PRESCOTT — The Prescott School District’s new superintendent, Jim Reif, is looking to bring his decades of education experience to the city, putting an emphasis on students and the classroom.

Reif was born and raised in Antigo and went on to teach for 30 years, primarily at Janesville Craig, before entering administrative roles. Reif was a principal at Menominee, Altoona and, most recently, high school principal and superintendent at New Auburn.

There were a few things that drew Reif to Prescott including the location, the similar size to Antigo and the communal focus on education. He also appreciates Prescott’s balance of academics, athletics and arts.

“Very pro-educational community, very supportive community,” Reif said. “I was looking for the next step in my career, a little bigger school district.”

It is not just the community that gives Reif the pro-education feel, but the administrators and the school board as well.

“I did my first interview with the school board and walked out of the room and went, ‘That’s a school board I want to work for,’” Reif said. “They’re very pro-education, very forward thinking.”

Reif has enjoyed working with a “well-established” admin team thus far. He said everyone on board simply wants to do what is best for the students and staff.

“I’m really looking to focus on the classroom and focus on the students,” Reif said. “Dr. Spicuzza, over the last few years, has done a lot of work to really take care of the teachers and improve the salary, but we also need to make sure that our focus is entirely on the classroom and giving kids every single opportunity we can.”

Reif recalled his time in school, where classes involved a teacher lecturing for the entire class and the students taking notes. Now, things have changed. Schooling involves a lot of group work, collaboration, presentations and other life skills.

“I went to school back in the days of, you sit in a chair, six rows across, five rows deep and you listen to the teacher talk,” Reif said. “That’s not the way it is anymore. That’s not the way life is now. It’s not a multiple choice test.”

To provide this continued focus on modern education, Reif is targeting thinking classrooms and visible learning. He said it is important to ensure it is the students doing the thinking, not the teachers doing it for them. While he is happy with their academic scores being around the top of the Middle Border Conference across the board, he wants to keep moving forward. He also wants to continue expanding on CVTC and Start College Now programs, in addition to continuing to promote reading early on.

“The best thing has just been meeting the community,” Reif said. “Even just walking down Main Street, down by the river, meeting different businesses and getting the businesses to support the school district.”

Reif is putting an emphasis on working with the chamber of commerce, city council, Prescott Foundation and the community.

“The way our funding model works in the State of Wisconsin, if you have declining enrollment, like Prescott does, and like I said, the vast majority of school districts in Wisconsin do, that really, really affects your budget, which affects what we can do for our kids,” Reif said.

Through working with the city organizations, Reif hopes they can continue to make Prescott a place people want to move to, thus increasing enrollment.

“The key for me to do that is very simple, it’s to be there, it’s to be present, it’s to be part of the community,” Reif said.

Another focus for Reif is building connections between the schools. He said they have great staff at all levels, so it is important for them to collaborate and work together. The district has already acted on that idea, hosting a kick-off cookout for all staff members with collaborative activities.

“You saw bus drivers laughing with custodians, laughing with elementary teachers…,” Reif said. “Everybody across the board was in a different team and really trying to build that culture.”

Overall, Reif is excited for the students to come back to school and the academic year to begin.