Ben Kanninen thinks he may have been a little naive.

The 10-year superintendent of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district came to the district from Superior, Wis., an "urban district with urban problems," he said.

Burnsville appealed to him, because "I wanted to be somewhere where money was not the issue."

After many millions of dollars of budget cuts over his tenure, that aspiration seems almost comically off the mark now, and Kanninen, 61, knows it.

"I didn't realize at the time that [the district] was approaching an important crossroads," he said.

In his time with the district, Kanninen has quietly led the state's 12th-largest school district through some of the most difficult of its 50 years. He's led it through crucial changes in the social fabric of the community and become a calming voice in the chaos of public education.

Kanninen, who was named 2005 Minnesota Superintendent of the Year, announced in November that he will retire at the end of the school year.

"A school district of our size is a big, complex organism," said school board Chairman Dan Luth. "And Ben is a maestro."

Kanninen was born in Ely in 1946 and moved to Duluth with his family as a third-grader.

His father was a high school math and science teacher when Sputnik was launched in 1957, and the U.S. government began pouring money into science education.

Kanninen's father brought the family with him to New Jersey when he attended a summer institute for science teachers at Princeton University.

Kanninen's grades were good through high school, and his father "got the idea that going to Princeton was maybe something I could do."

Kanninen was accepted by Princeton -- as well as Brown and Dartmouth -- and played defense on the Tigers' hockey team. He graduated with a degree in English literature in 1968 and took a job as a securities analyst in Minneapolis.

A career in education was the furthest thing from his mind.

"My dad was a teacher, so naturally, I wasn't interested," he said. A client told him about a part-time job teaching at a private school, and Kanninen "fell in love" with the profession, but his father tried to discourage him from going back to school.

"Even then, he could predict that the education field would become much more contentious," he said. "He thought there might be other avenues that would be more rewarding."

In the following years, he worked as a teacher in Bloomington and Duluth, where he became an administrator. His first superintendent job was in Superior. After his children graduated from high school, and his father died, Kanninen decided it was time to move, and the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage job caught his eye.

School board member Vicki Roy, who was board chairwoman when Kanninen was hired, said the board saw a "seasoned leader."

"He's not afraid of letting other people have the limelight, and he always wants to take the blame," Roy said.

A changing place

The Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district is a drastically different place than when Kanninen arrived. It has become the urban district he thought he'd left behind. The percentages of low-income students and students of color have tripled, and each now equals about a third of the district's population. Declining enrollment -- spurred by aging district residents -- means money is limited, because state funding relies on the number of pupils.

Navigating these waters can be tough for a superintendent, and it's easy to become a community lightning rod. But Kanninen hasn't.

"Despite all those choppy waters that we're sailing through," Luth said, "he doesn't get mercurial in terms of his emotions. It's always 'steady as she goes. Yup, the water's rough, but we're just going to have to hang onto the steering wheel a little tighter.'"

Ted Blaesing, superintendent of the White Bear Lake school district, has known Kanninen for more than 20 years. They first met as superintendents in Wisconsin, while they both worked in poor, urban school districts and lobbied the State Assembly in Madison together.

Being in a district where financial resources are limited, Blaesing said, is brutal. Kanninen has survived because he's direct and doesn't shy away from delivering bad news.

"He'll explain and own the problem," Blaesing said, "and he'll be the first to give full credit to others for fixing the problem."

In November, the district passed an operating levy that Kanninen believes will put it in a stable financial position for several years. While the approved levy wasn't the reason for his stepping down, it made it easier, he said.

Kanninen calls the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district "tremendous" and brags about its high-quality teachers. And despite the district's financial woes, he never regretted his decision to take the job.

"This has been very rewarding," he said.

Emily Johns • 612-673-7460