A St. Paul charter school that overcame opposition to a new addition — only to see use of the space limited this year by the pandemic — has a new executive director.
Kirsten Christensen will take the helm of Twin Cities German Immersion School (TCGIS) on July 26.
She has worked for more than 30 years in higher education, most recently at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. She holds the title of professor of German and helped found and direct the university's Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program, a charter school news release states.
"What attracts me to TCGIS is the centering of German in the education of the whole child," Christensen said in the statement. "By teaching in German, we are equipping students to understand the language of the countries that are the political and economic heart of contemporary Europe."
Board Member Dianne Bell said this week that Christensen also worked at the U.S. Embassy in East Berlin in the late 1980s and that she shared with board members the experience of seeing the Berlin Wall fall in November 1989.
"She said she had a front-row seat to history," Bell said.
Christensen succeeds Ted Anderson, who said in January he was resigning as executive director effective June 30. Her starting salary is $125,000.
Twin Cities German Immersion is now in its 15th year, and serves kindergartners through eighth-graders. Its students are mostly white and the school boasts strong standardized test scores. But it is perhaps best known recently for its battle to build a new addition in the Como neighborhood — a move that required demolition of the former St. Andrew's Catholic Church.
