The shared superintendent with Paton-Churdan is calling it a career after nearly 40 years in education.

Kreg Lensch started as a physical education and history teacher at Storm Lake St. Mary’s in 1988 with an annual salary of $12,000. He also coached football, basketball, baseball and track to help supplement the meager income for his then three children. Lensch then went on to teach and coach at East Monona School District in Morehead, Iowa, which no longer exists. Next, he wanted to be closer to his aging parents and took a job at Carroll High School, before taking a teaching position at Glidden-Ralston in 2000, and eventually became the building principal, then shared superintendent with P-C. 

Lensch explains the reason he wanted to make the jump to being an administrator is because he wanted to have more influence on the decision making for a school district.

“When I decided to be a superintendent that was, I think based on kind of the conditions of small schools and I wanted to make sure that both of the schools that I was involved with, Glidden-Ralston and Paton-Churdan, had an opportunity to be around and be around for a long time. So then you get involved in the finances and you try to make even higher level decisions on making sure that budgets work, and making sure that those schools are going to be around. And when I did decide to leave, that they would be on good grounds and I think both of them are.” 

Lensch points out one of the biggest changes over his career has been more state legislature involvement in education, which sometimes has been good, but not always. He says the more enjoyable parts of being in education is being around the kids and having positive impacts on them.

“That’s what you hope kids got out of it to be good people, to be good citizens. I told the kids at graduation just there’s a lot of value in being kind, caring and honest. You don’t learn all of that in books, but as a school district you have that be the theme or have that be one of the major things kids came out with. Then, you’re pretty successful.”  

Lensch adds that he won’t miss the stress of being a superintendent in today’s education atmosphere, and he is looking forward to spending more time golfing and being on a boat. Lensch officially retires at the end of June and Southeast Valley Superintendent Brian Johnson will take over as the shared superintendent with Paton-Churdan starting July 1st.