WILLMAR - Cheryl Nash, the Willmar Public Schools director of teaching and learning, has finished her four-year tenure in Willmar and will start working next week in the Hutchinson School District.
In an interview Thursday, just before she left town, Nash said the new job will take her closer to family, including her two brothers. One of them has been ill, she said, and “I’m too far from him here.”
Nash said she has lived out of a suitcase for some time, too, including during her time in Willmar. With this move, she plans to sell her home and land in the Brainerd Lakes area and move to the Hutchinson area.
Earlier this year, Nash had applied to be Willmar’s superintendent, but she withdrew that application before interviews. Her new job will have the same title she has had in Willmar, but it will have additional duties that will place her in an assistant superintendent role. “I’m excited for a new adventure,” she said.
The Willmar district’s staff makes a good team and is in a good position to continue the initiatives that were started in recent years, Nash said.
“I’m probably most proud of the collaborative processes that are in place,” she said. “We have done good things.”
Nash led the implementation of the Response to Intervention program in Willmar’s elementary schools, a reaction to the state’s new school performance ratings system.
“The (Response to Intervention) program in this district is stellar,” she said. She believes it is the best in the state, and she expects that to continue and grow after she leaves.
If she leaves with a disappointment, she said, it’s that the English Language Learner program continues to undergo changes.
Willmar is a rural district that faces some urban challenges, she said, and the district will continue to face the challenge of growing numbers of children arriving who don’t speak English and haven’t attended school before.
There is no other district like it in Minnesota, she said, and she has been impressed with how the district has accepted the challenge.
Nash’s last day was Thursday, and she will begin her job in Hutchinson by attending a meeting Sunday. Her first day in the new district will be Wednesday.
She said she plans to spend her first few months in her new district getting to know the staff and the school system and studying data. “You can’t walk in and make major changes,” she said.
