Doréan Dow will return to the Northwest R-1 School District, where she worked for eight years before taking a job with the De Soto School District.
The Northwest Board of Education voted unanimously Feb. 18 to hire Dow as assistant superintendent of secondary education, replacing Tammy Ridgeway, who is retiring at the end of the school year.
Dow, 40, of Antonia will start her new job at Northwest on July 1 and be paid a $123,050.40 annual salary, a pay increase of more than $8,200 over the $114,805 yearly pay she is making at De Soto.
Ridgeway is being paid $125,550.40 this school year at Northwest.
Dow, who has been with the De Soto School District for five years, said she is looking forward to returning to the Northwest District.
“Naturally, I can’t wait to return to work with many of the individuals I had an opportunity to work with five years ago,” she said. “I’m very excited to get to team up again with those not just in the curriculum instruction department but out in the classrooms and then, of course, make new friends.”
Dow said she is “excited” to focus exclusively on secondary education.
At the De Soto School District, she is an assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for all grade levels.
“When I move to Northwest, I’ll still be dealing with those same things, but I’ll be focusing just on the middle schools and the high school because I’ll have a counterpart with Dr. (Grace) Green, who takes care of the elementaries,” Dow said.
Northwest Superintendent Desi Kirchhofer said he believes the transition for Dow will be “smooth.”
“Just in the early stages of conversation, she can bring a lot of energy, but she also brings a great deal of experience,” he said.
Kirchhofer said he did not work with Dow when she was at Northwest before but has heard good things about her.
“Every time I spoke with a previous colleague she worked with, they had nothing but wonderful things to say about her, from performance to work ethic to just a good person,” he said.
Dow earned a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate from Southeast Missouri State University. She also has principal and superintendent certification and a doctoral degree from Missouri Baptist University.
She started her career as an educator teaching English at Hillsboro High School, her alma mater, and then she worked as a librarian there.
She joined Northwest in 2008 as the secondary instructional coordinator.
“Basically, I was an instructional coach for teachers at the secondary level,” she said.
After six years in that role, she was promoted to director of instruction for all grades at Northwest and held that job for two years before leaving for De Soto in 2016.
Dow and her husband, Les, have a 15-year-old son, Sam.
Ridgeway, 54, of Union has been an educator in public schools for 31 years and will finish her fourth year at Northwest when she retires. Before that she worked nine years as a principal for the Crystal City School District.
Her last day at Northwest will be June 30.