The Montezuma County Re-1 School Board met Tuesday night and decided to name an interim superintendent.

After a 90-minute executive session, and nearly three weeks since former Re-1 superintendent Stacy Houser cleared his office, the board named Mary Rubadeau of Telluride as the district’s interim-superintendent. Although there has been no official statement of resignation from Houser, the board received approval from their attorneys to name an interim superintendent.

Board president Tim Lanier said that legal negotiations are still on-going between Houser’s attorney and Re-1.

“Negotiations are further along, and our attorneys said to go ahead and name an interim,” he said.

Lanier said that Rubadeau’s salary for the interim position has yet to be determined. Houser’s annual salary is $115,000.

Rubadeau has come out of her retirement where she held the superintendent position of the Telluride school district for 12 years. Prior to that, she was superintendent of a school district in Juneau, Alaska, her last role of a 20-year career in the Alaskan education system, primarily in administration. She had been a teacher, special education director, principal, assistant superintendent and superintendent of three school districts before coming to Colorado.

Rubadeau said while in Telluride she developed a system to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps between special education and English language learners (ELL) children and the general population. She said since her retirement, she has taken what she learned and the best practices at work to raise student achievement, and formed a consulting company. She has since been consulting in several school districts full time.

“I look forward to bringing some of that background, in terms of leadership development and systems-thinking to the table here in Cortez, even in this short window that I have to work with the district,” Rubadeau said.

She will be in the new position until the end of the school year. She also said she wants to help set up a system that will welcome a new permanent superintendent.

“I think Cortez will put that person in a position for success next year,” she said.

While she looks forward to working with the Re-1 district, she knows it will have its challenges.

“I anticipate some challenges around the budget, the budget process, and coming to a consensus of what makes the most sense for the cuts that are definitely coming down,” Rubadeau said.

She also is aware that her interim period is a small window for instilling solid communications with district staff.

The district has contacted her to act as consultant on student achievement improvement prior to her consideration as interim superintendent, and she said she plans to embed that work as interim.

“That will be a challenge in a short period of time, to really try to get everybody with a common vision of where we want to go with instruction, how we can make a difference for kids and how we can improve the results,” she said.

Members of the board said they are pleased to have her working in the Re-1 district.

“She has our full support. She’s highly qualified and we hope to get back on course in a direction that we need to be in,” said Lanier

Rubadeau said that she will also be helping Re-1 search for a permanent superintendent and making that a smooth transition.

Rubadeau takes her seat on Feb. 2.

In other board business, Bill Grimm of the Re-1 District Accountability Committee presented the board with two optional surveys, at their request, to be mailed out to parents soliciting opinion on a four verses five-day school week for the district. Grimm told the board that the survey could be finalized and submitted to the school board Feb. 7. He said that actual data will be conclusive by the end of February.

The board also motioned to appoint Diane Fox to the vacant seat for District A. She previously held the seat before taking a leave last fall.

The next Re-1 board meeting is scheduled for Feb. 2.

Reach Brandon Mathis at brandonm@cortezjournal.com