WASILLA — The newly appointed superintendent of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District doesn't want teachers copying a stunt he pulled in Hooper Bay years ago.
The Mat-Su district on Thursday announced a one-year appointment for Gene Stone. He will replace outgoing superintendent Deena Paramo, recently selected as superintendent of Anchorage schools.
The Mat-Su School Board will still conduct a search for superintendent candidates, officials say.
Stone, now 57 and the district's assistant superintendent of instruction, spent summers in the 1990s working as a wildland firefighting smoke jumper out of Fairbanks.
During the rest of the year, he taught seventh grade at Hooper Bay — where he occasionally hooked his parachute to a snowmachine and soared hundreds of feet into the air.
"I'd be a human parasail," Stone said.
The students loved it. And no, they didn't get to try.
Stone said he had a different perspective on education back then.
"I would not recommend it as superintendent," he said Thursday.
Stone is expected to move up to superintendent on July 1.
The Mat-Su School Board on Wednesday night unanimously appointed him to the superintendent position. He will serve under a one-year contract to be reviewed for approval by the board on June 1.
The district is just starting a broader search for a superintendent, officials say.
The board will discuss how to conduct the search during a summer retreat and then discuss the options at a public meeting, school board president Susan Pougher said Thursday.
Applications for superintendent are expected to be solicited in the fall. Given board comments Wednesday, it's likely the board will choose an in-house search process with help from the Alaska Association of School Boards, two board members said.
Pougher said the board only talked about Stone and no other candidates for the one-year contract during a closed executive session before the decision was made in public. She credited Stone's knowledge of the issues facing the district as a member of a "highly effective" team running Mat-Su schools.
"It just made sense," she said. "Teachers' last day is (May 23). We'd really like people to leave for their summer vacation knowing that things are moving forward, that we're not changing direction."
Along with Hooper Bay, Stone taught at and later served as assistant principal and principal at Barrow High School. He spent five years as principal at Palmer Junior Middle School and the last five years as assistant superintendent.
Stone is the kind of administrator who still knows students by name as they greet him in school halls. He's planning to continue that kind of interaction.
"That's something that I still want to make a priority," Stone said, adding Paramo did too. "The job just isn't as much fun if you lose your connection to kids."
The still-growing district faces a challenge with Alaska's fiscal climate and a moratorium on capital projects, he said. The Mat-Su area's newest high school, Redington Sr. Junior/Senior High School, is already maxed out for space.
"Regardless of what curves the state or fiscal climate throws at us we need to find ways to use our resources the best we can and still do good things for kids," Stone said.
He said he plans to select his replacement by June 1.