Changes near the top at Anoka-Hennepin

The Anoka-Hennepin school district is losing two of its top administrators, one to retirement and the other to the top schools job in Green Bay, Wis.

Michelle Langenfeld, district associate superintendent for middle schools, will take over as Green Bay superintendent on July 18. Charles Briscoe, associate superintendent for high schools, will retire effective sometime in July after one year in the district.

"I just decided this was a good time to retire," said Briscoe, who is 58.

Langenfeld, 56, who lost her bid for the Anoka-Hennepin superintendent job two years ago to current Superintendent Dennis Carlson, said she wasn't actively looking for a new job. When a recruiter approached her about the Green Bay job, however, that changed.

"It's very much like Anoka-Hennepin," she said. "It's very rich in history. It has both an urban feel to it, and some of the schools have a suburban feel. It's a community that services a variety of folks, and so forth." Langenfeld said she was also struck by her new district's emphasis on "meeting the needs of all children."

The Green Bay district, Langenfeld said, has 20,000 students, about half of Anoka-Hennepin's total. It also has about 40 percent children of color, about double Anoka-Hennepin's percentage.

"There are larger businesses there that we don't necessarily have in Anoka-Hennepin," Langenfeld said. "Paper mills, the [Green Bay Packers] football franchise, and so forth." Plus, there's the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

"It's always tough to lose your top people," Carlson said. "In Michelle's case, this was not entirely unexpected. She was certainly ready to be a superintendent. This opportunity came up in Green Bay, and it seemed like an excellent fit."

As for Briscoe, Carlson said, "In Chuck's case, it was a challenging year on a personal level. He's a very good man. He is just making some decisions in his life that he wants to make."

Before her current job, Langenfeld was a district middle school principal. Briscoe was principal of Rochester Century High School.

Selected to replace Langenfeld and Briscoe on an interim basis are, respectively, Jeff McGonigal, principal of Coon Rapids High School, and Jinger Gustafson, principal of Oak View Middle School in Andover.

Because of the challenges facing the district -- including the possibility of a state government shutdown starting Friday and an effort to renew a $48-million-a-year levy in November -- Carlson said the interim label could stick to the new administrators for almost a year.

Norman Draper • 612-673-4547