Interim superintendent prepared to improve student success
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RONAN — Mark Johnston understands nearly every aspect of a school. He’s scrubbed floors as a substitute janitor, taught math for 20 years, coached wrestling, was a high school vice-principal and most recently served as principal of Ronan Middle School. He’s even had a landscape business, so he knows what it takes to care for facilities.
“Everything in my whole life has prepared me to oversee a school district,” said Johnston, who recently stepped into the role of interim superintendent for Ronan School District No. 30.
Johnston noted the schools’ facilities are currently in great shape.
Completion of a recent $2 billion expansion project at K. W. Harvey and Pablo Elementary Schools will allow the district to spend more time and money focusing on data- driven decisions to improve students’ academic success, according to Johnston.
“The number one goal of every school is to graduate kids. If you want to have the most doors open, it starts with the minimum of having a high school education,” Johnston said.“We’ve seen our graduation rates go up in the past years, which leads into more kids being able to have more opportunities once they leave school, whether its a career path or the vocational path.”
One of Johnston’s goals is to build connections with community colleges and Salish Kootenai College so students can earn college credits while still in high school. Last year a few completed their Certified Nursing Assistant training prior to graduation.
Getting a taste of college while in high school shows students that they can complete college-level courses, which is especially important for would-be first-generation college students who may not have the support or structure of a parent who’s been there, Johnston explained.
“Kids have to know they have the ability to do that kind of work, to challenge themselves in order to say, ‘I am smart enough to go to college,’” Johnston said. “By being able to taste it early on in their high school years, all of a sudden it becomes not such a big daunting task, and they see that they can do it.”
As superintendent, Johnston’s key roles are working with the administration at Ronan’s two elementary schools, the middle school and the high school.
“Teaching for 20 years led to an understanding of what it takes to be a good educator,” Johnston said.
He’s in charge of the budget, interacting with the school board because “they are the last word on how things are getting spent,” and overall his job is to be an educational leader.
“I was in the classroom constantly as a principal, and I am going to be very visible in the schools,” Johnston said. “I got into this business for kids, and that can’t change.”
Johnston’s own children are influenced by their dad’s educational career. His son, Cory, coached wrestling in Ronan a few years back, then moved to Butte to follow his father’s footsteps as a math teacher. His daughter, Ristina, is a second-grade teacher in Havre, and son Marky works in banking in Butte, but formerly worked at Valley Bank in Arlee.
Johnston, who has eight grandchildren, was born and raised in Butte, and taught his first three years in Ekalaka before moving to Glasgow, where he spent the next 17 years teaching math and coaching wrestling before moving to Ronan schools.
Johnston will remain interim superintendent until the position is revisited, which is usually a oneyear contract.
“I am 100-percent fine with that label, and being able to prove I am a good fit and they are a good fit for me,” Johnston said.
