South metro briefs: St. Thomas Academy headmaster to retire

Headmaster Thomas Mich is retiring from his job at St. Thomas Academy next year after a 48-year career in education, the all-boys prep school announced.

The retirement is effective at the end of the 2013-14 school year. He has been in his current job since 2004.

The school, in Mendota Heights, has formed a search committee to select a new headmaster. The committee will be led by Jim Kolar, who will be the academy's next school board chairman.

Before joining St. Thomas, Mich was superintendent of the Orono school district for 18 years and an associate superintendent in the Burnsville school district for 13 years. Mich has a prior connection to St. Thomas, having worked there as a student teacher in 1965-66 and as a Latin and English teacher from 1967 to 1970.

He has a bachelor's degree from St. Paul Seminary and a master's degree from St. Thomas College, which is now the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and the University of Minnesota. He also has a doctoral degree from the U.

St. Thomas Academy has about 675 students this year in grades 7-12.

"I am enormously proud of what we have accomplished these past several years," Mich said in a news release. "I am humbled by the quality and character of our students."

Participants make a donation to fight hunger, and in return they receive a meal of soup and bread and a handmade ceramic bowl to take home. The event will be on April 18 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Campus Cafe at the Diamondhead Education Center, 200 W. Burnsville Pkwy.

The event is raising money for a Burnsville High School project called BrainPower in a Backpack, which provides a weekend of food to local elementary school students who might otherwise go hungry.

"We are asking our community to come together and show that we are unified in our goal to stamp out hunger," said Fay Finn, the youth service specialist for the Burnsville community education program.