New Cloquet superintendent still lives in Duluth

I had the good fortune to interview Dr. Michael Cary, Ed.D., the new superintendent of the Cloquet schools, on “Harry’s Gang” this week.

Cary has been on the job since last summer, and is now just halfway through his first school year in Cloquet.

He has quite an interesting story. His undergraduate degree is in biology and chemistry at UMD, and he went into education afterward, teaching at a couple of schools before becoming a principal of a high school in Bismarck, N.D. He eventually became director of curriculum at the Duluth schools, which he described as “sort of an assistant superintendent” job. Cloquet came calling last year after Ken Scarborough retired, and now he’s our superintendent.

Cary has a real “kids first” attitude. I kept trying to get him to give me his personal philosophy on a variety of school-related issues, but every answer came back to, essentially, “We need to prepare our students for life after high school, and each child is a little different.”

For example, he explained that Cloquet has a terrific College in the Schools program, which offers college-bound students college courses for college credit. He then told me about the improvements the district is making in preparing students who will work in the trades. He said that — while studying at Mankato State University — he noticed students in the two-year programs, such as pipefitting and drafting, were accumulating half as much debt as four-year students, getting into the workforce two years sooner, and finding jobs that often paid very well.

His goal is to increase the amount of technology being used in those programs, because many jobs that require only a high school education often require some competency with technology. So, the district has been meeting with local major employers to figure out how to prepare students for careers at their facilities.

I think we found a winner in our new superintendent. He’s got the right idea. There’s a demand for plumbers, electricians, and technicians as much as there is for four-year-college-educated workers, and if someone wants to stay in the Cloquet area after high school, being prepared for a job at Sappi, Upper Lakes Foods, USG or Boldt gives our local students an advantage. And being able to prepare those of our students who want to move on to good colleges is important, too.

It was a pretty good episode of “Harry’s Gang,” and I encourage you to try and watch it on CAT-7 or its YouTube channel.

One of the reasons the Cloquet superintendent job appealed to him and his wife, he told me, was that the school board wanted someone who planned to stay in Cloquet for a long time, just like Ken Scarborough did, and Russ Smith before him.

Cary admitted that he still lives in Duluth, though. I suggested he start looking for a house here in town. Let’s hope he takes my advice.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hosts the talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. He can be reached at [email protected].