Martfeld hired
New position created to coalesce all services
Hoping to coalesce all the facets of education involved in meeting the various needs of 1,200 students, Pea Ridge School Board members hired Anne Martfeld as assistant superintendent for special services during a special Pea Ridge School Board meeting Monday night.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to lead,” Martfeld, recently principal at Siloam Springs High School, said Monday. “In Pea Ridge, you definitely have a great reputation that I’m excited to be a part of.”
“I’m most excited about learning Pea Ridge and learning how we are able to serve our community and all of the stakeholders who are a part of the school — parents, students, teachers, staff, classified … and how we all mesh together and become the community that is Pea Ridge,” she said.
Upon introducing the new position and Martfeld, school superintendent Rick Neal said: “In this role, we see a capacity that is sorely needed … dealing with special services — dealing with our counseling areas, our English language learners, our dyslexic, 504, gifted and talented, alternative learning environments. She’ll be working through all of those special services and helping us provide the best services for our kids.
“The beautiful thing about Pea Ridge is that we all do it for kids,” Neal said. “We’re excited about Mrs. Martfeld being here and being part of our team.”
“I see this role as a connector of taking down to the student level of all the district leadership, working through the accountability … making sure it’s connected to the building level,” Martfeld said, answering a question by board president Jeff Neil.
The focus of the assistant superintendent for special service, according to school officials, is to:
• Articulate clear, nonnegotiable student achievement goals for the district, for each school, and for subgroups of students;
• Establish a common framework of research-based strategies for achieving these goals;
• Establish the indicators that will be used to monitor progress toward the goals;
• In order to decrease the variability of instruction quality across the district, district leaders need to clarify expectations and hold directors and building leaders to those expectations while at the same time provide them with the ongoing training and support needed to meet those expectations; and
• Develop relationships among district leaders to establish the supports needed to assist building leaders in the execution of their work.
Martfeld, who has a bachelors in communications from the University of Arkansas, a masters in education, educational leadership and an educational specialist degree, educational leadership, superintendency, both from Arkansas State University, was assistant principal in Springdale at Don Tyson School of Innovation and at Central Junior High School (2012-16).
A graduate of Southside High School, Fort Smith, she also attended Bartlesville College in Oklahoma. She is licensed as an administrator for K-12, business technology 7-12, graphic communications 7-12. She began her educational career in 1997 at Bartlesville (Okla.) MidHigh School as business education teacher and cheerleading coach.
In other business, the board:
• Hired Mindy Ferguson as sixth-grade literacy teacher; Danielle Campbell, first- and second-grade teacher; Lauren Reid, Primary School teacher; Karella Kordsmeier, High School English teacher; Maria Holloway, health care instructor; and Eliza Garduno, Intermediate School teacher;
• Transferred Debra Klotz from sixth grade literacy teacher in the Middle School to fifth-grade reading teacher in the Intermediate School; and
• Accepted resignations from Pam Kennedy, Primary aide; and Brittney Humes, High School English.
The regular School Board meeting is slated for Monday, June 15.