Joel Pedersen will become NIACC President on July 1st. He’s been the Chief Administrator of the Central Rivers Area Education Agency based in Cedar Falls, which covers most of the broadcast area.
Pedersen tells Radio on the Go News that changes being made to the A-E-A’s in the state is part of the reason why he applied for the NIACC job.
“I think the biggest thing is is taking a system that was created over 50 years that by no means was perfect, but I think we found through this process that it did a lot of good things for people and basically changing it in such a quick time without maybe looking at unintended consequences is my biggest fear for the system. But I can tell you that we’re going to continue to evolve and do the best we can and then hopefully the legislators, if they see there’s something, well, boy, we didn’t know this was going to happen. We hope that they would make some corrections in the next legislative session.”
Pedersen is looking forward to his new position.
“So I really have kind of a pre-July 1st plan, a first 90 days after July 1st, and really a whole year. And it really revolves around the same thing I did when I started at the AEA is relationships first, connect with people, people like you that will allow me to share a journey and my story and what’s happening. Other people across the community and across the region, because it’s not just Mason City or Clear Lake, it’s really that service region that I know many of the superintendents already, I know many of the legislators. So I feel like I maybe have a little head start on some of those things, but it’s going to be based around listening, building relationships and when the time is right, I’ll share some of my ideas.”
The Central Rivers A-E-A board this week voted to share the chief administrator and some other positions with the Keystone Area Education Agency based in Elkader on an interim basis.
