Liebe TCGIS Gemeinschaft,
I’m writing to you today to announce that I submitted my resignation to the school board, effective June 30th, 2021. I will continue to serve in my role as executive director for the rest of this school year and help prepare the school for a smooth transition. It’s been an honor to be entrusted with the leadership of this community since 2016, and a pleasure to collaborate with so many talented, committed educators, board members, families, and students. Both humbling and inspiring, being part of our community - as a colleague, as a parent, as your director - has provided so many wonderful memories and taught me countless lessons, for which I am profoundly grateful.
While the road has been rough at times, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together in our pursuit of our mission: Education of the whole child through German immersion. We built a school together and we are holding together in the toughest school year I have ever experienced in 24 years - Gemeinsam sind wir stark!
I am excited to have been able to spend much of this school year in collaboration with my admin team and our school board on a new strategic plan, “Vision 2025.” The coming weeks will offer the chance to gather stakeholder feedback and I am confident that this community will carry it out with ambition and care.
Mit dankbarem Gruß
Ted Anderson
Executive Director
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The board is grateful to Director Anderson for his unwavering support of TCGIS over the past 5 years. Director Anderson made many impactful contributions to TCGIS, including the creation of the staff and parent councils, advocating for TCGIS through the controversy of the building project and related lawsuit, guiding the school through the pandemic crisis last spring, and addressing the murder of George Floyd and the civil unrest in the Twin Cities last summer on behalf of TCGIS. We cannot imagine a more challenging time to be the executive director of a charter school. We commend him for his leadership through all of this. Director Anderson’s pragmatism, thoughtful decision-making, positive mindset, spirit of perseverance, and absolute love of the German language, helped TCGIS become the school it is today.
We appreciate the timely notification of Director Anderson’s decision, and giving us the opportunity to conduct a quality and thorough search. Organizational change is never easy, and the ongoing pandemic and civil unrest are added challenges to this leadership transition. Nonetheless, we are optimistic and committed to collaborating as a community to conduct a formal and successful search for the next executive director to lead TCGIS into and through Vision 2025. All TCGIS stakeholders will have the opportunity to be involved in the search process, and we’ll communicate soon regarding the next steps and regularly throughout the process.
We look forward to continued collaboration with Director Anderson this spring and into the future; we value his perspectives as a committed member of the TCGIS community who cares greatly about its future success. We wish him the best as he embarks on new endeavors, knowing this isn’t goodbye, rather Auf Wiedersehen, until we see each other again.
Mit Blick nach vorne,
Julie Alkatout
Chair, TCGIS Board of Directors
