GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The new Green Bay Area Schools Superintendent is settling in to his new job, but it’s a strange time to be starting a job so important with the coronavirus pandemic leaving a lot to be addressed before students return in the fall.
Stephen Murley arrived in town over the July 4th Holiday. He comes to Green Bay directly from Iowa City, Iowa, but he has roots in the area, having served as a superintendent at the Wausau School District previously.
“It’s awesome,” Murley, who graduated from Oshkosh West High School, told WTAQ on Thursday. “I tell people it feels like coming back home. It’s fantastic.”
It hasn’t been a normal start to a new job.
“We’re such a ‘people’ business, we’re used to coming in and going to schools, going to physical meetings, connecting with the teams that work with the district,” explained Murley. “Now we have to do all of those connections through Zoom and Google Meets.”
Those meetings are important, too. Murley’s first big task is leading the district as it devises a plan to reopen in the fall after the COVID-19 pandemic canceled classes earlier this year.
“What will it look like to bus kids? How will school nutrition function? How do you keep the facilities clean and safe?” Murley said Thursday. “What do you do if kids are back in session and a kid in the classroom comes down with it or someone in their family comes down with it?”
“I got to admit there is a bit of frustration. We are spending a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of energy, and in some cases a lot of money just to figure out what school is going to look like in September,” Murley said. “There’s a lot of work to be done…but it’s not at the core of what we do.”
Some of the major goals that were on the table when Murley was selected to replace Dr. Michelle Langenfeld in early March have taken a back seat to preparing to open schools.
“Improvements to teaching and learning, working on equity issues, that is all very important work, but to some degree it takes a bit of back seat as we try to figure out how to just bring kids back to school.”
Town halls are set to be scheduled in the near future for community members to weigh in on reopening.
