Monday marked Dr. Doug Van Zyl’s first official day as St. Joseph School District Superintendent.

He met with local media Monday afternoon before taking a tour of Hillyard Technical Center.

“It’s been a great first day so far,” Van Zyl said. “A little overwhelming anytime, I think, that you transition into a new job, but my impression is we’ve got a lot of great folks that I’ve dealt with so far in the short time that I’ve been here and people that really want to do what’s right for the community and for our kids and that’s really what our focus needs to be.”

Dr. Van Zyl comes to St. Joseph from Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he was superintendent for eight years of the school district there of approximately 4,000 students. Van Zyl said it will take some time to get to know the St. Joseph School District and set priorities.

“We started out having a meeting with the board a couple weeks ago and had some conversations about what they, as a board, see as the priorities,” Van Zyl said. “But the number one priority is always going to be taking care of kids and doing what’s best for them. We’re going to have to continue to take a look at finances, of course, there’s some challenges that have been there in the past and will continue to be a challenge. We’ll probably have to put a workshop in place in the next couple months to talk about what finances look like so that we can do some planning for what happens with the revenue… so it’ll take us a little bit of time to dig through it.”

Van Zyl said another priority is communication.

“I think the best thing you can do is communicate, just be open and transparent about what’s going on and what’s there on the plate and then be able to communicate in detail about what the plans are and then follow through on it,” Van Zyl said. “Most people really want… a well established plan and then for us as school district leaders to follow through on it because they don’t want to be told one thing and then find out, oops, it changed or we didn’t tell them what we wanted upfront. So just to be transparent and up front with everything that we’re going to do… is the best approach.”

Van Zyl, along with his family, made the move to St. Joseph last week. Van Zyl and his wife have a son and a daughter who are both in college and another daughter getting ready to attend college in the fall.

“(St. Joseph is a) great community, it’s a little bit bigger than where I was the last eight years but… seems like it’s a community that’s got a lot of positive things going,” Van Zyl said.

For more information about Dr. Doug Van Zyl, click here.