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KINGSLEY — The Kingsley Area Schools Board of Education has narrowed its list of superintendent candidates to five.
At a special board meeting this week, officials selected five first-round candidates from a list of 25 candidates who responded to district postings before voting.
Rayburn
This comes after outgoing Superintendent Brad Rayburn announced he was leaving to take a position with Fremont Public Schools.
By the end of August, Rayburn will have been in Kingsley’s position for about seven months.
Candidates to replace Rayburn are: Joshua Rothwell, Superintendent of Forest Area Community Schools; Bill Tillman IV, Beal City Public Schools Superintendent; Thomas Langdon, former superintendent of the Walkerville, Sturgis and Big Rapids school districts. Steve Wilson, former Bronson Community Schools Superintendent; and Brandywine Community Schools Superintendent Travis Walker.
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Joshua Rothwell
Mr. Rothwell has served as Superintendent of Forest Area Community Schools since 2014. For five of those years, he was principal of Lake Elementary School in Fife, where he took up the post in 2010. The district has 482 students, according to Michigan school data.
Prior to that, she worked as a teacher in the Kingsley Regional School District for 12 years.
Bill Tillman IV
Mr. Tillman has served as Superintendent of Beale City Public Schools since 2007. The number of students in this school district is 666.
Prior to that, she worked as a teacher in Brimley Area Public Schools for four years and as principal at Meridian Middle School for 10 years.
thomas langdon
Mr. Langdon twice served as superintendent of Walkerville Public Schools. The first time was from 2000 to 2004, and the second time was from 2018 to this year. He has 302 students in this district.
Between those two jobs, he served as superintendent of Sturgis Public Schools for seven years and served as superintendent of Big Rapids Public Schools for another seven years. He is the CEO of Langdon & Associates, an educational leadership consulting firm.
steve wilson
Wilson parted ways with Bronson Community Schools, where he had served as superintendent since 2020, earlier this summer. The school district has 1,002 students.
Prior to joining Mr. Bronson, he worked for the Constantine Public School District for 13 years, some of which was as a middle school principal, before becoming superintendent in 2016.
Earlier this year, he was another finalist with Rayburn for the Fremont Public Schools superintendent position, but was not selected.
Travis Walker Walker has been the superintendent of Brandywine Community Schools for one year. A year earlier, he served as principal of Niles Brandywine Middle and High School. The number of students in this district is 1,287.
He taught at Grand Traverse Area Catholic Schools for three years and at Kaleva Norman Dixon for six years. He served as principal of Constantine High School for five years from 2015.
Interviews with these candidates will be held on August 14th and 15th from 5pm. The second interview will be held on August 25th.
The hiring process is being facilitated by Sean Lewis Lakin of the Michigan School Boards Association.
Rayburn’s contract called for a base salary of $134,000 annually and a moving allowance of $5,000.
The former Newaygo Public Schools principal started with the Kingsley School District four months ago, but had not yet fully relocated to northern Michigan. As previously reported, this week he accepted a job at Fremont Public Schools, about 10 minutes from his home.
He replaced former Superintendent Keith Smith, who resigned after more than 12 years in the top job in a $700,000 buyout in September 2022. Members of the Smith and Kingsley school boards said they reached the agreement after lengthy private discussions about the best way to move the district forward.
In the months leading up to the recess, district leaders faced intense criticism from some community members over transparency, Smith’s leadership and treatment of teachers.
Smith resigned in exchange for the school board’s offer to buy out the remaining five years of his contract in full.
After retiring from Kingsley, Smith had less than a year to become eligible for retirement. On Jan. 1, he signed a six-month contract to work part-time at Vanderbilt Area Schools. According to previous reports, Smith said he could retire as soon as his tenure at Vanderbilt ends, but he doesn’t know if he will.
Report for America corps member and data journalist William T. Perkins’ reporting is made possible through a partnership between Record-Eagle and Report for America, a journalism services project founded by the nonprofit Ground Truth Project. The community’s generous support helps fund the Local Share of the Record-Eagle/RFA partnership. To support his RFA reporters in Traverse City, visit www.record-eagle.com/rfa.
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