Clear Creek Elementary principal Brandon Borseth and his family will be leaving the Clear Lake area after he finishes up his duties in June. The Borseths will be moving to Tipton, Iowa where Borseth has accepted the position of Tipton School District Superintendent.
The Borseths, originally from south Des Moines, moved to Clear Lake in 2013 when Brandon accepted the job as the sixth grade and high school band director, while his wife Rose took a position as a sixth grade teacher at the Clear Lake Middle School. “My wife taught here for 10 years. This past year, she has been a student success coach at Waldorf University [in Forest City],” Borseth said. “And five years ago I took the Dean of Students job here and then transferred to assistant principal, then principal and then a few weeks ago accepted the position with Tipton.”
Pursuing a superintendent role was something that Borseth said he always saw in his future. “I want to help people succeed. I want to celebrate successes…those things that we call home about. We [at Clear Creek] actively look for things to celebrate kids for and as a superintendent, I believe I can help do that for a whole district,” he said.
Borseth started the superintendent program with Drake University when he became the assistant principal at Clear Creek. But he said that as he neared the completion of that degree, he and Rose had some serious decisions to make, not only for themselves but for their children, their 7th grade son, Logan, and five-year-old twin daughters.
They decided that there were two options. Either move closer to Des Moines where all of Borseth’s family and Rose’s mother and sister live or move closer to Iowa City where Logan had been receiving treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. “We’re not in that spot right now, but could very easily be again. So we said if there was something that granted us a proximity to Iowa City, we would take a look,” Borseth explained.
The Tipton superintendent search just happened to be led by the supervisor of the superintendent program he had recently graduated from. So after a good conversation and some highly spoken remarks about the Tipton school district by mutual acquaintances, Borseth decided to drive down and take a look for himself.
“I went down and drove through the town a bit. A small town is something that really appeals to our family. We didn’t know that until we moved to Clear Lake. We liked the pace of life, liked the people and liked being a member of that kind of community,” he said. “Tipton is not as large as Clear Lake, but has a lot of the feel. And then doing the interview process really cemented for me that this was a community that was very proud of its school, very proud of its people and wants the best for them.”
Borseth said the welcome from the community has been phenomenal. He had sent a family picture that the local newspaper had used in their story about the new school superintendent. But when they went down to look at houses they were very surprised to be recognized by a shop owner. “She came up and introduced herself and we had a great conversation,” he said. That’s when the family knew what he had already discovered – that this was going to be a good thing.
Borseth said the job turnover will be very quick. He will go from finishing out in June in Clear Lake to beginning in Tipton as of July 1. “It’s super hard to leave. This is the longest stretch of time in my wife’s and my relationship that we’ve spent anywhere. And we’ve built up a lot of friendships and we have poured into our church family in a big way. Leaving is hard but it’s still the right call.”
