Meet Tom Messinger

Shortly after he assumed his new role as superintendent of the Newton Community School District, Tom Messinger was almost immediately expected to have a return to learn plan set in place for all seven campuses and was prepared to answer several questions from people he had never really met.

Between COVID-19’s social restrictions and the delays caused by the derecho, the new superintendent has barely had a chance to get to know Newton. Admittedly, he’s disappointed these circumstances have prevented him from getting acquainted with the community as well as he wanted to originally.

Messinger started full time on June 1, but he was also steadily involving himself in the school district and the town a month before. By then, Newton was already a few months into the pandemic, and the graduating senior class was driving laps around the Iowa Speedway in lieu of a typical ceremony.

“Communities don’t look the same like they did back in February or even earlier than that, so it’s been very tough,” Messinger said. “The flip side of it is it’s also fun to see communities come together during times like this, too. You have COVID-19 you’re working through as a school and the storm damage.”

To some extent, these events may have helped the school district. More people have been wanting to volunteer, donate or provide support in some way, Messinger said. Before March, Messinger had planned to become part of a service organization and be present at community functions in summer.

“All of those types of things to get myself out there and to learn more about the community have really been put on hold,” Messinger said.

Both the COVID-19 pandemic and state officials have put pressure on school districts to develop new contingencies and learning methods in a short amount of time. Newton is no different. Messinger had to hit the ground running, along with those in his return to learn plan committees. Again, these were new faces.

“Right away, it was problem solving time,” Messinger said. “It wasn’t getting to know somebody and just familiarizing yourself a little bit with people. It was diving right in, putting a high amount of trust in them and having them put a high amount of trust in me having only really met during the interview.”

Get to know Tom Messinger

To those who don’t know Messinger, he is a graduate of Adair-Casey High School, which is now known as Adair-Casey/Guthrie Center High School or AC/GC. His parents moved to Casey in 1970, the year Messinger was born. They still live in Casey in the same house to this day.

Messinger looks back fondly on his upbringing. It was “the greatest life any kid could have.” Oftentimes he would work odd jobs for farmers and played baseball every day until his mom told him to get back into the house. Messinger said he grew up learning the value of community.

After high school graduation, Messinger attended the University of Iowa and received his bachelor’s degree. From there, he got a job at the school district in Eddyville teaching high school math, before the school consolidated with the neighboring Blakesburg. He taught there for four years.

Once Messinger secured his master’s degree through Drake University, he transitioned into a joint position as assistant principal and athletic/activities director at Eddyville-Blakesburg. Since he needed five years of teaching prior that, the school got the state’s permission to keep him on while teaching.

This meant that Messinger taught pre-calculus one period per day and was the assistant principal/AD for the remainder of the day. He maintained the high school administrative position for about two years before becoming the principal for five years. Altogether, he spent 11 years at Eddyville-Blakesburg.

Messinger then became principal at Burlington High School, spending another 11 years at the district. It was the farthest away from home he had ever been. The four-hour drive was a big change. Messinger went back to school to get his specialist degree through Drake, taking classes Fridays and Saturdays.

Eventually, he interviewed for the superintendent position at Red Oak Community School District, where he would stay for the next five years.

“Then the job came open here, I applied for it and interviewed — and here I am,” Messinger said.

Joining a school district during a pandemic

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, every superintendent in the state should feel like they’re new to the job this year, he said. The Newton superintendent recalled when he was a principal at Burlington High School during the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic in 2009. It was a challenge back then, too.

“We were one of the first schools in Iowa that jumped way up with the number of people that were absent,” Messinger said. “We were one of the first schools that had positive cases of it. We had a positive case and before you know it — like two weeks later — we had 20 percent of our kids gone from school.”

Back then, the guidelines and available resources during that particular pandemic were not even close to what districts have now, Messinger said. Schools relied on the rationale of “if you don’t feel sick, don’t come to school.” Now, there is more that goes along with a situation like that.

Masks or face coverings. Disinfecting materials. Reducing bus capacities.

“I feel like we know so much more now on how to deal with these types of things that if it comes out again 10 years or more down the road we’re better suited to deal with these types of scenarios each time they come up,” Messinger said, noting they would likely still be posed with challenges.

Communication is needed more than ever

Keeping families informed helps, too. By the time the Newton school district began releasing details of its return to learn plan, Messinger designated a large block of time during a school board meeting to answer more than 70 questions from concerned families regarding classroom and masks and rules.

Shortly after, school administrators organized a virtual town hall meeting that had attracted more than 200 people to, again, ask blunt questions. Although not every question was answered during the town hall, Messinger felt it was necessary for the district to post its responses online for families.

If that wasn’t enough, the school district devoted an entire webpage for families to turn to for further information. This return to learn process has also allowed Messinger to collaborate with other leaders of the school district, which have settled on a four days in/one day out, hybrid model approach.

“I feel like we were able to put together an as good or better plan than anybody,” Messinger said. “Our website that we have on it is tremendous. So I feel like this process of me coming in new at this point in time has been good to build that professional trust and working relationship that we have.”

Messinger said he has great concerns for Newton’s educators, who are expected to teach students in the classroom and online. And they’re also expected to get all those students at the same level by the end of the year. That, too, is going to be a challenge.

“This is going to be the hardest year that teachers have ever seen,” he said.

Pride will prevail

One of the things that drew Messinger to Newton was the “strong sense of pride” the community had for the school district.

Part of that, he said, comes from his upbringing in Casey, a typical Iowa small town populated with roughly 400 people. Of course, like most communities of that size, everybody knew everybody. Messinger’s father was a barber for more than 50 years, and his mother worked at the local bank.

That meant two things: word travels fast, and everyone knew what he was up to as a kid before he ever did anything. It was a comfortable lifestyle Messinger was very much accustomed to, and one that he felt was similar in a town like Newton. And pride in one’s school district is important to Messinger.

Wearing the school colors or keeping up with the high school sports comes naturally to Messinger. (“I couldn’t tell you who wins an NFL game on Sunday, but high school sports is what I’ve been involved with now for 28 years,” he said.) The hometown pride in Newton was evident from the get go.

During the interviewing process, Messinger — who was still the superintendent of the Red Oak Community School District — recalled being driven around town. The Newton school district’s mascot or ’N’ was on driveways, lawns, porches, businesses’ windows and the water tower near downtown.

He said, “By the time I left here from the interview that day, I’m sitting here thinking, ‘I’m going to be so bummed out if I can’t go work there.’”

Messinger knew then — and knows now — that he is in the right place.

“I’ve never experienced that before,” Messinger said. “I just thought that is pretty cool. Then I sat down with the interview groups, I realized that’s just not a red ’N’ painted on a building. That is really people’s beliefs. That whole mindset of ‘Red Pride Lives Here’ is really believed. It’s not just spoken.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com