Bruer takes over as superintendent
August 13, 2008
The Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton school district has gotten a new superintendent with a familiar face. Randy Bruer was recently named the superintendent, replacing Bernie Lipp and he may be familiar to some. Bruer began his education career training as a teacher in Glyndon, MN back in 1979.
Bruer is the former district superintendent of Fisher, MN where he was known for his balanced budgets and aggressive actions in handling the Fisher school districts enrollment crisis. Bruer started his superintendent role nearly 15 years ago in a Fischer school district that was facing a all-time low student count. The district was facing school closings do to the low enrollment, but Bruer began a campaign to woo students and parents from the larger neighboring Crookston and East Grand Forks district’s. The tactic worked and the enrollment in the district is now about 300 students with almost a third of those students coming from neighboring district’s.
During his tenure in Fisher, MN, Bruer was known for giving troubled students a second chance. Bruer always has an ear to lend to the students as well he knows given the chance, the students will speak their piece and they know what is going on.
He’s a mild-mannered, soft-spoken type – who has little taste for sugarcoating the realities of Minnesota public schooling.
A stickler for balanced budgets, he’s already thinking of ways to make the D-G-F administrative team leaner.
Bruer likes to be on the cutting edge of technology. A grant that the Fischer district received in the late 1990s, allowed the district to outfit the seventh through ninth grade students with laptops. Bruer attributes this move to a increase in writing proficiency.
The DGF school board was impressed enough with work in Fischer that they offered him the job of retiring superintendent Bernie Lipp.
Board members like that Bruer is open to ideas and is not intimidated to make a difficult decision when pressed.
Now that Bruer is back at D-G-F, he finds himself in a healthy district with a solid reputation.
A self-described visionary, he hopes to work on improving test scores and find some creative uses for technology the students enjoy, such as iPods. School begins in the DGF district September 2nd.
Got something to say?