Carlton hires new school leaders

South Terrace Elementary School in Carlton has a new principal. The school board on Monday approved the hiring of Donita Stepan, the former superintendent in Thief River Falls in northwestern Minnesota. She will replace Ben Midge, who resigned this spring to take a principal job in southern Minnesota.

Midge had been the principal of the entire Carlton school district, covering the elementary through high school grades. Superintendent John Engstrom said a search for a replacement for Midge would be easier if the district posted a job for the elementary principal job only. He volunteered to fill in for duties at the upper grades school or find another solution.

That solution came into play Monday as well, as the board approved hiring Warren Peterson as the middle and high school principal. It’s a job the former Cloquet principal has held before, when Carlton had two principals before merging the jobs with Midge three years ago.

Stepan resigned from the Thief River Falls district after two years in the top administrative post. She admits it was a trying time there, being interviewed and negotiating for the job online, in the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her first duty was to create protocols for the pandemic and create a strategic plan for the district as it prepared for a referendum. The tax increase did not pass in 2021, and the district now faces $1.2 million in cuts.

It’s a scenario Stepan will face in Carlton, though not on such a high administrative level. The Carlton board approved a deficit general fund budget for next year of $368,901 Monday night, well shy of its goal in the past few months to lessen the budget hole to $250,000 as it expected a $500,000 deficit budget for next year.

After community outcry about folding its upper grades into the Cloquet school district earlier in the school year and a board vote to scrap the plan, the board is now tasked with making the numbers work with grades K-12 intact.

Stepan would seem overqualified for the principal job. But she said, “I really miss the kids” since taking her first superintendent job at Thief River Falls in 2020. She was a superintendent candidate for a host of openings across the state this spring. She was also a candidate for superintendent at Carlton in the past, losing out to Gwen Carmen.

So why Carlton, when there were many high-profile openings? She made final cuts in many of those candidate lists.

“I’m looking forward to being home,” she said. She has a home on Sturgeon Lake, just south of Carlton County. She is also taking care of her mother, another factor in leaving the outpost that was Thief River Falls. Her mother and late father grew up in the Willow River area.

“I reached out to John,” she said Wednesday after the hire was made official. “I said, ‘Is this job really open?’”

She said she is done moving around for jobs. “I’m not interested in going anywhere else. I’m done.”

Stepan is a 1988 graduate of Hastings High School and attended St. Cloud State University and completed higher-level degree work leading to her administrator qualifications.

Engstrom said the district is fortunate to have landed Stepan in a field of 10 applicants that led to five interviews. Stepan was the clear choice, he told the board Monday. “We are very excited that she is coming to Carlton,” he said Tuesday.

Stepan said she is looking forward to some “small-town charm” in Carlton and even the budget crunching in a cash-strapped district.

“I’m not afraid of a challenge,” she said of the necessary and continuing cuts to the budget. She said she found ways to trim the budget in Thief River Falls without hurting the student experience too much. “You have to figure it out,” she said, adding that having a supportive school board is key.

For now, after a whirlwind spring of interviews and scenarios playing out in her head, she is happy to land in Carlton.

“I really wanted to be home,” she said.