Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The San Jon Municipal Schools superintendent is returning to Illinois after four years of running the eastern Quay County district.
Janet Gladu submitted her resignation letter on May 31 to the San Jon school board “after much prayer, deliberation and thought,” she wrote. She enacted the 30-day notification of resignation clause in district policy and her contract.
“For personal and professional reasons, it is time for me to move on from San Jon Municipal School District,” she wrote.
She expressed her “heartfelt appreciation for the privilege and honor” of serving the San Jon community and its school board. Gladu expressed confidence the district will “continue to flourish.”
During a special meeting Thursday, the school board voted 4-1 to accept Gladu’s resignation. Board President Frank Gibson cast the only “no” vote.
In an email last week to the Quay County Sun, Janet Gladu stated she and her husband Tim, a Tucumcari police officer, were returning “home” to Illinois to an undisclosed location and position. She stated she would be within three hours of two of her three children and four of her seven grandchildren.
“Tim and I are very thankful for the time we have been in Quay County. He has thoroughly enjoyed working with the amazing Tucumcari Community as a police officer and has thoroughly enjoyed working alongside the amazing law enforcement officers. Tim plans on continuing as a law enforcement officer at our new home,” Gladu wrote in the email.
Before coming to San Jon in mid-2018, Gladu was the superintendent at the Griggsville-Perry School District in western Illinois.
“When I told a former colleague I was leaving New Mexico, he stated: ‘Ah! The long sojourn to the desert comes to an end. Welcome back to the heartland.’ I could not state it any better,” Gladu wrote in the email.
“Tim and I will deeply miss San Jon and New Mexico, but we know that this move was God inspired and we will always follow the promptings of the Spirit in our life. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says — He hath made every thing beautiful in His time. Tim and I trust that God knows our future and He is moving us even though it was not in our plan 2 1/2 weeks ago. We know that when God says move, it’s time to move.”
The San Jon board last month approved Gladu’s salary for the 2022-2023 school year after extending her contract to mid-2024. She would have been paid $113,817.28, a raise of about $2,500.
Gladu stated in her resignation letter she and the board secured millions of dollars in grant money to increase the longevity of district buildings and improve student access to supplies and technology.
“(W)e faced and walked through the ever changing and extremely challenging times of COVID procedures, protocols and lockdowns, and seen our students achieve amazing academic achievement,” she wrote.