FULL CIRCLE

Beth Giese ran into an employee last week, who jokingly asked the new Kasson-Mantorville Superintendent how long she was going to last as superintendent. 
While meant to be humorous, it’s a legitimate question.
Since August 2022, Giese is the fourth superintendent to occupy the office.
Mark Matuska abruptly left before the start of the 2022-2023 school year. Dr. David Thompson filled in for the rest of the year.
Ted Ihns was hired on a three-year contract, but after a few months, announced he would stay only one year.
But Giese said if all goes to plan, she will end her career in the same place it all started: as a KoMet.
“I have big dreams for this District. It’s hopefully my last district,” Giese said.
Full circle
Giese began her career in the mid-90s as a special education teacher at Kasson-Mantorville. It was a temporary position, at a time when teaching positions were very competitive.
Now, staffing is a major problem for KM and other districts.
“Staffing is kind of a little bit tricky right now,” Giese said, noting the district had four special education teacher openings.
When she first started teaching, over 200 candidates filled every applicant pool. Recently, KM had just four candidates for a high school English teacher position.
Asked why she thinks there is a shortage of teachers, Giese pointed to salaries.
“Pay, for sure. It puts you below the poverty line, I think,” Giese said. “I think that’s probably one of the biggest things.”
But Giese recognizes that’s not the only explanation.
“I think there are a lot of factors that go into it,” she said.
In terms of the problem at hand, Giese said the District will think outside the box to fill the vacancies, including internal changes.
“You just try to get creative with the team you have,” Giese said.
Culture will also be a short-term priority, because staff “always work harder when culture is good.” One of the ways to do so, Giese said, is by celebrating the small things people do. If she sees a staff member doing something “amazing,” she is going to talk to them.
It’s also about celebrating accomplishments publicly.
“It’s every day making a social media post that’s talking about our celebrations and the great things we’re doing here,” Giese said.
Trust factor
Trust, and at times, the lack of it, has been brought up countless times over the course of the past few years at the KM School District.
It’s something Giese hopes to tackle.
For example, she plans to be heavily involved in the community, something she has done at her previous stops, which include Cannon Falls, St. Francis, and most recently, Kenyon-Wanamingo.
“I joined the Chamber, I’m joining the Lions, I spent 12 years in the military so I’m joining the Legion,” Giese said.
She believes it’s important to have conversations with community members no matter where they are.
“When people can have a conversation with you at a food stand versus having to come into your office…I just think that really helps,” she said.
With declining enrollment, and federal and state funds not keeping up with the cost of inflation and mandates—or going away altogether—school districts are increasingly becoming more hyperfocused on per pupil operating levies.
Giese knows passing one requires the community to trust what the district is doing and to know what is going on.
“We need to be a District that is going to be really transparent, especially if we’re going to go into a levy,” she said.
Giese said building trust will also be important headed into contract negotiations, including with Kasson-Mantorville Education Minnesota (KMEM). One of the people in the room will be a familiar face; Travis Robertson, KMEM vice president, is one of about a half-dozen people with whom she went to high school in Pine Island, who now work for KM.
A second chance
When the superintendent search was underway in 2024, Giese wanted to apply, but with her father very sick, and her Wanamingo office just a few minutes away from him in Zumbrota, she didn’t.
Then Ihns officially announced his resignation in January 2025.
Giese called her high school classmate, and current KM teacher Jennifer Kujath.
“I said, ‘how is this happening again,’” Giese said.
She put in her application immediately after the job was posted.
While she declined to go into details, Giese said she would’ve taken a different approach with some of the issues that have plagued the school district over the last year. A longtime teacher resigned, and his wife, a school board member, resigned from the board, won re-election, and then resigned again ahead of a vote over whether to remove her from office.
“We just need to talk about it, and everybody does it differently, but I would’ve had conversations about the why,” Giese said. “And instead, the staff didn’t know. Community members didn’t know.”
Asked whether she felt she would still be superintendent now if she had been hired in 2024, she said she would.
“You pick to be the CEO of a company, it gets hot, and you quit?” she said.
Giese said she is up to the challenges the district faces.
“I knew some of the things that were broken but they are fixable. They just need a leader that is really passionate about Kasson-Mantorville,” she said.