GUERNSEY – The Platte County School District No. 2 school board has finished interviewing three finalists who were applying for the position of school superintendent and has chosen Lisa Weigel.

“Three-quarters of our candidate’s pool met most of the board and stakeholder top survey expectations. Survey top concerns included, teacher thru superintendent experience, servant leadership and staff/administration relations,” Gary Anderson, PCSD No. 2 school board president said. “Our board felt we had good candidates among the applicants resulting in three great finalists. Lisa Weigel, Cheyenne, Arron Carr, Edgemont, South Dakota, and Todd Burleson from a similar size district in Texas.  All our finalists are class acts. We ultimately, unanimously chose Mrs. Lisa (Yeaman) Weigel as our new superintendent.”

“I actually grew up in Guernsey,” Weigel said. “My family moved there in the early ‘70s and I spent my kindergarten through freshman year there and then we moved to Douglas where I graduated in 1985. I have such fond memories of Guernsey. I walked to school every day as we only lived about three blocks from the school and always stopped and picked up our friends on the way which is always kind of a special memory. I can also still name all of my elementary teachers.”

Weigel said that Guernsey in her early years left a profound mark upon her as well as providing an early educational foundation.

“Even as a future leader and previous educator, some of the traits that they instilled and modeled were great lessons for me,” she said. “I have been able to go on and share these things with educators that I’ve teamed with. One teacher in particular, Mrs. Winship really left an impression upon me. I’ve often shared her story with teachers and leaders that I’ve mentored with. Every day she stood outside of our classroom and I still remember her horn rimmed glasses. She conveyed such a warm, special, compassionate feeling and she always had a smile on her face every day when she welcomed us in. She radiated kindness.”

Weigel said that those positive things that are transparent in our mentors when we are young are so important when we think about educators and the connections with kids in today’s world.

Weigel not only learned from good mentors in Guernsey, but that gave her a good foundation to thrive and continue to excel at Douglas High School where she was a standout student and volleyball player who has since been inducted into the Douglas High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

Upon her graduation from college, she returned to Douglas so serve as a teacher and a coach. She then went on to become a district administrator.

“I actually started out in secondary education,” Weigel said. “I taught special education at the high school level and from there went down to elementary and the intermediate grades and middle school, so I have a variety of K-12 experiences.”

Weigel has not only educational experience under her belt, but also administration experience.

“In my time there, I spent 25 years,” Weigel said. “I coached volleyball there and coached a team to a state championship. It was once again, a nice way to give back to a community that provided me with so many wonderful experiences.”

That is one of the things that she has decided to do in Guernsey. She is giving back to a district that gave her an early foundation in education and leadership. Her heart is with the kids and she made mention of how the students at Guernsey have already touched her in a special way.

“I got a real sense of how amazing the kids were when I was there interviewing,” she said. “They had their student leadership team there and, wow… it was so much fun to visit with them. They gave me some really well-thought-out questions and I can tell they are so talented and so proud of their school. It was so evident.”

Weigel, spent a quarter of a century shaping and molding the kids of Douglas with teaching and her district supervisor duties. In January 2015 she was appointed to a state position by the State Superintendent of Instruction Jillian Balow who has since moved on to take a similar position in Virginia.

“I was part of her cabinet and was asked to come in and direct all of the special education programs in Wyoming,” Weigel said. “So, I served as the State Special Ed Director. After two years of that I moved into the Chief Policy Officer position for the state. That was such a great experience because I was able to see from a different scale, everything in Wyoming with regards to just how impactful educators and education is for schools and communities. From that position I just had that urge to come back to the K-12 arena and so I moved into a principalship in Cheyenne at one of their largest elementary schools. I did that for four years.”

From there Weigel moved into another district position in Cheyenne and served as the assistant special education director and also served on the district cabinet team.

“My husband grew up in eastern Colorado,” Weigel said. “He has been a district administrator and assistant superintendent in Cheyenne. We both really had a passion to give and serve in superintendency roles and that’s really hard to do in the same district. So, the opportunity came in Colorado for us to kind of go and give back in the place he grew up. We both served as superintendents for the last two years in neighboring districts. Our teams would play against one another, and I’m pretty competitive so I would tell our student-athletes that I could take some losses, but never to Mr. Weigel’s district.”

Weigel doesn’t officially start her job until July 1, but says that her and her husband will be doing some housing inquiries in April in the Guernsey area. Her husband is going to work remotely as a superintendent consultant while Weigel herself dives head first into the Guernsey school system.

“In my husband’s district they have an internal administrator that is not quite at that superintendent role yet,” she said. “He is looking for mentoring and guidance and so they are going to consult with my husband. So he will do some things remotely and then maybe a couple of days a month go down and see how things are going. So, this works out nice for him too.

The couple have made it to the Frederick Golf Tournament in the past and they are looking forward to that as well as the river floats and all the other activities that Guernsey has to offer. 

“We love all of the things that Guernsey offers in terms of recreation,” she said. “We love fishing and I remember floating the river and going to Guernsey State Park and all those things. I am so exited to be coming back home to Guernsey.”