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New IASA president Kuffel feels
‘profound responsibility’ to educate kids
By Michael Chamness
IASA Director of Communications
It was his first year as a superintendent and
teachers in the Oregon (Illinois) school district went
on a strike that lasted two weeks. Scott Kuffel
remembers learning to swim in the deep end of the
school administrators’ pool by being thrown in
headfirst.
“That probably was the greatest single learning
experience for me in public education, dealing with
the stress on teachers, administrators, the board and
the community. I probably learned more from that
than my other 28 years in education combined,” said
Kuffel, the new president of the Illinois Association of
School Administrators (IASA) for 2014-15. “Adversity
doesn’t build character, it exposes character.”
The lessons learned, Kuffel said, included media
relations and the dynamics of diffusing an explosive
situation. He held press briefings at 1 p.m. every day
during the strike, establishing a regular cycle for the
dissemination of information and making sure
everyone in the media heard the same message.
Navigating through a tense situation with the school
board and the teachers’ union was more complex.
“It was about building consensus and how to
achieve solidarity on a very difficult issue,” he said. “I
learned that you not only have to talk, you have to
listen. Also, that you have to have empathy and be
able to feel what the other person is feeling.”
The other moment that Kuffel said helped shape
him as a school administrator was the loss in 2007 of
popular Geneseo science teacher Brad Schoon, who
at age 47 died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s
Disease.
“Every district goes through a loss at some point
in time, but that really galvanized the spirit of the
community,” Kuffel said. “A school can win
championship trophies and have fire truck parades,
but nothing I’ve seen demonstrated the spirit and
love of a community more than how I saw Geneseo
pulling together during that time of loss.”
Those who work with Kuffel describe him as a
superintendent who always is pushing for
improvement and not afraid of challenging the norm
– almost as if a job, or even a life, is too short to
become complacent.
Geneseo School Board President Doug Ford
describes Kuffel as “a great leader who never rests
with the status quo.”
“Scott never takes anything for granted,” said
Ford, who has been board president the past five
years and has been on the board all 11 years that
Kuffel has been superintendent at Geneseo. “He
leads by example and his personality is what carries
him. He’s been about working to make the board
better at all times. He sees that as the way the
district gets better.”
For example, Ford said that Kuffel pushed for a
bold 2010 initiative that said that every student in
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