Mount Ayr Record-News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, May 26, 2005

A new secondary level principal was hired, a reading and talented and gifted program position filled and several other contract changes made in a special meeting of the Mount Ayr Community school board devoted to personnel items Tuesday night.

New principal for the junior-senior high will be Matt PATTON, who has served the past three years as junior-senior high principal in the Southern Cal school district in Lake City.

Hired as the Second Chance reading teacher and secondary talented and gifted program teacher was Deb ETCHISON of Lamoni.

Following a long search, a replacement for secondary principal Darrell BARTLING, who is retiring at the end of the year, was named Tuesday night.

Three candidates had visited the district in the latest round of interviews and an offer was made to Matt PATTON, principal at Southern Cal at Lake City.

PATTON is a 1994 graduate of Iowa State University and has his administrative certification from the University of Iowa.

PATTON served as a youth pastor in Illinois for a year before becoming a social studies teacher and coach in the Fairfield Community school district for six years.

Since August 2002, he has served as secondary principal. He has been active in the communities he has lived in, serving on the Fairfield city council while living there and as a board member for the Calhoun County Pheasants Forever group.

He and his wife are expecting their third child yet this month.

Board members noted that all three candidates who attended the interviews held in the past few days were good candidates but that PATTON stood out from the group.

DECKER told the board that PATTON comes highly recommended from the district he has served in and that the school board there has released him from his contract.

"He is mature beyond his years and experience," DECKER said about the new administrator.

Groups of faculty, administrators, students and community members have been involved in the interview process and there has ben nothing but positive comments about PATTON from these groups, DECKER noted.

Named to the newly created Second Chance reading and secondary talented and gifted program position was Deb ETCHISON.

ETCHISON has worked for the Green Valley Area Education Agency 14 for nine years and has many years of classroom teaching experience as well. She has served as a professional development contact and talented and gifted contact at the AEA and has extensive training in the Second Chance reading program, superintendent DECKER told the board.

"I don't know where we could have found a person with more experience to fit this opening," DECKER told the board.

ETCHISON is the wife of school psychologist Gary ETCHISON, who has served the Mount Ayr Community district through AEA for a number of years.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, November of 2012