RUSD interim superintendent Gajewski looks ahead to upcoming school year

Once he was let in, Gajewski, a first-time principal, thought about the magnitude of the job ahead of him.

“I sit down in that office and I’m like, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’” Gajewski said.

It was a constant learning process to lead the school, but Gajewski and his staff figured it out.

“It probably did not fit like a glove, especially initially, there was a lot of adjustments, but we eventually coalesced,” Gajewski said.

His time as Racine Unified School District superintendent has similarly entailed adjustments.

The past three months leading the school district have involved “learning, learning, learning, learning, figuring out what people expect of me,” Gajewski said. “It’s just been a continuous process.”

Gajewski, who has held several positions at RUSD during the past 17 years, became acting superintendent May 1 when former RUSD Superintendent Eric Gallien began a medical leave of absence.

In June, Gallien accepted a job as superintendent of the Charleston County School District in South Carolina.

Gajewski expected to be acting superintendent for a few months but said it was “a bit of a surprise” when Gallien took the new job.

That resulted in the RUSD Board naming Gajewski interim superintendent starting July 1.

‘A tryout period’

RUSD Board President Jane Barbian said Gajewski has done “a fine job” as superintendent so far.

“I think everything’s going well,” Barbian said.

Barbian is on a new superintendent search subcommittee that will meet to discuss search firm applications, which are open until Aug. 31.

The School Board does not have a timeline for when it hopes to make an offer for the permanent superintendent job.

The interim superintendent contract does not have an end date, but Gajewski anticipates holding the position through the end of the 2023-24 school year. As interim superintendent, he will be paid $226,000 per year.

Gajewski isn’t sure if he will apply for the permanent superintendent role, since he would have to balance the job responsibilities with being a husband and father of four.

The upcoming school year “is a tryout period for me and the greater community, the district, the board,” Gajewski said.

Despite the role’s inherent challenges, Doug Clum hopes Gajewski applies to be permanent superintendent because he is familiar with and invested in RUSD.

Gajewski “knows the people, he knows the problems, he knows what needs to be addressed, he knows how to prioritize what needs to be addressed,” Clum said. “He’s strong, he’s resilient, he’s got a clear sense of mission, a clear sense of purpose.”

Clum, a longtime RUSD educator who retired earlier this year, has known Gajewski and his family for nearly 20 years and said Gajewski is a good man, father, husband and friend.

Clum and Gajewski often had lunch when Clum was principal of Fine Arts school and Gajewski was principal at Jefferson Lighthouse. They stayed in close contact during the next several years when Clum was principal at Jerstad-Agerholm and Gajewski was Mitchell principal.

Regardless of how long he is superintendent, Clum is confident Gajewski will do well in the role.

“I have really strong faith in his ability to manage the job as well as anybody possibly can, given the conditions of the job,” Clum said. “He’s an intelligent guy, he’s a reasonable guy, he’s an insightful guy, he understands the dynamics of people, he understands education, he understands educational systems.”

Background

Gajewski lived in Racine as a young child before moving to Kenosha and then Green Bay. He attended middle school and high school in the Green Bay area but often spent summers in Racine.

He went to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was initially a substitute teacher at Milwaukee Public Schools, where he was stunned by the lack of learning opportunities available to students.

That eye-opening experience solidified Gajewski’s interest in an educational career, because he wanted to help provide better learning opportunities for students.

“That was the fire that made me want to be in the business,” Gajewski said. “Seeing what I took for granted as an educational experience as a kid, and seeing the kids not get that level, I felt, was just incredibly wrong.”

He taught in Milwaukee for six years, mainly as a middle school science instructor, before going to Jefferson Lighthouse in 2006.

Gajewski became a principal because he wanted to make teachers’ jobs easier so they could best assist students.

“It’s not that simple, but that was the idea,” Gajewski said.

He is proud of instituting the International Baccalaureate program at Jefferson Lighthouse and called it “really satisfying” that IB is now taught at more RUSD schools.

After five years at Jefferson Lighthouse, Gajewski was a principal at Mitchell K-8 School for six years, initially at the middle school section and then the entire building.

He misses leading the school on a daily basis and still has dreams where he is the Mitchell principal.

Being a principal is “very hard work, but there are certain parts about that job that you can’t replace,” Gajewski said. “You get to work with kids, the camaraderie of the staff. I miss that.”

After Mitchell, Gajewski was a deputy chief of schools for four years and chief academic officer for two years before becoming acting superintendent.

As a leader, Gajewski aims for coworkers to become their best selves, so he gives them room to work on what they are passionate about.

“I err on the side of trusting people,” Gajewski said. “There’s risk in that, because sometimes people do things that maybe aren’t exactly aligned with what you might want to represent, but I’d rather err on that side than have people living in boxes where they’re afraid of their own shadow … I’m not an expert or great at almost anything, frankly. Everybody in the room is smarter and knows more or has more experience about various things than I do. I am simply a coordinator of their talents, and the outcomes that we get are because they have gotten us there.”

Clum, who worked under Gajewski when he was RUSD fine arts coordinator from 2021-23, said Gajewski was “one of the finest educational leaders I worked with in my career” because he had technical expertise and interpersonal skills.

“He’s sharp enough and humble enough to know what he doesn’t know, and he excels at so many things,” Clum said. “If he doesn’t know something, he will either learn it or he will find somebody who can help him with it.”

Outside of work, Gajewski enjoys attending his children’s athletic events and Brewers baseball games.

“To me, the outside world stays on the outside of those walls in the (Brewers’) stadium, and all I care about is what’s going on in there,” Gajewski said. “That is a reprieve. That’s a place I can go to take a break.”

Trying to solve a Rubik’s cube

Most of his days as superintendent are filled with meetings, and Gajewski yearns for more time to process information “to make the pieces all fit together.”

During recent months, he has sometimes woken up in the middle of the night and mulled over work issues.

“There are so many things going on in a day, and you’re just thinking about how to make it all fit,” Gajewski said. “It’s a Rubik’s cube, and you’re always trying to twist the darn thing enough to get it to fit, and very rarely can you get it to where all the colors come out perfectly … The puzzles are always going on, and you’re trying to make things better, but they’re complicated. That’s the fun part, too. It keeps you up at night, but really that is the fun of doing this.”

A challenge Barbian anticipates is how Gajewski will deal with the school district’s financial challenges.

“He’s going to start having to make budget cuts, so we’ll see how that goes,” Barbian said.

RUSD’s projected deficit for the 2023-24 school year is $31 million, and the estimated deficit for the 2024-25 school year is $37 million.

Gajewski wants to provide RUSD students with quality educational opportunities but knows that financial constraints will make that difficult.

“There is a finite amount of resources, so the challenge is, ‘How do we provide the best possible opportunities for these kids with the resources that we have?’” Gajewski said.

To deal with deficits, Gajewski plans to ask RUSD administrators to prioritize their departments’ programs.

“There are good things all over the place, but which good things, when done with fidelity, give us the biggest bang for our buck?” Gajewski said. “Which of the things that we’re spending resources on give us the biggest impact on kids long-term?”

For example, Gajewski believes the district’s ongoing emphasis on early childhood literacy “has to be protected at all costs.”

“If you cannot read, the rest of the initiatives and work that we do are meaningless,” Gajewski said.

He aims to keep RUSD staff informed about the financial realities so they understand why decisions are made, even if they don’t agree with them.

“While they may not like everything that happens, there is an understanding as to what we’re trying to do here, what we’re trying to preserve,” Gajewski said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described RUSD Board discussions regarding a timeline for making an offer for the RUSD permanent superintendent job. The board has not met to discuss a timeline for when it hopes to make an offer.