By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
The Dawson County Commissioners have selected a candidate to fill the vacant County Superintendent of Schools position. Following a public interview on July 17, the commissioners have chosen Jayne Mitchell to fill out the term of former county superintendent Steve Engebretson. Engebretson resigned his post in late June to take over as superintendent of the Brockton School District in Roosevelt County.
With the withdrawal of one other candidate before the interview date, Mitchell, who currently works as the legal counsel for Dawson County Domestic Violence, was the only candidate to interview for the position.
“She’s well-qualified,” said Commissioner Doug Buxbaum last Tuesday after the commissioners had made their decision.
Mitchell expressed her gratitude to the commissioners for choosing to appoint her.
“I’m very honored and very appreciative of the commissioners and I will certainly do my best,” she said.
Mitchell said she definitely plans to run for the office when it is up for election, as county superintendent is an elected position. She noted that she has run for public office before and would have no qualms about doing so again.
She will fill out the last year-and-a-half of Engebretson’s term. The county superintendent position will be up for election again in November 2018.
Mitchell, who has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Montana State University and a law degree from the University of Montana, has spent most of her career in the legal profession. Before coming to Glendive, she served as Pondera County Attorney from 1991-94. She also previously worked as the City Attorney for Deer Lodge and as chief counsel for the Montana Insurance Department.
Mitchell has worked in education before, but not for nearly 40 years. Her first job out of college was as a teacher, as she spent the years 1973-78 teaching elementary school at Edgar Public Schools in Edgar, Mont.
She does, however, meet the minimum requirement of five years of teaching experience. She has also kept her Class 2 teaching license current through the years, which was one of the other major requirements for candidates for the position to possess.
Asked if she believes the fact she has been away from education for so long would be a detriment, Mitchell responded, “I don’t think so,” adding that she has had to take courses and keep up-to-date on the current trends in education in order to maintain her licensure.
“I have kept my teaching certificate up and I have to take classes every five years for that,” Mitchell said.
She added that she also knows, on an anecdotal basis, just what being the county superintendent of schools entails.
“I have friends who are county superintendents, so I know what they do,” Mitchell said.
Buxbaum added that the commissioners had “no concerns” about the time that has passed since Mitchell last worked in the education field.
Mitchell, who has spent the last several years of her legal career working to protect victims of domestic and sexual violence, including children, said she was first drawn to education as a young woman because she wanted to do something to help kids who were victims of neglect or abuse.
“I originally started teaching because I ran into some children who were abused and neglected, and in those days there wasn’t much you could do about that,” she said.
She added that she sees her work today with DCDV to be “an offshoot of that” and said that “a lot of the issues that go with teaching are similar to the issues I deal with here at DCDV.”
Concerned that the Trump administration is looking to cut the grant funding which funds her position in the DCDV, Mitchell said she was keenly interested in returning to the field of education, not only as a new challenge, but so that she doesn’t have to look for work outside of the community.
“It’s interesting work. It would keep me in the area and it would be a nice step from this field to that,” she said, adding that she “enjoyed” her previous stint in education.
The county superintendent oversees the county’s small, rural school districts, which in Dawson County are Deer Creek, Lindsay and Bloomfield.
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.