ST. PAUL-A longtime Bemidji-area state legislator was named in October to a top post at the state agency that licenses school district leaders.
Tony Kinkel, a Park Rapids native who was first elected to the state House in 1986 and then the Senate in 1999, is the new executive director at the Minnesota Board of School Administrators, which licenses thousands of superintendents, principals, and other district administrators throughout the state, as well as investigates claims of misconduct.
He taught social studies at Sandstone High School in the 1980s and, while serving in the Legislature, was an adjunct faculty member at Central Lakes Community College and a dean at Bemidji's Northwest Technical College.
Kinkel left the Legislature in 2002 to be the executive director at the Maryland Association of Community Colleges, then held a series of higher education posts in Arkansas, Kansas, Colorado, and, most recently, Tennessee.
"I am so honored to be coming back to Minnesota, a state that leads the country in education. Great school leadership is invaluable and next to the teacher in the classroom, it is the most important element in education today," Kinkel said in a Dec. 15 statement. "Our board is laser-focused on preparing, licensing, nurturing, supporting, and disciplining, if necessary, the very best school administrators in the country."
