[Vision2020] Rush Earns Idaho Education Board's Top Job

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (May 24, 2008) Spokesman Review -

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Rush earns Idaho education board's top job 

Interim director's work on budget, morale cited
Jesse Bonner 
Associated Press

http://tinyurl.com/3ohj3m
Dr. Mike Rush greeting Governor Otter.

BOISE – The Idaho state Board of Education has skipped a national search 
for an executive director and instead appointed interim director Mike Rush 
to the position permanently after he helped bring the agency back from the 
financial brink.

"They're pretty pleased with the job he's been doing," board spokesman 
Mark Browning said Friday.

The board appointed Rush as interim director in September when trustees 
came under heavy fire from both Gov. Butch Otter and the Senate Education 
Committee for accounting miscues that left the board with a $1.4 million 
deficit last year.
 
The board also flubbed an $18 million federal grant to help low-income 
students attend college. Board President Milford Terrell, who conceded 
earlier this year the board was a "dysfunctional family," was forced to 
ask private foundations for matching state funding so Idaho wouldn't lose 
the federal grant.

As interim director, Rush ordered a complete audit of the board's fiscal 
procedures and helped stanch an outflow of personnel amid a morale crisis 
that preceded his arrival.

"He has put us on a path that we will finish the year in the black with 
our budget," Browning said. "Good people attract good people. When you 
take a guy that has that kind of stability, that attracts stability."

The agency's woes made it a frequent target of the Senate Education 
Committee during the 2008 Legislature.

Critics on that panel, including Sen. Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden, had 
encouraged the board to conduct a national search for a new director, a 
new chief financial officer and a new chief academic officer. That's after 
the agency's two previous directors, Dwight Johnson and Karen McGee, were 
hired from within the ranks of Idaho state government.

Jorgenson said he's now satisfied Rush's selection is appropriate – even 
though Rush's previous job was as administrator of the Division of 
Professional-Technical Education, housed within the Board of Education.

"If it were anyone else that was appointed from the stockpile, I'd be 
disappointed," Jorgenson said. "But Mike Rush is a terrific guy. He's 
worked under some tough conditions. I'm satisfied that Mike is probably as 
good as the board could have gotten on a national search basis."

Senate Education Committee Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d'Alene, said 
Rush was a good choice.

"I've got a lot of respect for Mike Rush," Goedde said. "That job seems to 
be eating people alive over the last couple of years. Hopefully he'll last 
longer than the last three directors did."

The board hired Rush after an executive session this week in Boise. 
Trustees approved a salary of $110,000 per year for Rush, including a 
$7,000 bonus for the work he did as interim executive director. 

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Seeya at Farmers' Market, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"People who ridicule others while hiding behind anonymous monikers in chat-
room forums are neither brave nor clever." 

- Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch (August 21,
2007)

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