The Crystal City Board of Education has hired a new principal for the district’s high school and junior high school – Katie Minster, who currently serves as secondary principal in the Marion School District in Marion, S.D.
Like Crystal City, the Marion School District also has junior high and high school students in the same building and operates on a four-day school week, so Minster is a good fit for the job, said Crystal City Superintendent Matt Holdinghausen.
“We interviewed (Minster) last year and she made an impression on us,” he said. “We kind of knew what we were getting with her. She’s got some experience as a combined junior high-senior high principal. She also operated in a four-day calendar.”
The Crystal City School District switched to a four-day school week at the start of the 2020-2021 school year.
Crystal City school board members voted 6-0 May 18 to hire Minster, choosing her from among 15 applicants, Holdinghausen said. Minster will start the new job Aug. 1, replacing Ross Koenig, who said he is leaving education to go into another line of work.
Crystal City will pay Minster $84,886 next school year. Her salary at the Marion district is $68,500. Koenig was hired as the Crystal City junior high and high school principal last year and is being paid a $76,957 annual salary.
Minster, 44, said she is originally from St. Louis, so taking the job at Crystal City means she and her family can return home. She graduated from Kirkwood High School, earned a bachelor’s degree in middle school education and a master’s degree in educational administration, both from Southwest Baptist University, and an educational specialist certificate in educational leadership from Northwest Missouri State University.
“My husband (Josh) and I see this as an opportunity to come back home,” Minster said in a recent phone interview. “He’s from Bolivar. We’ll be closer to family.”
The Minsters have two daughters, Gracie, who will enter the seventh grade this fall, and Amelie, who will be an eighth-grader.
“One of the things that was really important to me was I have two daughters in middle school about to go to high school,” Minster said. “I want them to have all the educational opportunities there are, but at a smaller school. I also want them to go to the school where I teach. Our goal is to move into the district.”
Minster said her husband, Josh, 41, is a school counselor working in Freeman, S.D., where the family lives, and is looking for a job in the St. Louis area.
Katie Minster, who has worked in the Marion School District for five years, previously was a middle school teacher in the Affton School District; a middle school and high school teacher, instructional coach and assistant principal in the St. Louis Public Schools; a general education teacher for the Missouri Division of Youth Services; and a principal at Freeman Academy, a private school in South Dakota. She also spent a year in Japan teaching English.
“It was a great opportunity,” Minster said. “I worked for a company that taught English to Japanese people.”
She said she is looking forward to starting her job with the Crystal City School District.
“My family and I are very excited to move and start being a part of the community,” she said.
Board member Cindy Coleman did not attend the May 18 meeting.