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Incoming Provo City School District Superintendent Wendy Dau is introduced during a PCSD board meeting at Centennial Middle School on Friday, May 5, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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Incoming Provo City School District Superintendent Wendy Dau sits next to school board member Gina Hales during a PCSD board meeting at Centennial Middle School on Friday, May 5, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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From left, Provo City School District board members Rebecca Nielsen (chair), Jennifer Partridge (vice chair), Lisa Boyce and Teri McCabe talk to state Rep. Marsha Judkins before a special board meeting at Centennial Middle School on Friday, May 5, 2023. Judkins was a member of the PCSD Board of Education before being elected to the Utah House of Representatives.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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For eight months, the Provo City School District worked to find a replacement for longtime superintendent Keith Rittel. After a series of public and private meetings among employees and with the community as a whole, the school board winnowed the list of 13 candidates down to one.

Wendy Dau was named the next superintendent of PCSD during a special meeting of the board at Centennial Middle School on Friday.

“It definitely feels real today. I’m very excited, I love the energy that’s come. I can already feel there’s a great, positive energy in Provo and I’m really excited to be part of that, that’s incredible,” Dau told the Daily Herald.

Dau is currently the director of federal and state programs for Canyons School District, a role she has held for almost two years. Before her stint in district-level employment, Dau spent 17 years as an AP history teacher at Davis High School, two years as an assistant principal at Jordan High School and six years as a principal at Jordan High School and Midvale Middle School.

Dau will take the reins of the district at the beginning of June, at which time she hopes to begin gathering information specifically on what works in the district.

“You don’t want to go in and change things that are working well, so you want to make sure you’re continuing and bumping them to the next level and then finding out what isn’t working — and let’s problem-solve that,” she said.

She mentioned declining student enrollments — PCSD reported almost 3,000 fewer students in the 2021-2022 school year compared to 2019-2020 — as an area where “tough decisions” may need to be made.

Rittel’s retirement after 11 years in the role will be a significant shift for the district, and Dau hopes to make herself known to students and members of the school community right away. Coming from Canyons, which has 42 schools, to PCSD, with 18, Dau hopes to have more interaction directly with people and visit schools frequently.

“I hope students know who I am. If our superintendent in a large district walks into a school, they may or may not know who that individual is. I want them to know who I am and be like, ‘Oh yeah, she was here last month. Oh yeah, she comes in.’ I would love that,” Dau said. “I feel like just that presence, so that they know that people at the very top are caring about what’s happening in individual classrooms, that’s pretty important to me.”

Before the public announcement was made at 3 p.m., teachers and other faculty members were invited to the school to meet the new superintendent. While everyone was invited to the in-person-only meeting, about 100-150 people attended, according to district spokesperson Caleb Price.

On a district level, it was important to get the process right and ensure the community’s voice was heard. Surveys were offered to district employees and Provo residents to see what they cared about most in a new superintendent. After gathering the information, about 50%-54% of the time spent on the search involved the community and employees, board president Rebecca Nielsen said.

While 13 candidates applied for the role, the board interviewed six and made site visits to the top three finalists. “We’re able to get a good feel for their work ethic and how they work with other people,” Nielsen said.

Provo City School District’s process comes in stark contrast to the Salt Lake City School District, which announced its new superintendent Thursday without any public input. Nielsen acknowledged the different situations for the two districts — Rittel led PCSD since 2012 and SLCSD is selecting its fourth superintendent in four years — while emphasizing the need for transparency and different perspectives in the process.

“We really did use the input that we got from the surveys — from community surveys and from employee surveys. We were able to take themes out of that, and then we honed in on those and we used those as our interview questions and as our application questions. And that was really important to us to make sure that the public feels like they had a part in this,” Nielsen said.

Sarah Hunt contributed to this story.

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