District 214 board chooses Huntley District 158 superintendent as next leader
The Northwest Suburban High School District 214 board conducted a national search for its first new superintendent in 17 years, but it didn't have to look far at all.
The board Thursday night named Huntley Unit District 158 Superintendent Scott Rowe as the new leader of the state's second-largest high school district, voting 6-0 on a four-year, $280,000-a-year contract that starts July 1 and will keep him in the job through June 30, 2027.
Rowe, 42, of Huntley, succeeds longtime Superintendent David Schuler, who left the job in February to become executive director of the Alexandria, Virginia-based AASA, the national School Superintendents Association. It was that organization that named Schuler National Superintendent of the Year in 2018.
As superintendent in District 158 since 2018, Rowe has overseen processes for strategic and equity plans and capital improvements - similar tasks he'll be faced with in District 214. As principal of Huntley High School the five years before, he helped implement a blended learning program of in-person and online coursework.
"We expanded that and really knocked the doors off of a traditional school day, creating a flexible environment that looked more like a community college," Rowe said Thursday night at the Forest View Educational Center in Arlington Heights. "That was really when my mind opened to what school and learning could be, because it's not students in rows. It's not the teacher owning all of the knowledge. I mean, we have a supercomputer in our pocket that we can certainly use and whether it be a Chromebook or an iPad at our disposal that has access to everything. So we need to break down those walls."
Rowe came to the Huntley-based district in 2011 to become principal of Marlowe Middle School after three years as an assistant principal in McHenry Elementary District 15 and four years as a social studies teacher at McHenry High School's West campus and Knob Noster High School in Missouri.
A native of Charleston, Missouri, Rowe holds a bachelor's degree in history from Missouri State University and master's and doctoral degrees in educational leadership from Aurora University.
Board President Bill Dussling, who was involved in Schuler's hiring in 2005, echoed the direction board members gave to Schuler on his first day years ago: Push the envelope on public education, have the courage to fall forward and fail forward, and try again if at first your ideas aren't successful.
"We have a tradition of selecting superintendents that we hope will stay with us for a while, who serve as leaders in support of our staff and students, who want to build consensus, who find ways to get to yes, and continue to build toward what's next in education to meet the needs of all learners," said Dussling, of Arlington Heights, who was reelected to a seventh 4-year term last week.
After Schuler announced his departure from District 214 in November, the board hired Schaumburg-based search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to help find his replacement. Consultants Brian Harris, the retired Barrington Area Unit District 220 superintendent, and Connie Collins, the retired Round Lake Unit District 116 superintendent, conducted a series of forums, surveys and focus groups with various stakeholders to create a leadership profile report. They then recruited candidates and collected resumes to present a pool of candidates to the school board, which did rounds of interviews in closed session starting in March.
The search firm is due a fee equal to 20% of the new superintendent's salary.
District 214 Associate Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Laz Lopez and retired Community Unit District 300 Superintendent Ken Arndt will continue serving as co-interim superintendents until July.