The Rockwood Board of Education voted unanimously to extend Superintendent Mark Miles’s contract by one year, Board president Loralee Mondl announced at the Feb. 20 Board meeting.

“We are pleased with the performance of our superintendent and we believe our community is pleased with the direction of our school district,” Mondl said in a press release.

Miles was initially hired for a three-year contract beginning on July 1, 2019. With the extension, Miles’s contract is now set to expire on June 30, 2023. 

Miles’s hiring followed a two-month search by the Missouri School Boards’ Association after sitting Superintendent Eric Knost abruptly announced plans to retire on Oct. 11, 2018. However, Knost later chose to accept a job offer to be superintendent of the Lewis Central Community School District in Iowa.

Knost served five years as Rockwood superintendent and helped to pass bond issues, approve turf fields and get Rockwood its own fleet of buses. During the search process, Mondl said the Board was looking for a superintendent who would be similar to Knost.

“I think everyone [on the Board] is going to say ‘We want someone just like Dr. Knost,’” Mondl said in an interview with The Image in December 2018. “Well, we’re not going to find someone just like [Knost], but we could certainly try and find someone who exemplifies everything he has stood for and that he believed in doing.”

Prior to joining Rockwood, Miles served as superintendent of the Indian Hill Exempted Village School District in Cincinnati, Ohio for seven years and as deputy superintendent of the Park Hill School District in Kansas City, Missouri for 10 years.

In an interview with The Image in March 2019, Miles said he “hope[d] to make Rockwood home for a long time.” Following his extension, Miles echoed that sentiment once again in a press release.

“I remain honored to serve as the Superintendent of Schools for the Rockwood School District and appreciate the continued support of the members of the Board of Education,” Miles said.