Warren Keller takes over as Community Education, Activities Director for Warroad school system

In the summer of 1995, I worked a three month internship at The Warroad Pioneer, which I'm sorry to say has since ceased operation. This was the first professional newspaper that I worked for in my career, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I had only worked at Bemidji State University's newspaper for about a year and half before landing the internship. At The Pioneer I gained experience in sports, feature, beat and government reporting. I designed pages, took and developed photographs and was responsible for community relations. The best part is that I remain friends with the owners nearly 30 years later.

Aug. 1, 1995

By Devlyn Brooks

The new position of community education/activities director that Warren Keller was awarded this past month will call for a lot of long days and probably some late nights. However, Keller said that this will not be something about his job that will bother him.

"One attribute that I have is that I'm a work lover. I like to work long hours," Keller said. "But I don't like to say that I'm a workaholic because there are negative connotations to that word."

In his new position, Keller will be splitting his time between two areas: community education and the Warroad School District's activities.

The community ed duties will involve setting up adult education classes and working with the community, in general.

the activities director will involve all the activities that students of the district participate in. That includes everything from all sports, to band, to theater and even speech.

Keller said that schools used to call his position "athletic director" because most of the duties concerned sports. Now, he said, that there are simply too many different activities he oversees to just call it an athletic director. Warroad has 18 of these activities.

He said he likes the fact that his job encompasses both the community education and activities director.

"It works well that way because it comes out of one central office ... you can be in tune with the entire job," he said.

To help himself get started, Keller delegated much of the sports-related work to his Assistant Community Ed/Activities Director Cary Eades.

"I gave him 12 different responsibilities, such as coordinating practice schedules, setting up sports schedules and getting referees," he said. "So, I can spend a little more time with the community ed thing."

He said that it is not that the sports responsibilities are less important, he just has some experience wit them, and not the community ed duties.

Keller said that when he interviewed for the position he mentioned about 20 concerns in the activities director area and about 10 in the community ed area to the School Board.

One of his major goals is to make a stronger bond between the school and the community. One way of doing this, Keller said, was to get some join ownership of some of the facilities in the district.

An example is the new football equipment storage building that Keller would like to see built. He said that he would also like it to serve as a concession stand and ticket office. He said that maybe the community could help the school by volunteering time to help build the building or maybe the community could even help finance it.

"In this time of budget constraints, the schools want to have a partnership with the community," he said.

Keller has been in education for 28 years and has taught a variety of subjects, including physical education, health and science. He has also been a coach for that time on the varsity level in football, basketball and baseball. He even has six years of being an athletic director under his belt.

He was the director of the Migrant Program at the Argyle school for 22 years. He said that this involved working with children 6 weeks old to 20 years old.

Another of his goals is to be very "hands on" in his position. He said he is going to show up at the programs he oversees and give suggestions as to how he thinks it can be better. However, most important to Keller is to be supportive of all the programs he oversees.

"We already have great facilities in Warroad. It's one of the things that brought me here three years ago," Keller said. "I don't think the School Board brought me here to make a lot of changes. I'm going to build on what we already have and try to make that a little bit better.

"I'm looking forward to entertaining other people's ideas," he said. "There has to be an open door policy. I'm always open to new ideas."

Keller concedes that his first year will probably be a learning year for him. He said he is also going to use the first year to discover all of what his job entails.