Trotwood-Madison superintendent to retire

Wagner is a 21-year veteran who plans to care for ailing relative.

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By Marc Katz, Staff Writer 1:13 AM Friday, January 13, 2012

TROTWOOD — Rexann Wagner, the Trotwood-Madison City Schools superintendent since 2010 and a 21-year employee, will retire at the end of the month to care for a ailing family member.

“I’ve been blessed with a 37-year career in education,” Wagner said, “but some things come first, and family is one them. It was a prayerful decision.”

Kevin Bell, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, will serve as interim superintendent, said school board president Adrienne Heard. She said a search, including in-house candidates such as Bell, will be conducted prior to the next school year.

Wagner, who is a native of Defiance and comes from a family of educators, has worked in the Trotwood-Madison district since 1991, when she was hired as an elementary school principal. Known as a trouble-shooter, she became the district’s high school principal in 2003.

She was hired as the district’s superintendent after Lowell Draffen retired. Wagner had more than two years remaining on a four-year contract with an annual salary of $130,000.

“She told us in executive session last week,” Heard said. “We were surprised, but we weren’t surprised. We appreciated her dedication. She served us in many capacities and excelled.”

Wagner was named the district’s high school principal to help move it out of academic emergency and “straighten things out,” Draffen said at the time. The school eventually moved to effective on the state report cards and currently is listed under continuous improvement.

During Wagner’s tenure, Trotwood-Madison has felt the same pressures as other districts, including reduced state funding and dwindling population that forced the closure of two new elementary buildings, after the state mandated they be built along with a new high school and middle school in 2005.

The school board has had to absorb some of that blame, even though declining enrollment is not necessarily a symptom of mismanagement of the buildings.

Wagner thanked Trotwood-Madison for their support. “The community has been good to me over the years,” she said.

She leaves as the district works to pass a 4-mill levy on March 6. Voters have already rejected six consecutive levies since November 2008.

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