Leadership Matters June 2014

New IASA president Kuffel feels ‘profound responsibility’ to educate kids

By Michael Chamness IASA Director of Communications

him as a school administrator was the loss in 2007 of popular Geneseo science teacher Brad Schoon, who at age 47 died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. “Every district goes through a loss at some point in time, but that really galvanized the spirit of the community,” Kuffel said. “A school can win championship trophies and have fire truck parades, but nothing I’ve seen demonstrated the spirit and love of a community more than how I saw Geneseo pulling together during that time of loss.” Those who work with Kuffel describe him as a superintendent who always is pushing for improvement and not afraid of challenging the norm – almost as if a job, or even a life, is too short to become complacent. Geneseo School Board President Doug Ford describes Kuffel as “a great leader who never rests with the status quo.” “Scott never takes anything for granted,” said Ford, who has been board president the past five years and has been on the board all 11 years that Kuffel has been superintendent at Geneseo. “He leads by example and his personality is what carries him. He’s been about working to make the board better at all times. He sees that as the way the district gets better.” For example, Ford said that Kuffel pushed for a bold 2010 initiative that said that every student in

It was his first year as a superintendent and teachers in the Oregon (Illinois) school district went on a strike that lasted two weeks. Scott Kuffel remembers learning to swim in the deep end of the school administrators’ pool by being thrown in headfirst. “That probably was the greatest single learning experience for me in public education, dealing with the stress on teachers, administrators, the board and the community. I probably learned more from that than my other 28 years in education combined,” said Kuffel, the new president of the Illinois Association of School Administrators (IASA) for 2014-15. “Adversity doesn’t build character, it exposes character.” The lessons learned, Kuffel said, included media relations and the dynamics of diffusing an explosive situation. He held press briefings at 1 p.m. every day during the strike, establishing a regular cycle for the dissemination of information and making sure everyone in the media heard the same message. Navigating through a tense situation with the school board and the teachers’ union was more complex. “It was about building consensus and how to achieve solidarity on a very difficult issue,” he said. “I learned that you not only have to talk, you have to listen. Also, that you have to have empathy and be able to feel what the other person is feeling.” The other moment that Kuffel said helped shape

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