BROWNSTOWN
Jade Peters has had his administrator license since 2010.
He said it was a goal to someday take on an administrative role, and that came in 2016 when he was named Brownstown Central Community School Corp.’s business manager.
Now, the 39-year-old has an additional title: Interim superintendent.
The board of trustees unanimously approved that during Tuesday’s meeting at the superintendent’s office.
“I had no thoughts of it hitting this quickly or having this opportunity now,” he said after the meeting. “I really enjoy my role now as business manager. It presents a lot of challenges. Being a part of all of the construction projects, I really enjoy that. So eventually down the road, yes, that was probably the ultimate goal, but I’m just kind of taking it day by day and going with the doors that open.”
The opportunity came following Superintendent Greg Walker recently announcing he was resigning to become superintendent of Paoli Community School Corp. He starts there Oct. 1.
During a recent executive session, Peters said the school board talked about hiring an interim superintendent.
“They are looking to move forward pretty quickly with getting a superintendent in here, and I said, ‘If you guys need somebody to step up, I can do that,’” he said. “I’ve got a lot of pride here, grew up here, want to see the school do really well, and I’m willing to work and do whatever I need to do to make that happen.”
Peters said the superintendent position will be posted this week. He declined to say whether he plans to apply.
The school board already has been discussing the hiring process of the next superintendent, he said. There are two possible starting dates: Jan. 1 or July 1.
“If they don’t find who they want in that amount of time (by Jan. 1), then I think they would be willing to push it back to July 1 if that’s what they need to do,” Peters said. “It will be a process. They are moving quickly, but they are doing a very thorough job in everything that they’ve done so far.”
Peters, a 1997 Brownstown Central High School graduate, earned bachelor’s degrees in math and education and a minor in computer science from Franklin College in 2002. He also played football in college all four years.
He taught at East Central High School from 2002 to 2004 before teaching at Brownstown Central Middle School for five years and then moving to the high school. He also helped coach football and girls basketball at the high school.
He earned his master’s degree in education from Olivet Nazarene University in 2008 and his administrator license from Indiana State University in 2010.
Since graduating from high school, he also has operated his own business, A+ Outdoor Services.
Peters has been business manager since July 1, 2016. In that role, he has worked closely with Walker.
“Greg and I work great together,” Peters said. “He’s a lot stronger in probably the law area than I am, and I was stronger in the budgets, so we really did work well together. We worked well together on the construction projects that we had. Those are big tasks. The last two years, we’ve had construction projects in a row, and those take up a lot of time, so we did a lot of communication with that.”
Peters said he learned a lot from Walker.
“His people skills, he’s really good, and he gets along with everybody, so I learned from that,” Peters said. “I’m always trying to learn and always trying to find ways to improve professionally, personally, everything. I’m just going to take my skills that I have and work really hard to keep this going.”
Harry Rochner, the corporation’s previous business manager, is going to fill in to take on some of Peters’ day-to-day business manager duties.
“We’ll have administrative meetings, and I’ll have to deal with that,” Peters said. “Weather is going to be a big thing this winter coming up. We’ll have to deal with that, which I was a part of that already anyway. Curriculum, we’ve got teacher negotiations coming up, so it’s going to be a very busy time, there’s no doubt about that, so we just look forward to it and take it day by day.”
Peters also is excited about continuing to work with the school staff.
“Everybody does an outstanding job,” he said. “I’m just looking forward to maybe a little bit different relationship with them and being able to help them because ultimately, I look at the superintendent’s job as, ‘How can I make them better? What can I do in my role to make them better and make their job easier and more productive?’ We do have some challenges, and we’ll hit them head-on and move forward.”