Michael Mansfield, superintendent of the Dunkirk City School District, makes a point during a 2023 interview. Mansfield gave his final report as superintendent recently. He’s set to become the district’s business administrator in July. P-J photo by M.J. Stafford

Mike Mansfield looked back on his five years as Dunkirk City School District superintendent during his final meeting in the position last week.

Mansfield will become the district’s business manager today. Brian Swatland is taking over as superintendent.

The COVID-19 epidemic hammered down giant challenges just a month after Mansfield took over as superintendent in February 2020.

He recalled “all those safety concerns and unknown going into that summer. It was late July we finally received the guidance from New York State about how we would be coming back to school — and we did.

“As you recall, I think we worked very well with our unions and the Board of Education and we pulled together and we were able to open (the 2020-21 school year) a little late, but we had hybrid or remote options for our families. I think we were very proud of giving the people that opportunity.”

However, Mansfield’s next challenge came up quickly: The first time he met with district financial advisor Richard Timbs, in January 2021, he was told the school district would be out of money in two years unless it changed course.

“That’s when the relocation discussion came up about maybe getting more efficient. We went to the three levels of schools — primary, intermediate and secondary. We were kind of trying to close down School 4… You may recall, you may have been a part of, the efficiency and effectiveness committees we formed with community members and board members. We ran those for a while, just trying to figure out how we were going to be more efficient and more effective in what we were doing.

“We needed a good five year financial plan — we started working through that. We still needed to maintain and grow our programming while we were doing this, and then we needed to recruit and maintain highly qualified staff during what was a staff storage.”

Mansfield noted all five of his budgets passed, and said “we feel fiscally sound right now for five years.” He said it was done with no staff layoffs, though some people were reassigned.

He also touted that district unions have contracts at least through 2027, and that the district has had clean audits annually.

Mansfield went on to talk up the district’s expansion of its bilingual program into an academy, and work done on curriculum and instruction. He also mentioned the girls flag football program and the new athletics hallway.

An $83 million capital project is coming up for the district. Mansfield highlighted some of the improvements ahead, including but not limited to: a secure entrance vestibule at the secondary school, a renovated secondary school cafeteria, a new health center, new and renovated STEM classrooms, creation of additional classrooms, artificial turf and lights for the baseball and softball fields, renovated tennis courts, and air conditioning for all buildings.

“I’m very appreciative of the community for voting that in. That was a tough one,” Mansfield said.

He wrapped up by praising the Board of Education. “These people are volunteers, they care about the community, they care about the schools — so they show up at these meetings, they show up on Saturday mornings sometimes… I think it’s important from a superintendent’s perspective having that alignment that we all wanted to do what’s best for the kids. I think the motto for this board has been ‘whatever it takes, as long as it makes sense.'”

Board of Education Kenneth Kozlowski later offered praise for Mansfield.

Kozlowski said the slides Mansfield showed in his presentation “doesn’t even touch what he’s done for this district…One morning, I’m up at 4 in the morning, I thought I was the only one that’s up at that time, and I get an email from him. He was constantly working, and he was working to do the best for our students — but he always had our community in mind also, for our finances, to protect our tax base and make sure we could do what we could with what we have.”

Kozlowski continued, “Luckily, we get to keep him as our business manager, because he showed the big project and we’re going to have a ton of money coming in and out. We know we got somebody we can trust to monitor that.”