Coming back to school

Aug. 22—OSKALOOSA — As the community gears up for the 2023-24 school year, the Oskaloosa Community School District is welcoming staff members who already have roots in the community and have chosen to bring their talents home.

Mike Dursky is a 1985 Osky graduate who has spent his career working in the community he calls home. A former teacher at Garfield and Grant Elementary Schools, Dursky went on to serve as the OCSD's middle school principal for five years and the elementary school principal for eight. Now in his third year of working as a success coach, Dursky says his work centers around paying the community back for being the place his family has called "home" for generations

"The community has been very good to my family for multiple generations," Dursky says. "My great-grandparents immigrated here, actually, but my grandparents graduated from here, and my folks graduated from here. [I'm] all about service, and serving the community and paying back."

Samantha Doll is a 2011 OCSD graduate whose education and career have taken her on a journey that started in Oskaloosa and looped through Indiana, Texas and Des Moines before coming full circle once more as she begins her new job as the K-1 counselor for the district.

Doll says a combination of family and culture played key roles in the decision to come home to Oskaloosa, and that OCSD's all-in attitude is something that money could never buy.

"I worked for Des Moines Public Schools, and I think they have like a $600 million budget for this next school year, or something like that, and they're doing really great things, but one of the things that I've come to realize, even just in my short time here, is that even that amount of money can't buy you good culture, a good environment, people that are excited and all-in," Doll says.

"It's been so exciting to hear and see all these people that are just really dedicated to serving your community, and being a part of that," she adds. "I'm excited to be a part of it."

While Doll will be helping to counsel very young children who are just starting their school careers, Keegan VanDevender is bringing his unique combination of education and experience to the table as OCSD's new middle school language arts teacher.

VanDevender first came to the school district as a second grader at Webster Elementary. His class was one of the first to transition into the new elementary building. During his time in the district, VanDevender was able to pursue unique opportunities including two years of study abroad in Guatemala and Belgium before earning a degree in education through William Penn University.

After teaching at Des Moines Public Schools, Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont and pursuing higher education, VanDevender says he was dissatisfied with the culture he experienced and wasn't seeing a future for himself in any of the districts he'd taught for so far. Oskaloosa, he says, has been a refreshing change.

"Great things were going on here," he says. "I had the opportunity to come back, and I did. My experience these first few days has been completely different, in a very positive way, than any of the other first weeks back to school that I've experienced."

"Everybody is so happy to be here," he adds. Everybody is very positive about what is going on here. Everybody has buy-in to the culture. Our vision culture."

Like VanDevender, Randie Gist was also one of the first classes to transition to the new elementary school building in Oskaloosa. She graduated from Oskaloosa Community High School in 2012 and from Central College in 2015 before returning to substitute in the Osky district from January to May of that year.

"It was really awesome, very eye-opening, and it got me some good experience," she says.

After substituting through the spring, Gist took a position teaching special education and reading at the Twin Cedars Community School District in Bussey. After a seven year stint at Twin Cedars, however, Gist had the opportunity to come home and teach middle school special education at Oskaloosa.

She took hold of the opportunity with both hands.

"I saw a job here, and I remembered what it was like when I was here subbing," she says. "It was awesome then, but it is completely different now in a much better and positive way, so I was excited to see that that position was open and [to] get back to this district."

Lauren Trainer, on the other hand, is one of Oskaloosa's more recent graduates. A member of OCSD's class of 2019, Trainer attended William Penn and graduated last spring.

Trainer initially applied for jobs in the Des Moines and Altoona area, but says that nothing really "felt right."

"I had subbed in Osky and done a lot of field experiences here, and I loved it. It was amazing. But I was like, 'No, I can't because I'm living [in Des Moines].'"

Trainer ended up applying at OCSD anyway and is starting this year as a second-grade teacher. She says that her long history with the district is part of what makes it so appealing. The school is filled with familiar faces from her own time as a student there.

"It's amazing to see all the people who were my teachers. I just recognize all the people, so it's amazing being here. I really enjoy it," she says.

Sarah Fisher grew up in the Oskaloosa school district. She even met her husband — current OCSD Superintendent Mike Fisher — there. After attending the University of Northern Iowa, she worked at several different school districts teaching elementary education before the Fisher family decided it was time to come home.

"Last year, my husband and I decided to come back home," she says. "Both our families are from here, and we have a son and one on the way, and we wanted them to be able to be around family, and we wanted to be part of a community that had the same vision that we did. [We] wanted what's best for kids, wanted to be fully invested. And that's definitely — I suppose, of all the districts we've been in, this has been the one that has the same vision as we do."

Sarah Fisher will be starting this school year in behavioral leadership, supporting teachers and staff members as they work to educate their students.

Tim Foster was part of the first freshman class in the new high school building at Oskaloosa. For Foster, teaching at Oskaloosa is a multi-generational family tradition that he is now proud to be taking part in.

"My grandpa started teaching here back in the '50s," Foster says. "He was a vocational agriculture teacher for like four decades, and he was the FFA instructor as well. Then my mom taught here as well. She taught PE and health in the '90s or 2000s. My dad coached football from the '80s to the 2000s. So I pretty much grew up in the building."

Foster, who has a doctorate in Spanish, previously taught college-level Spanish in Texas before the COVID-19 pandemic caused him to reevaluate his life.

"I think that caused a lot of us to rethink our life priorities," he says. "I don't know if I could speak for everybody else. At the same time as COVID happened, my mom passed away, and we kind of realized — we had three little kids at the time — that we wanted something different for our family. That we didn't feel like we were in a place where we wanted to settle permanently.

"And also, at the university level, I felt like there were a lot of days where I sat alone in my office working on research projects, which I loved ... But it felt like something was missing a little bit."

Foster left his position teaching college-level Spanish and moved his family back home to Oskaloosa. He starts this school year as the new high school Spanish teacher.

"Family was a reason to come, but since then, seeing the culture, just the positive momentum that is going on in the schools, it's really exciting to have my own children be a part of that as well," he says.

For these seven OCSD staff members, Oskaloosa is certainly living up to its hype as a great place to live, work and play. Dursky says that part of what makes the school district such a compelling place to be is the support it receives from the community.

"The community, as a whole I really believe, is so supportive of the schools, whether it's school projects, whether it's any of the extracurriculars or the components that surround school," Dursky says. "My experience has always been, as a student and as a professional for over 30 years, that if there was a want or a desire on the school's behalf, if we reached out to the community, it always happened.

"I can't think of one time in over 30 years when I asked or made a request that somebody said 'No,' or 'I just don't see how we could make that happen. I don't see how we could ever do that.'"

Dursky says the overwhelming community support is something that he believes is unique to Oskaloosa.

"I know a lot of communities, that's not the case." he adds. "If you tour, and you drive around rural America, not just rural Iowa, and you look at other communities of similar size, and you see the supports and services that are in place here, and you look at the facilities that are in place here compared to a lot of other places that are of a similar size, it's strikingly different. And so I think that that speaks of the community and its support for the kids and the staff that we have here."

For seven staff members who are still, after all this time, proud to call Oskaloosa home, Dursky's hunch has been proven right.

Channing Rucks can be reached at crucks@oskyherald.com.