Jason Glass to lead Eagle County School District
-1
EAGLE – A former Eagle County educator is returning to lead the Eagle County school district.
The school board voted unanimously to offer Jason Glass the superintendent position during Wednesday’s meeting.
Glass will replace Sandra Smyser, the current Colorado Superintendent of the Year. She’s leaving to be superintendent of the Poudre School District in Fort Collins.
Glass is Iowa’s State Director of Education, serving as the state’s chief state school officer. He was the human resources director for the Eagle County school district.
“I am thrilled to have been selected to lead Eagle County Schools,” Glass said. “I look forward to connecting with the wonderful communities in the valley and to working with the incredible and talented Eagle County Schools employees in continuing to deliver a great education for Eagle County kids.”
Support Local Journalism
Board members said Glass’s familiarity with the local school district and vision for the future of education helped him top the other two candidates — Karen Brofft, assistant superintendent, Englewood school district, and Donald Johnson, superintendent, Middleton-Cross Plains Area Schools in Wisconsin.
“We were fortunate to have three excellent candidates,” said school board member T.J. Johnson.
The final terms of Glass’s contract are still to be determined. The job was advertised as paying $175,000. They’ve set a target of July 1 for Glass to start.
The Colorado Association of School Boards helped coordinate the search.
“This was a very comprehensive process,” said school board president, Jeanne McQueeney. “The national reputation of our district attracted great candidates from many states, making for a difficult selection.”
The school board received applications from 24 candidates, half from outside Colorado, said school board president Jeanne McQueeney. They quickly narrowed it to 12 semi-finalists.
“Then it got hard,” McQueeney said.
The three candidates were put through a battery of interviews with the school board, then on May 16 with two citizens committees with 10 members each. After all that the three were put into various social situations.
The board was looking for someone to help the district stay on its path of student achievement, McQueeney said. While all the candidates could have done so, the board picked Glass.
Glass left Eagle County to take a position as the senior director of human capital strategy with Battelle for Kids, a national nonprofit dedicated to improving America’s schools. With Battelle, he worked to help school districts and state departments of education across the country.
In Eagle County, Glass also worked as the local school district’s director of research and assessment and helped create the district’s performance-pay program.
Glass held several posts with the Colorado Department of Education, and worked as a university instructor and high school teacher in Kentucky.
He earned his bachelor’s in political science, an M.Ed. in education and a master’s in political science from the University of Kentucky. He earned a Ph.D. in education from Seton Hall University.
Glass currently lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife, Sarah, and children, Norah and Chase.
Staff Writer Randy Wyrick can be reached at 970-748-2935, and rwyrick@vaildaily.com