New LPS Superintendent, Paul Gausman, Talks Goals, Staffing, & Diversity

Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) hired a new superintendent last week. The school board voted, 7-0, in favor of hiring Paul Gausman.

Gausman said he’ll have an open mind for how LPS operates when he starts as superintendent.

“Certainly I’m not going to come in and just indicate that I’ve got all of the ideas as to what should be going on there,” Gausman said. “I need to learn what is going on there, and so, spending time learning about those items, as well as building relationships with those that are doing that work right now is very important to me.”

LPS has almost three-times the student population as Sioux City Community Schools in Iowa, where Gausman is the superintendent now. He said he’s not worried about the size difference because he’s made a jump like this before, when he moved to Sioux City Community Schools from a much smaller district in South Dakota. He expects the work at LPS will be similar, but on a larger scale.

“It is important to me to get out into all of the facilities and to meet with all of the agencies and businesses that support the school district, and the higher education institutions,” Gausman said. “All of those sorts of things, and so it’s a lot more groundwork in terms of the size.”

He said his goals at LPS won’t be much different from his goals in Sioux City. Specifically, he wants to improve Lincoln’s 82% on-time graduation rate from the 2019-2020 school year.

The superintendent said supporting and hiring staff, which has been a challenge for the education industry during the pandemic, will be important to accomplishing goals.

“We have got to go out and find great candidates that are out there,” Gausman said. “[We’ve] got to bring them to the community to show them how wonderful it is and we’ve got to focus on creating a staffing population that mirrors the student population in demographics.”

He said Sioux City Community Schools are more diverse economically, but Lincoln Public Schools has a larger variety of languages students speak.

Gausman has been the superintendent at Sioux City Community Schools in Iowa for 14 years. Before taking on administrative duties, Gausman worked in Omaha as the band director at Millard West High School. He also worked as a band instructor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and taught education leadership courses at Doane University in Crete, Nebraska.

Gausman will take over for Steve Joel as LPS Superintendent. Joel will retire in June, after working 37 years in education, including more than 11 years as Lincoln’s superintendent.