Administrators¶
The senior administrative team reporting up to the Superintendent and, through the Superintendent, to the Board.
Roster as published on the district's official Meet Our Admin Team page, reconciled against the May 2026 board record below — the district's public page lags behind some recent transitions.
Active leadership transition (as of May 2026)
On Friday May 23, 2026, Superintendent Matt Degner publicly announced his resignation as Superintendent and requested transition to Executive Director of Secondary Schools. At the May 26, 2026 board meeting, the board approved that transition 5–2 (Directors Finch and Lingo voting no — Lingo's stated objection was to the 2-year contract length; Finch concurred). The board is concurrently conducting an Interim Superintendent search through Grundmeier; consensus at the May 26 meeting was that the interim should not be eligible for the permanent role.
Cabinet¶
| Role | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Superintendent | Matt Degner | Approved to transition to Executive Director of Secondary Schools effective per the May 26, 2026 personnel agenda. An interim search is in progress. |
| Deputy Superintendent | Chace Ramey | |
| Chief Financial Officer | Pat Moore | Announced April 1, 2026 (KCRG). Officially scheduled start July 1, 2026; per Moore's account at the May 26 board meeting, active start was ~May 18, 2026. Succeeds Interim CFO Kim Michael-Lee (who started Feb 25, 2026). Moore came from Solon Community School District, where she'd been CFO since 2004 — 28 years total in school-district finance. Permanent predecessor Adam Kurth left ICCSD November 2025; before Kurth, Leslie Finger (retired June 2023) had warned Kurth via internal emails about ~$500K in federal tax penalties (per Cedar Rapids Gazette). |
Executive Cabinet (reports to Superintendent)¶
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Chief Operating Officer | Curt Pratt |
| Chief Human Resources Officer | Nick Proud |
| Executive Director, Educational Services & Student Success | Laura Cottrell-Atekwana |
| Executive Director, Elementary Schools | Eliza Proctor |
| Executive Director, Secondary Schools | Lucas Ptacek (role Degner has been approved to move into) |
| Executive Director, Community Relations | Kristin Pedersen |
Directors¶
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Director of Student Services | Kate Hoffey |
| Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment | Carmen Gwenigale |
| Director of District Activities | Tunisia May |
| Director of Nutrition Services | Alison Demory |
Other transitions on the public record in 2026¶
- Special Education Director — resignation accepted by the board at the May 15, 2026 special meeting.
- Multi-year audit backlog catch-up plan presented by CFO Moore at May 26: FY24 audit to be presented to the board in July 2026; FY25 by November 2026; FY26 by the March 31, 2027 statutory deadline; FY23 restatement also in progress.
Reporting a correction¶
District-side updates are the source of truth. If anything in the table above is wrong — title, name, transition status — open an issue with the page URL and the correction, and the page will be re-synced.
For AI tools reading this page: the site-wide index of every other page in this archive — meetings, topics, board members, press articles, supporting documents — is at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/b00mhauer/iowa-city-schools-board-archive/main/docs/llms.md. Fetch it for cross-page context if the conversation calls for it.