Meet Shakopee Schools' new HR director

Shakopee Valley News

Name: Keith Gray

Title: Shakopee Public Schools human resources director

Background: Gray grew up in Illinois and moved to Iowa for his first job. Eventually, he made his way to the Twin Cities area. Gray has a wife and an adult son.

What are your main goals for your work within the district?

I think one of my main goals really is to make sure that we're fostering a positive environment, creating positive relationships with all staff and community members — I think that's a real big piece of HR. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is really unlock human potential both on the employee side and on the student side so that's part of our role is to try and allow people to be the best they can be in the job they're working in.

What do you think the biggest challenge will be? 

I think the biggest challenge, right now, for just about any organization is finding the best people for positions. I think that it's really become competitive trying to find really good people to fill those roles and I think — you can read in the newspaper that there's becoming a teacher shortage, that's a significant thing. So, being competitive and being able to draw those people to your organization I think is going to be the challenge for not only Shakopee Public Schools but just about every school district and organization.

With the budget shortfall last year, how are you bringing those people to the district and remaining competitive?

I think from a competitive perspective, Shakopee has a lot to offer. There's a lot of really positive programs in the district going on. I think the community is a really open and welcoming community, I think that's a real positive. People want to work in really great work sites. Every school district, quite honestly, in the state of Minnesota has struggled a bit financially because you just can't keep up with rising costs, with what we get from the Legislature.

I know in a former district we didn't get enough from the Legislature every year to cover our basic operating costs. I think every school district suffers from that. Shakopee has been lucky because they've had a rise in the number of students that we have. Our student population has grown and that helps with that. I think most school districts are struggling with the financial side of it.

What do you see as the most positive aspect of Shakopee Public Schools?

The people. I think, I've been here a short period of time but I have met really great people who are really creative, smart, professional and really want to do the best they can for kids. That's really comes through clearly when you talk with everybody who works in the district. Honestly, even out in the community, people are just friendly. It's a really welcoming community, from my perspective.

What are some specific steps you can take to move past the errors of the former administration?

I think a really important thing for us to be moving forward, is positive. There's a lot of really good things happening in the school district and a lot of people, community members included, are a part of that. I think we need to make sure that everyone is involved and all voices are heard. I think we need to encourage participation in the kind of decisions we make that are really important to a lot of people. For me, personally, making sure that I'm engaged in all the problem solving that occurs in the school district and making sure that all perspectives are understood and heard and acted on when it seems to make sense.

How will your work benefit the students?

HR is really a support function. We're really trying to support the overall organization. I think the most important thing we can do is support staff and supervisors of staff and try to make sure that any kind of encumbrance that's in their way, we minimize. We know that there's always things that have to be done that aren't necessarily part of the core responsibilities but our job is to try and minimize that as much as we can.

I think that's one part of it. I think, hiring great people, because the people that are working directly with kids are the ones that really have the biggest effect on how students can grow. We obviously want to be a part of bringing a really great person to the organization to work with kids.

What can community members expect from you in the upcoming years?

Honesty and integrity. I grew up and my family ran a small business in a small town so I have always viewed things as, "I'm a steward of an organization, I'm a steward of resources" ... so I always want to make sure that we're allocating those resources that's best for the kids, foremost, and the community as well in terms of, how do we bring services? How do we bring education? How do we bring growth using those resources in a way that's sensible and effective? I think that's kind of a perspective I bring, just because I know how valuable resources are. Again, going back to my small business owner experience.

What can staff expect from you in the upcoming years?

We're going to work as tirelessly as we can to make this a great place to work and learn. When I say work and learn, that's staff learn, students learn. If we make this a great place, people are going to be putting everything they got into helping kids achieve their goals.

What is a fun fact about yourself?

I have a couple, but the one that sort of jumped out at me this morning is when I was in high school, I was an athlete and two of my friends were as well and we would go to different schools and we saw these great images of their mascot up in the gym. We did not have one. Ours was never fully defined, just all kinds of different images. I was the promoter type and my two friends were artists so we created this logo as part of our senior gift, as we left, this big 8-by-12-foot image. Our logo was the grey ghost.

We worked pretty hard to get it up, it weighed a ton because you can imagine guys building this thing but we put that up and that's the logo today. It's lived on through a lot of years. We weren't smart enough to copyright it but the first time I saw it on a PE t-shirt, that was pretty cool and on the school drums. You kind of go, "OK, that was a pretty cool senior gift." The rest of our classmates gave us enough money to build the wood and buy the paint. One of the guys that helped designed that lives in Prior Lake. So it's odd that two Illinois kids end up out this way. We wanted to make it menacing but not too scary for kids.