a “transparent and consistent evaluation system of all coaches and advisors.”

“We talked about that a great deal,” Nettesheim said. “We’re not the only district that has an AD who is also a coach. Actually, it’s fairly common.”

In fact, that’s the way it used to be in the Port-Saukville District when Al Urness served as both athletic director and head football coach.

Nettesheim said Port High Principal Rachel Biertzer will evaluate Bunyan’s coaching performance and that the district plans to release more information about that process in the near future.

One school in particular that is no stranger to leadership changes is Port High, where Solorzano has been the one constant since being hired in 2014.

In 2020, Principal Eric Burke, who had been in charge of the school since 2011 and served as an elementary school principal and teacher in the district before that, resigned to become superintendent of the Rhinelander School District.

Thad Gabrielse, athletic director and assistant principal at the school, was elevated to principal and Hinze, a Paralympic gold medalist with athletic director experience, was hired to fill the vacancy left by Gabrielse’s promotion.

Gabrielse, however, was placed on administrative leave in December 2021, just days after being arrested for drunken driving. He resigned weeks later, and Port High finished the school year with Solorzano and Hinze in charge.

The district then hired Biertzer, who is in her first year at Port High as principal.

The district letter announcing the changes described Solorzano as a good fit for the middle school.

“Mr. Solorzano has an extensive background in social and emotional support that will lend itself favorably to the middle school environment and allow him to expand his knowledge at a new level,” the letter read.

Solorzano will join the administrative team of Jodi Swagel, a former physical education teacher at Thomas Jefferson who became assistant principal in 2017, and the school’s new principal, Nick DeBaker. DeBaker will succeed Steve Sukawaty, who will retire on June 30 after seven years in charge of the school.

In 2018, a second middle school assistant principal position was created and Bunyan, a physical education teacher at the time, was chosen to fill it.

There has also been turnover in the highest ranks of the district.

In 2021, Mike Weber retired after 21 years as superintendent and the School Board hired Dave Watkins. A year later, Watkins stunned board members by announcing his retirement effective at the end of this school year.

The board then quickly decided to promote Nettesheim, who joined the district in January 2021, to superintendent.