Elk Mound school superintendent retires June 30

By LeAnn R. Ralph

ELK MOUND   —  After serving in education for 37 years, Dr. Ron Walsh, school superintendent in Elk Mound, officially retired at the end of the school year on June 30.

Dr. Walsh, who has worked in the Elk Mound school district for 23 years and has served as the superintendent for the last 13 years, submitted his request for retirement to the Elk Mound Board of Education in October.

Dr. Walsh says he clearly remembers the transition when he took over from Bill Vincent as superintendent at Elk Mound.

“It was hard too. I got the job in February, and I was high school principal at the time. There is so much work to do in the spring that it was hard to find time to work with Bill on the transition to superintendent,” Dr. Walsh said.

To complicate matters, the school district’s bookkeeper, who had been ill for a while, died in July shortly after Dr. Walsh began the superintendent’s position.

In addition to working on putting a budget together for the next school year, “I was doing a lot of the day-to-day budget,” he recalled.

“That’s the part you worry about the most is the budget. You have to have it in your mind and be able to explain it,” Dr. Walsh said.

Dr. Walsh was recognized during the staff recognition luncheon in May at Elk Mound High School, and the school district also held a going-away party for him in May.

“The hardest part was giving (the school board) my retirement letter. It’s been a great district for me. It’s been fun. I started as principal in the middle school. I came from Spooner. And I remember — Eric (Wright) is closing in on 400 kids in the middle school now — but when I started they didn’t have a middle school. They had a K-8 structure,” Dr. Walsh said.

Eric Wright, the principal at Elk Mound Middle School, took over as superintendent on July 1.

Chris Hahn, who taught fourth grade at Mound View Elementary for ten years, became middle school principal on July 1.

Beginning

Dr. Walsh said he had initially applied for the principal position at Mound View Elementary.

The school board hired another individual as Mound View principal, but then Dr. Walsh received a telephone call from a school official asking if he would like to set up a new middle school.

“I said, ‘of course. I’d love to do that.’ That’s where I had been working,” he said.

When Dr. Walsh started at Elk Mound, the junior high was sixth, seventh and eighth grade and had about 180 students.

In addition to working on setting up the middle school, Dr. Walsh also served as the curriculum coordinator, and a year or two later, he became the transportation director and also was put in charge of safety.

The “add-ons” took some of the pressure off of Superintendent Bill Vincent, Dr. Walsh said.

Dr. Walsh served as the middle school principal for eight years. At that time, growth had not yet started in the school district, and the class sizes were steady.

A junior high is based on a “mini high school” concept while a middle school focuses more on the emotional and social development of the students, Dr. Walsh noted.

When Jay Silvernail retired as high school principal, Dr. Walsh took over as the high school principal and served in that position for two years.

“The time has really gone fast,” Dr. Walsh said.

Most enjoyable

Out of all of the positions he has held in education — teacher, guidance counselor, principal, superintendent — Dr. Walsh says the superintendent’s job has been the most enjoyable.

“You have such impact. You’ve always got people mad at you, but you kind of get used to that. You’ve got people mad at you when you’re a principal, too. You don’t do these jobs for popularity. You do them for positive impact, to impact the lives of students, the people you hire to be in front of those kids. The programs you develop. You don’t always get it right, but then you have to work to make it right. That’s part of the job, making it right and continually molding it,” he said.

“A primary goal of mine as superintendent, and as a principal too, was to make school a safe place. Safe in the sense that the students felt safe. You establish rules about using the swimming pool and the cleanliness of the school so people feel safe being here. And you also want them to feel safe from being bullied and harassed. That is so important. We work on that a lot. There is no bigger tragedy than a student who does not feel safe because then they are not learning,” Dr. Walsh said.

“It is an important job of ours to make the buildings and the environment safe for every student. It’s hard to do, but it’s important work,” he said.

“I think that’s what draws people back to our school to apply for jobs. They have fond memories of being here. It’s hard to have fond memories if you don’t feel safe here,” Dr. Walsh said.

And safety is especially important now because society has changed so much.

“We have such an epidemic of mental illness. We see it here in Elk Mound, and I know Bill (Yingst) sees it at Colfax. We are not immune from that,” Dr. Walsh said.

“We are struggling to deal with it, and I think that’s the tragedy of our 21st Century so far,” he said.

Board of Education 

“I’ve been blessed. I’ve had great (school) boards,” Dr. Walsh said.

“Actually, there has been so little change on the board. You can never plan board changes because that’s up to the public. But we’ve talked about transition when it is possible,” he said, noting that longtime school board members Bill Moore, Jim Holte and Margaret Dieter retired within the last few years.

Dr. Walsh nominated the Elk Mound Board of Education twice for the Magna Award sponsored by the National School Boards Association.

The Elk Mound Board of Education won the Magna Award in 2008 and received an honorable mention in 2014.

“The Magna Award is not a small thing. It’s a big deal,” Dr. Walsh said, adding that while several school boards were selected for the award the same year as Elk Mound, the school boards selected were out of the whole country and 60,000 school boards.

“We called it leading with trust. When the public trusts us, you can really get some work done,” he said.

In 2010, Dr. Walsh earned his doctorate degree in educational leadership from Edgewood College in Madison.

In 2014, Dr. Walsh was named the Wisconsin Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators.

Referendum

Superintendents often are faced with a referendum in the district to complete a construction project.

The Elk Mound school district held a referendum for $9.325 million in 2009 to add onto the elementary school and to do some remodeling at the middle school and high school.

Dr. Walsh noted that the trust the public had concerning the school board is what allowed the referendum to pass, 61 percent “yes” to 39 percent “no.”

The demographics of the community have changed over the years. Elk Mound is now the largest school in the Dunn-St. Croix Conference, and Elk Mound has the lowest in property values for the conference but is the highest in adjusted gross income,  Dr. Walsh said.

“When I started here, my son was in seventh grade and my daughter was in third. It was nice watching them go through school here. I really felt good about my kids going to school here and graduating from here,” Dr. Walsh said.

Spooner was a great school district, too, he said, noting that his children were not in school when the Walsh family lived in Boyceville.

What’s next?

Dr. Walsh said that he and his wife, Sue, are planning to do some traveling after he is retired.

Dr. Walsh also might do some consulting or some part-time work in education.

“We are taking a trip in July. We’re going to take the whole family. My daughter, Laura, had a kidney transplant 25 years ago. The third of July is her anniversary, so we always do something big on her big anniversary,” Dr. Walsh said, noting that they are planning to go to Puerto Rico for a week

Laura lives in Eau Claire, and his son Ryan and his wife and their son live in the Twin Cities.

“I am feeling very nostalgic and very thankful for the experiences I got from Bill Vincent, Jay Silvernail, Joyce Olson (Mound View principal). All of the board members. Elton Christopherson was the board president when I started. Gary Oas was board president for a long time. His son is on the board now. They have all been great board members to work with. They value education,” he said.

Dr. Walsh said he also appreciates his family.

“They’ve been very patient with me over the years,” he said.

And of course, Dr. Walsh is going to miss his colleagues in the Elk Mound school district.

“I’m proud of all of our staff. They do a great job,” Dr. Walsh said.