Retirement bittersweet for Union Superintendent Kirt Hartzler (2024)

It’s starting to hit Kirt Hartzler that this summer is going to look a little different.

After almost 40 years in public education, the Union superintendent is officially retiring at the end of the month.

“I’ve been working since I was about 13 years, doing little odd jobs until now,” he said. “I’m realizing that it is that time that that chapter in my life is closing. It’s bittersweet, but I’m at peace about it, and I’m happy that we are at the place where we’re at.”

The 2023 State Superintendent of the Year, Hartzler started working for Union Public Schools in 1986 as a high school social studies teacher.

After stints as an assistant principal, principal of the district’s Eighth Grade Center, assistant superintendent and deputy superintendent, he was named Union’s superintendent in July 2013.

Over the last 11 years under Hartzler’s leadership, partnerships and collaboration have been key for Union’s administration, both internally and externally.

“I still think that for Union, our brightest days are still to come, but it’s because of the culture that we’ve all worked very hard to build,” Hartzler said. “And I’m going to use the pronoun ‘we,’ because none of this happens without certainly the collective work and the collective commitment from our incredible teachers, our support staff, our administration, our board and our community.”

Conversations with private businesses made it possible for the district to launch its Career Connect program in 2014, creating job shadowing and internship opportunities for more than 300 students per year.

Thanks to partnerships with the city and Community Health Connection, the state’s first community village school, Ellen Ochoa, opened in 2017 with a clinic next door that now handles more than 40,000 patient visits per year.

Since the 2017-18 school year, a partnership with Tulsa Community College has provided Union students the chance to simultaneously earn a high school diploma and an associate’s degree for free.

To date, more than 100 students have completed the program, and, like Hartzler, many are first-generation college graduates.

“I’m a first-generation college student myself, and I can remember the hardships and the issues that you need to figure out,” the Evangel University graduate said. “I don’t get there without caring teachers, coaches, counselors, and people in my life who believe more in me than in myself.

“That’s the mindset that we have worked with.”

His tenure was also marked by a string of challenges, including the statewide teacher walkout in 2018, navigating the impact of the district’s 2020 decision to stop using a slur as its mascot, a string of bomb threats at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, plus COVID-19 and its lingering effects.

Although made in consultation with the community, board members and members of his administrative team, Hartzler acknowledged that several of the district’s pandemic-induced decisions were particularly difficult to make and unpopular.

“It hasn’t been 11 years of, of really just what the Romans would call ‘Pax Romana,’ where it’s peace and just prosperity,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of issues to navigate through and to deal with, but I wouldn’t have changed anything. Even with COVID, what that challenged us to do was to be more mindful and adaptive and responsive.”

Further compounding those challenges were the financial realities facing public education and their continued ripple effect. The state has had multiple revenue failures during Hartzler’s tenure, forcing funding cuts or flat budgets across the board.

Although the Oklahoma Legislature approved teacher pay raises in 2018 and 2023, those increases have not kept up with inflation and excluded noncertified support personnel, such as paraprofessionals and teacher’s assistants.

With Union now employing more than 100 emergency certified teachers, Hartzler noted that those decisions have not gone unnoticed by educators and potential future educators.

“A high quality education system doesn’t happen by accident,” he said. “It happens because of investment. We might not always agree on how we get there and what it looks like, but there is a common denominator we have to have, and it’s that we have to have adequate funding and resources in order for us to provide a high quality education.

“The one thing that concerns me the most and has kept me up at night is the lack of young people who are coming into common education, and we know why that it is. It’s because we don’t talk very highly of it in terms of valuing our teachers as we should. And then there’s certainly the compensation. It’s not a bad living to start off at $40,000 per year, but you can be in our profession and 20-25 years later, only make $10,000 more … than when you started. That doesn’t stay up with inflation, and young people know that.”

Those challenges — and successes — prompted collaborative efforts with other districts.

Stacey Butterfield became superintendent at Jenks Public Schools the same summer Hartzler assumed the top spot at Union.

Despite the fierce rivalry in football and other extracurricular activities, the two neighboring districts’ superintendents would frequently talk about issues facing their respective communities and even co-hosted a professional development workshop prior to COVID-19.

“Kirt promotes a spirit of collaboration across all aspects of our school districts — teaching and learning, business operations, athletics and activities,” she said. “He has been a voice of reason and a staunch advocate for public education to ensure that students are given opportunities to pursue their dreams.”

Beyond taking some time to step back and decompress, Hartzler has not decided on his next move after July 1. He acknowledged that he has been approached by multiple people to run for elected office in part due to his passion and concern for public education.

However, that is not in his immediate plans.

“I’m not going to totally rule it out because I care immensely about public education,” he said. “I really do. And I don’t just say that. I started off out of Evangel and went into business for about a year before I made the leap to teaching and coaching.

“Now that this has become part of my whole career, I’m not going to be one to step back and just watch it be undervalued and underrespected. There’s too much potential in our public education system in Oklahoma for not only our state, but, economically speaking, it is the only way we remain viable.”

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