Odin School Superintendent Jeff Humes is retiring at the end of the school year.
Humes went to Odin High School and began an education career that began as a teacher in 1989 and included work as an administrator in four districts.
He says he wanted to return to Odin to complete his career to give back. He notes it was some of the past legends at Odin School that served as his role models throughout his career including Ray Woods, Tom Smith, Ken Dillingham, Rick Jackson, Larry Kelly, and Chuck Hawley.
“I was very excited about that possibility of coming in and trying to make a difference for Odin. I’m very honored to have the chance to work with the students and families in the district and the teaching staff. I feel like my teachers have been fantastic to work with and they have done a great job for me. We have accomplished a lot in the past six years.”
Humes says he is proud of the improvement in technology that was limited to two computer labs and no computer network when he arrived to a fully wired building, one on one computers for students, to hot spots being made available to those without home internet access to utilize during remote learning.
Humes is disappointed to miss the final round of many activities due to COVID-19 and admits the virus has provided extreme challenges.
“COVID has brought extreme and unusual challenges. My staff and students have been there working hard trying to make the best of a bad situation. I feel like those things are thrown at us sometimes and it causes us to reach down deep and bring out the best in all of us and I think that’s what it is doing right now. We’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit even with this stuff going on.”
Odin school is currently on full remote learning due to 26 members of the staff being positive for COVID-19 or being close contacts. Most of the staff, including Humes, came off quarantine Monday. Full remote is currently scheduled to end after this week, but if case numbers are still high that could be extended.
There is one more project he’d like to see worked out before he leaves.
“I would hope we would get new high school classrooms built and junior high classrooms built. If we get that done I will be very proud of what we would have accomplished this past six years.”
Humes says he will feel successful if he is judged to have left the district as a better place than when he started and met the expectations of the school board and his role models.
