Whitefish School Board Offers Superintendent Position to Michigan Educator
Jennifer Fee’s selection is not yet finalized as the district waits for final background checks and goes through contract negotiations. She was offered the role from a bench of three finalists, the other two of which had Flathead roots.
By Mariah Thomas
After a months-long search and finalist interviews stretching over Wednesday and Thursday nights, the Whitefish School District has offered its superintendency to Jennifer Fee, a veteran educator from Grand Rapids, Mich.
Board chair Elizabeth Pitman said Fee’s selection for the position remains pending and will be finalized following final background checks and contract negotiations. Should Fee accept the offer, she will replace retiring superintendent Dave Means, who has helmed the A district for six years, following an unsuccessful superintendent search in 2020. Fee has not yet accepted the district’s offer.
Fee was the lone finalist candidate for the position from out of state, as the board also considered Flathead High School Principal Michele Paine and former Fair-Mont-Egan Superintendent Brandy Carlenzoni as finalists for the role.
In public meetings with the consultant helping conduct the district’s search, some parents suggested the board consider local candidates and potential candidates from within the district, though they also stressed several other attributes as being important in the district’s new leader. Among them: personability, communication and a neutral approach to educating students.
Fee boasts a long background in education, with more than two decades in leadership roles, all of them in Michigan. For the past two years, she has served as Kent Intermediate School District’s assistant superintendent for instructional services. That district, located in Grand Rapids, serves 20 public school districts, Christian and Catholic schools and Public School Academies that comprise more than 100,000 K-12 students.
Fee also has experience serving in superintendent, assistant superintendent and principal roles in a pair of Grand Rapids public school districts.
During her interview for the role, school board members asked Fee to share examples of her leadership, her approach to collaboration with teachers and the school board, and about how she would ensure communication and transparency in her leadership.
They also lobbed questions about budgeting and advocacy to Fee. School district budgets have served as a hot-button topic in the state and area in recent years as schools have faced down inflation, the sunset of federal funding and failing school levies. The state is also undergoing its once-a-decade examination of the school funding formula, which many agree is outdated.
Fee, for her part, drew on her wealth of experience in the field of education to answer. She highlighted experiences where she has mentored teachers; spoke about the importance of communicating facts while respecting individual privacy in a school district; and ensuring horizontal and vertical curriculum alignment to streamline student learning. In her free time, she said she enjoys spending time with her children — but in Montana, would also enjoy local opportunities to ski, hike and snowmobile outside the classroom.