In July, Dean Jones will depart as superintendent of the Tea Area School District. Jones was the first superintendent in Tea after it was formed by splitting with Lennox in 2003.
Jones will leave after working through some of the most tenuous times the district is likely to see.
The district’s first school board was in place in January. He was hired that April. The high school and middle school principals came on board in May and June, leaving around two months to prepare students for that first school year.
If the source of the district’s difficulties were to be boiled down to a word, that word would be money.
The 43-year-old superintendent oversaw a district whose boundaries do not include any major commercial areas – which affects how much property tax revenue it generates – but saw an increase in students every year. The state pays the district a per-student allocation every year, but that figure is based on enrollment from the previous year.
Through the start-up years, Jones said he gathered many memories, made friends and was proud to watch the district grow and evolve.
Here are excerpts from an interview conducted last week with the outgoing superintendent. For a complete transcript, visit www.thechampiononline.com.

JH: What is your number one memory?
DJ: The first day of school is something you’re never gonna forget. We had the day start and we didn’t even have electricity yet in the classrooms. The lights came on as we doing a television interview.
Then we had a mishap with a bus at the same time: We had cars parked too close together along the side street and the bus caught the edge of one of a teacher’s vehicle over at the elementary.
That was all in the same day – the very first day. Everything was happening at once. It was a hectic day but it all came together and it’s something I’m never gonna forget.”

JH: Was there ever a time in those first months where you thought “What have I gotten myself into?”
DJ: Not really so much that. It was going so fast. Mr. Rockafellow and I have talked about this before … that first semester was such a blur with so many things at once. You don’t realize, until you’ve actually gone through it, all the little things that are just routine in a district that’s been there for years and years and years. It’s all brand new.
Just little procedural things: filling out a voucher for this or that or making sure that everybody knows where to get there supplies because you’re dealing with so many new folks. There are just little procedural things you don’t think of.

JH: You couldn’t say “We’ve always done this ...”
DJ: Right, you can’t say that. It’s not the way it’s always been done, because it’s never been done. If it needed to be done differently, it needed to be different from how things were done in the old district. Plus, we were dealing with so many new teachers who didn’t know. Things happened so fast from July 1st to when we started school.

JH: Weren’t there kids in the Historical Society building?
DJ: Yeah, that’s another thing. My office was on the altar of the old Catholic Church. That’s where my desk sat. We used the church for the library and they used the kitchen area for the fax room, they put a divider on there.
The bathrooms were used as bathrooms for the stick buildings cause the stick buildings at the K-3 now were in the parking lot of those old catholic school. We did that for two years before we even built (the Middle School/High School) building. We passed the bond issue for that in 2003. We didn’t open up until 2005.

JH: How many kids did you have at first?
DJ: With about a week or so to go before school, on our roll, there were about 550. By the end of the year we were between 630 and 650. We kept adding kids. That first month, we had all kinds of open enrollments and kids who saw that the school did happen and came to enroll.

JH: There were holdouts?
DJ: I think there were some people who weren’t sure if they were gonna go to Lennox or Tea and they waited until the last minute to fill out their stuff. Some people are just that way – they procrastinate.

JH: Did you get the sense at the start that there were people who thought it wasn’t gonna work?
DJ: I’d heard that a few times, but I don’t think it was the consensus that it wasn’t gonna work. You always have those who are negative and don’t think it’s gonna happen, but the consensus was that this is gonna happen and that failure is not an option. That’s how it had to be to make it blossom into what we have today.

JH: What do you think the greatest challenge has been?
DJ: The greatest challenge has been being able to put the curriculum in that you want based on the financial situation. With the tax base we have, it’s been a challenge adding building space we’ve needed.
Because of our growth, having to educate the number of kids we’ve had to with money coming in the rears (one year late). That challenge has been a little easier with the growth money we’ve been getting, but it’s still a challenge. We have the kids in the seat, we’ve got to get the funding for them so you can give them the education that they need. Those will continue to be the obstacles the district will face.

JH: Has something come out in the character of the district – its students, its teachers – that you did not expect?
DJ: I don’t think there’s anything I didn’t expect. It’s a very caring community in terms of their kids, and I think a lot of the character of our staff has shown. Especially for those who have been here since day one, they’ve shown their true work ethic in trying to make the district what it is.
The district is only as successful as those people who are in the classroom working with the kids. Success is not necessarily dictated by what the school board or the superintendent does, it’s dictated by the folks who are working with those students day to day and working with those teachers day to day to make the education the best that it can be. That’s a characteristic this district has: it has very caring, hard-working folks.

JH: The original board said they wanted the district to be known for its curriculum and they set out a number of things they wanted Tea to be known for. How far along is the district?
DJ: Probably not as far as I’m sure they would like and a lot of that’s just due to the amount of money you have to put into those programs. And the number of kids who want those programs.
They wanted all kinds of different foreign language options, but in the high school area when you only had a couple hundred kids it was hard to get those kinds of programs in.
They have requirements from the (South Dakota) Department of Education, too. They can only take so many classes, and you can’t offer a curriculum to 3-4 kids – it’s not fiscally responsible. There were all kinds of things they wanted to have, but unless you’re the size of a Sioux Falls … Brandon isn’t even able to offer some of those things. It’s because of the size of the budget you get.

JH: Were there any big disappointments?
DJ: Not really. I think that we’ve done pretty well with the curriculum we have and what our district standing is. We’ve been a distinguished high school two of the last three years. Our test scores are right there with the state averages or a little better.
We are in school improvement there at the middle school but we’ve made gains. It’s not that we’ve gone backwards, we’re right on the fringe of getting out (of school improvement). There’s been a lot of hard work done there.
As far as the education aspect is concerned, I don’t think there’s any disappointment there.

JH: What are your favorite extracurricular activities? (Jones was Activities Director until the 2008-09 school year)
DJ: When I went to the region one act play over in Brandon. Those kids were awesome. Just to see the talent those kids have … it’s just fun. It’s what you wanna be a part of. You see them do the other plays and the musicals, the concerts and other things you just have to say “Wow, we’re helping provide outlets for those talents.” That’s really a satisfying thing to be a part of.
I know there are people who’d like to see even more of the fine arts but with what we’ve been able to provide, they’ve been able to use their talents to make it the very best. Our kids showed that, despite some of the limitations we have, they were still the best there was. They were able to perform and have state superiors in those programs. In our music, how many times have we had kids make the All State Chorus or win awards at their competitions? It just shows that talent is the most important thing. It isn’t always the fancy facility or the fancy materialistic things, it’s a matter of having the talent and getting the talent out of them. The teachers that have worked with them have been able to get that talent to show through.
The other extracurricular is obviously being able to host a playoff football game was a very exciting thing for the whole town; the whole community. To watch those kids go from eighth graders and really getting beat up that first year to having a very successful senior year for that group was very satisfying, too.
For all of our athletics, our kids put the time in to try and be the best they can be and sometimes the other school’s has just a little more talent. Not everybody can win and I think sometimes that’s a hard thing to accept.

JH: What are you going to miss most?
DJ: I’m gonna miss all of it. I like the people here. They’ve treated me pretty well. I’m really gonna miss the teaching staff here. They have done, in my opinion, a tremendous job. They have put in as much time, if not more time, developing programs as any group I’ve worked ever worked with. Their willingness to do that; they want to do that and have input. I’m gonna miss that.
They’re good people and I just appreciate the heck out of everything they’ve done. With the work they’ve done they’ve made it a lot easier for the principle and myself to do what we do. I’m just proud of them and proud of what they’ve done.
I’ve thought about it a lot. Six years. I’ve put in six years of the blood, sweat and tears and the personal sacrifices to make this thing work and it’s kind of a bittersweet end. There’s a lot of great memories here that I’ll never forget.

What’s next?
Well, I’m looking. I’ve got three opportunities that I’m going to look into here this week. I’m waiting to hear today about an interview today. Two of them are in-state and one of them is out of state. It would be in this side of the state. They’re more in the Midwest. I’ve had a couple of interviews in Arizona.

JH: Do you have any advice for Mr. Schutz?
DJ: I’m actually meeting with him the week after next. He asked that I come in here and visit with him and get him up to speed on where we’re at with some of our curriculum issues. He wanted to pick my brain on a few things. I said I’d be available to him in whatever capacity he wanted.

JH: What does he need to know?
DJ: Well, the career academy, for one thing. He needs to know what our obligations are on that thing so that when he goes in those meetings that he’s up to speed on that. Where we at with our Cornbelt special ed co-op. The budget’s set for next year, what Tea’s getting out of it, where we’re at with the building project and up to speed on the documents we have.

JH: What would you tell him about Tea that you wouldn’t tell him about another district? What does a person need to know about this community and this district, coming in?
DJ: Tea is really unique in that because of the growth it’s taken on, you’re getting folks from all different parts of South Dakota, the Midwest and they all come in with preconceived notions of what they want in their school. More so than I would have had in Menno based on how their growth happens.
You have a lot of different pods of folks and beliefs out there and you’re going to have to really know and understand what their perceptions are so you can somehow mesh those together to have them successful. When we started here, there were I don’t even know how many different committees that they had and they all had their little niche of what they wanted done in a certain way.
They were pretty good about kind of letting go of some of that as things started to evolve, and there’s still some that people are trying to hang onto and I thinks that’s where a lot of controversy arises sometimes. People still feel they have a strong hold on the way things should be, but the direction the district has taken might not match. It does cause some friction from time to time.
There’s definitely a few land mines out there that you have to keep an eye out for and you definitely need to keep an open ears.

JH: You mean like a performing arts center.
DJ: Yeah. And you get some people who really wanna know “when are you getting a track?” or lights on the football field or building the street or not building a street (Brain Street) and building an elementary school instead of what we’re building. Or building an industrial arts center. Everybody’s got their little niche and you really need to mindful of those things and do a lot of watching and observing.

JH: Most districts aren’t in the position to build new buildings.
DJ: Exactly. It’s because of the growth and because of the situation you’re dealing with here.
Tea’s also unique among growing districts. In most growing districts, you’re not just growing your population, you’re growing within your commercial areas. That’s the problem in Tea, we’re growing in the housing area and in the pupils and the number of people who live here, but the commercial area does not grow very fast. Because of that, we’re so out of whack in terms of trying to figure out what the valuation of our district is. The commercial areas are what really grow your district in terms of your evaluation.
Tea is really a true bedroom community in that respect. We’ve got some good businesses, but they really need a good commercial area to build some of the things that people want to see.
I don’t know how to fix that and I don’t think Mr. Schutz is going to know how to fix that. I think a lot of that part of this district is more on the heels of your city council and those folks in the business community. That’s not really the school’s forte.

JH: Any parting words for the community?
DJ: My hope for them is they just continue what we’ve started and keep growing with it. I just wanna see it continue to blossom. I’m glad I did what I did and I’m glad I was here the time that I was here. I don’t have any ill will, I want to see it thrive.
It’s disappointing not to be coming back and it was a little disappointing how it ended.

JH: No ill will?
DJ: No, because that’s not productive. I want what’s best for the kids here like everybody else. It’s not about the school board, you know, it’s about the kids.