New East Mills Principal Eager For Start Of School Year

MALVERN - Linda Rempe has spent most of her career in education 1,800 miles from her hometown in southeastern Iowa.

But the Bonaparte native still calls Iowa home.

Rempe was formally hired as the new East Mills Middle-High School principal on June 22. She succeeds out-going principal Andy Irwin, who accepted the activities director position at Shenandoah High School this spring.

Rempe’s first official day on the job was July 1.

A Harmony High School graduate, Rempe earned her bachelors degree from Florida State University and a master’s degree at the University of Nebraska–Omaha. After teaching in Burlington and Underwood for several years, Rempe, a mother of four, and her family headed west to Washington state where she taught and then served as an administrator in the Seattle suburbs. She returned to Iowa two years ago to help care for her ailing mother.

“My mother was aging and we wanted to be close to her,” Rempe said. “She’s doing better now.”
Rempe said she kept “her fingers in education” on her return to Iowa, substitute teaching for a time and most recently serving as curriculum director and talented and gifted coordinator for the Harmony School District in Bonaparte.

“I wanted to stay involved in education,” she said. “I wanted to make sure I knew what was going on, taking classes with some of the new initiatives such as aligning curriculum to the new Iowa Core.”
When the East Mills position opened, Rempe said her research revealed a school district with high test scores in close proximity to a larger community. Two major selling points, she added.

“I liked the proximity with a small town close to a city,” she said. “And as I looked at East Mills’ scores, I felt like they  excelled academically and they had a lot to be proud of as far as their students doing well on tests. I was also impressed with the facilities and how they’ve been maintained and since I’ve been here I’ve been pleasantly introduced to a lot of students and parents and they’ve been very nice.”

The new principal hasn’t had a lot of opportunities to meet as many students or parents as she’d like but has been attending East Mills softball and baseball games this summer. A self-admitted “relationship person,” Rempe is a hands on administrator who prefers the smaller school environment for building relationships with students, parents and teachers.

“To have excellence you have to have strong, trusting, real relationships. Not surface ones. I think at larger schools, it’s harder to get to really know people, especially students, when they are in large groups.

“A lot of my children had 500 people in their classes and they don’t even think about going back for their reunions because they just didn’t know all the students they went to school with.”

Rempe eagerly awaits the Aug. 26 start of school.

“I can’t wait,” she said. “I’ve met a few students but I’m looking forward to meeting them all. The parents have been friendly. The booster club has been great and the community is really positive. So I’m pumped to get school started. I know the kids probably aren’t but August will be here before we know it.”