Knox Community School Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart announced he will be retiring this summer during Wednesday’s school board meeting.
The announcement was amended to the agenda for the board’s approval and was approved.
Reichhart began his tenure at Knox in 2017. He will retire after having served 41 years as an educator and administrator. In a sit down interview with Dr. Reichhart he told WKVI News what made him make his decision.
“I have been in the business for 41 years and have been superintendent for 13. I started out teaching for 20 years and then I went into administration and its been my 21st year. My wife and I built a new lake home over on the eastern side of the state near Angola. The last six years, my wife has lived their and I have lived here and then I go home on the weekends. I’ve just turned 65 and all the stars apparently have aligned and now is a good time for me to retire.”
When asked about what he is proud of in his time at Knox, Dr. Reichhart noted several things.
“Things that stand out to me would be Redskin Academy. We started an alternative program for students that we were losing at the high school. They were dropping out or being home schooled but weren’t really home schooled. They are doing well and we have got them graduating. Obviously the whole building renovations and remodeling the high school. We touched every building. We took down fences. We opened our campus up. We changed the front entrance of the high school to the other side. We created secured entryways at all three buildings. Then the shinning moment for me was to be able to have money left over to do the career center, where we can expand opportunities for our career technical students. We did it all without raising property taxes, which is huge. The other thing we have been able to do is, financially when I came, we had a cash balance of about $1.5 million. Now we have a cash balance of over $7 million. We are on very good grounds and in addition we have been able to give raises to our staff. That was something that hadn’t been done in a number of years before I had arrived at Knox.”
Knox School Corporation staff members reached out to Dr. Reichhart to thank him for his time. He mentioned what stood out most in those messages to him.
“My favorite emails are the ones that say we appreciate you having an open door. We always felt we could come into your office and tell you anything and you would go from there and that means a lot to me. That’s what I wanted this position to look like.”
Superintendent Dr. Reichhart’s final day will be July 31 of this year.
