Nampa school board accepts superintendent’s resignation, appoints interim replacement
Nampa School District trustees formally accepted the abrupt resignation of the system’s superintendent at a special board meeting Saturday and appointed a temporary replacement.
Gregg Russell, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, will serve as interim superintendent.
Paula Kellerer served as superintendent for more than four years before announcing her resignation Friday. A week earlier, Zone 2 board trustee Michael Kipp also resigned.
Kellerer’s resignation and Kipp’s exit from the five-member board come after three new trustees took office in January. During the pandemic, the school district has been roiled by debates over COVID-19 learning protocols and how race and American history are taught in school.
In her resignation letter, Kellerer cited divisions between her vision and that of the board.
“A district’s educational vision must supersede personal interests, politics, and ideologies,” she wrote. “Sometimes, however, values and deeply held individual beliefs are too far apart.”
In his own resignation letter, Kipp said he was “weary” and “tired” after his time on the board, and that “it felt as if the arguments about a global pandemic (and even its legitimacy) had diminished our focus on student achievement. That was discouraging and even demoralizing.”
Last year, Kipp faced a failed recall effort over his support for continued remote learning and delaying the restart of school sports in the fall of 2020, according to the Idaho Press.
At Saturday’s meeting, trustees did not mention the ongoing pandemic.
Jeff Kirkman, the recently elected chair of the board from Zone 5, said he had only worked with Kellerer for about a week since he took office in January.
“It’s disappointing for me because I was really looking forward to working with her and her administration,” he said. “I sincerely believed that Dr. Kellerer leaving would be more disruptive and ineffective for the school district, and so I really had all intentions of working with her and moving forward.”
He added that “we may have differences” on how to help students succeed, but that Kellerer’s tenure was spent focused on helping students thrive.
During the meeting, Kirkman asked a spectator in the crowded room to bring forward a sign that read “Thank you Paula” and place it at the front of the boardroom. Attendees clapped multiple times during the meeting, with Kirkman at one point saying “this is the only meeting I’m never going to gavel down anybody.”
Tracey Pearson, a Zone 3 trustee who also took office in January, said she was “very surprised” when she learned Kellerer was resigning on Saturday morning.
After the board was in executive session for nearly 30 minutes on Saturday, trustee Mandy Simpson, from Zone 1, reluctantly motioned to accept the resignation of Kellerer, saying through tears that “it’s not every day you get to work with great, amazing leaders.”
Simpson worked in Nampa’s schools with Kellerer for multiple years, serving previously as board chair before being replaced by Kirkman last month, according to Idaho Education News.
The item was passed unanimously, after which the board unanimously appointed Russell to fill her seat as interim superintendent.
“I think it is a natural transition,” Simpson said.
Russell was previously an assistant professor in the Northwest Nazarene University Doceō Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, according to his biography on the school district’s website. He also worked as a teacher and administrator in Nampa schools, serving as principal of Ronald Reagan Elementary School.
The school board also unanimously accepted Kipp’s resignation and will be accepting applicants to fill the Zone 2 seat until the end of the term, in 2023.
Under Idaho law, the trustees have 90 days to appoint someone to fill the seat.
Speaking of Kipp, Kirkman said they agreed on most issues, but that “there are some things that we will always have disagreements with people on, and that’s OK ... and that’s what I look for in filling this vacancy, is someone who doesn’t always agree with everything everyone else says on the board because I don’t think that’s healthy.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2022 at 6:42 PM.
