Glasgow School Board Selects And Interview Flaten For Open Superintendent Position

The Glasgow School Board met in special session on April 30 to discuss the five Superintendent applications that were received to fill the vacancy that will be left by Wade Sundby at the end of June. After serving Glasgow Schools for four years, Sundby has accepted a position in Cut Bank.

The five candidates included two in-state applicants, one of which is a current district employee, and three out-of-state applicants. The five candidates, their location and current position are as follows:

Brenner Flaten Glasgow, Mont., Vice-principal- Irle Elementary School

Jon Hewitt Kalispell, Mont., N/A – most recently Campus Principal-Music Teacher, OneSchool Global-Kalispell (06/2017 – 2/2024)

Jeffrey Schaum Gainesville, Ga., AHC, Teacher – Riverside Military Academy

Joseph Vaughn Foley, Ala., School Food Service Consultant

Nicola Campagna Harrellsville, N.C., N/A – most recently Principal Arapaho High School, Wyo. (2014-15).

In addition to reviewing the application themselves, online searches were also utilized to gather more information on the candidates. Board member Blaine White stated “I did some Google searches to find out a little bit more about some of the things they put on their resumes. Some of the information definitely arose some red flags from those other applicants. Brenner is definitely the one that I want to interview. The other four, I did not feel, just from reviewing their applications, they would be a good candidate for where we are at.” Page agreed stating “I would like to speak a little bit about that Google searching. There’s a wealth of information out there. I would agree that there were actually some red flags in those other applications.” Board member Ryan Fast also agreed that Flaten’s application was the one that stood out, stating “I had some major concerns with four of the five applicants. I thought Brenner Flaten would be a candidate worth interviewing.”

After providing an opportunity for the rest of the board members to provide their feedback on all five candidates, the consensus was Flaten was the only truly viable candidate out of the application pool. The recommendation was made to move forward with an interview on May 1.

As part of the application process, candidates needed to submit three letters of recommendations and the Glasgow School Board reached out to Flaten’s references on April 30. On May 1, with a handful of members of the public in attendance, the Glasgow School Board spent over an hour interviewing Flaten for the superintendent position.

Once the interview was over, the Glasgow School Board went into a closed session to allow the trustees to discuss and reflect upon the interview. Upon opening the meeting back up, Board Chair Angie Page praised Flaten for his interview, thanking him for his candid answer, stating “We went from a place of, kind of, hopelessness to after today feeling incredibly hopeful.” She then announced a final decision on the open position will be made at the regular School Board meeting on May 8.

During the meeting on April 30, Board member Stan Ozark cleared misinformation he has heard from the public regarding Flaten’s application and the process the School Board has followed for the open Superintendent position. “There was a lot of misinformation going on in the community about how we shut applications down as soon as Brenner applied. People had plenty of time to apply for the job even after Brenner did apply for it,” expressed Ozark. “Just to be very clear, that application was received from Brenner the evening before the transfer request was received from Mr. Sugg,” clarified Page. During the work session on April 23, Irle School Principal Ed Sugg requested a transfer to a teaching position at the Glasgow Middle School

The Glasgow School Board will meet in regular session on Wednesday, May 8. 6 p.m. Following the regular school board meeting, contract negotiations for the open superintendent position are set to take place.