Shawn Arnold will be the interim superintendent for Nome Public Schools, filling a role left vacant as current superintendent Steve Gast steps down after announcing his resignation earlier this month.
At a special session of the Nome Board of Education Monday night the school board chose Arnold after an hour of executive session. He was selected from among three candidates who had applied to fill the role temporarily.
Arnold is a former infantry officer and forward air controller with the U.S. Army and now an Air Force reservist. He’s taught social studies, English, and special education during his more than 20 years in Alaska. He came to Nome in July as the district’s director of special programs and human resources.
“My wife and I both, we’ve both taught in different parts of rural Alaska, and wanted to return to kind of a similar place,” he said at the meeting. “We really wanted to come to Nome.”
Arnold also worked as a teacher, a principal, and a district administrator in the Mat-Su School District before coming to Nome. He’ll continue his work with HR and special programs while also taking on the new interim duties of superintendent.
Arnold said he already sees areas where he thinks the district can improve.
“Here in Alaska, we do a lot of lip service for preparing students for college and career readiness,” he said. “But sometimes we don’t do enough to prepare them for career readiness. And that’s an area that I really feel we can do more for our kids here in Nome.”
Arnold said, if the interim position goes well, he may apply for the full-time position.
To fill that full-time job, the board is moving ahead with a search for a new superintendent, starting with staff already in the district. The board unanimously agreed to seeking applicants from within Nome Public Schools in the next three weeks. The application deadline is Friday, January 16. The school board hopes to review applications at a subsequent work session scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 20.
Beyond superintendent-related business, the board also unanimously approved about $34,872 in additional expenses for its sprinkler system upgrade project. The additional funds will go toward extending fire walls beyond the drop ceiling in the district office and superintendent apartment. Gast brought the additional funding request to the board, he said, in the interest of transparency. He said the oversight requiring the additional expenditure was not the fault of project managers or the architect or engineers, but rather “a mistake in initial planning” of the project that now has a final price tag just shy of $513,000.
