After eight years as superintendent at Bertrand Community School in Bertrand, Dr. Greg Barnes will be the superintendent for the Seward Public School district beginning July 1.
     He also spent two years at Bertrand as secondary principal and activities director. Before moving to Bertrand, the Barnes family lived in Chambers, where he taught business, physical education and math courses. He was also principal for six years.
     The Seward County Independent submitted a list of questions for Barnes to answer related to becoming the superintendent at Seward. His responses follow.
     1) What will you do to inspire confidence in the district employees, students and patrons?
     Involving people in the decision-making process is critical with regard to inspiring confidence. In situations that allow for teamwork I will try to get various groups of people involved. Making sure people have the tools and resources available is crucial to success and success will cultivate confidence. Obviously, school districts have limited resources, so sometimes you have to do what you can with the available resources without setting the team up for failure.
     Things are not always going to go as planned, but [for] things [to] go well it's important to thank people for a job well done. Schools and communities need to celebrate the positives.
     2) How do you plan to communicate within the district, both with the staff and with patrons?
     The best way to communicate with people is face to face. I will be involved in the community and try to meet the people of Seward and the surrounding communities. Beyond that there appear to be a number of viable communication pieces in place in the Seward School District at the present time. I will need time to experience how the various tools work and then try to build on those things currently in place.
     3) Seward High School has been ranked near the bottom of Class B in numbers of course offerings. How do you plan to improve/increase the class offerings at SHS?
     I plan to come into Seward Public Schools with both eyes open, but certainly don't have enough knowledge about the school district to address questions of this magnitude at this point in time. Most schools across the country would like to offer more for their students, but as I mentioned before school districts do have limited resources, and often resources come and go. The idea of increasing offerings is a good one, if sustainable.
     4) The district's state aid has fluctuated wildly in the past few years. How will you keep the district budget within the state-mandated parameters while dealing with the ups and downs of state aid?
     It is important to put money away in those good years so the school district has a cash reserve built up for those rainy days, so to speak. Sometimes it is difficult to fight the urge to spend the money that may be available, but it is important to use tax dollars wisely with the goal of providing a quality education well into the future.
     5) What direction would you like to see the Seward School District take? Where do you see it in five years? Ten years?
     Again, I certainly have no idea what direction the Seward District should take. It takes time to develop those perceptions and I feel it would be counter-productive for a new superintendent to come in with preconceived notions of what improvements should be made or what direction the district should take. I've heard very good things about the students, staff and support provided by the people of Seward, and I look forward to working with all parties to improve the education [we] provide the students of the district.
     Barnes received his bachelor of arts in education from Kearney State College in 1987, a master of arts in education from the Universiy of Nebraska-Kearney in 1993 and an educational doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2002.
     He and his wife Pam will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary in May. Their twin daughters, Brittney and Courtney, are college freshmen. Son Trey is in sixth grade.