By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

CARTHAGE, Mo. — With his first R-9 Board of Education meeting behind him Monday night, new Carthage Superintendent Blaine Henningsen is looking to his future with the district.

Henningsen, 54, was hired to succeed Gary Reed, superintendent for the past eight years, who last September announced his plans to leave his Carthage post. Henningsen started his job in Carthage on July 1.

A former University of Missouri-Columbia football player with degrees from MU and Southern Illinois University, Henningsen is intimidating in stature but disarming in nature. It was his personable nature that R-9 board members mentioned as one of his strongest points as a candidate for the position.

But, with a smile on his face, Henningsen plans to get tough on some of the school district’s long-standing issues. He wants to improve graduation rates, help English language learners be more successful and meet No Child Left Behind requirements.

And he thinks he has the experience to do it. Henningsen came from the Hazelwood School District in St. Louis County. In that district, he started as a high-school social studies teacher, then worked as an assistant principal of a junior high school, as an associate principal at a high school, as a building principal at a different high school, and finally as an assistant superintendent for school accountability.

The Hazelwood district has more than 19,000 students, and Henningsen was in charge of 6,000 of them. The Carthage district has about 4,000 students.

Henningsen said he was attracted to the Carthage area partly because of its high minority population. Ninety-four percent of the students at his Hazelwood high school were black, he said.

“I know it’s not quite the same, and there are language barriers here, but I thought that I might have something to offer in this situation,” Henningsen said.

He said he also was impressed with the new high school Carthage is building, and that he likes the prospect of getting to choose a new assistant superintendent to fill the position Susan Taber left this summer.

Henningsen said he is a data-driven leader who wants to make sure the solutions school leaders come up with will actually address the problems. He said he is looking forward to digging into Carthage’s state testing data once it is released in the next couple of weeks, and he said he accepts the challenge to raise scores and graduation rates.

He described his leadership style as a big-picture vision that trusts teachers to do what they do best.

“I like to hire good people and turn them loose,” he said. “I don’t micromanage. I work hard and smart, and focus on the big picture. If somebody is looking for an 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. job, this is probably not the place, and I lead by example.”