Prairie View's Bollinger set to retire at end of school year

LA CYGNE – The Prairie View USD 362 Board of Education on Monday, Jan. 9, accepted the retirement of Superintendent Rex Bollinger effective on June 30. His retirement comes after 31 years as an educator, but it doesn’t mean that he is leaving education.

He said following Monday night’s meeting that he has accepted a superintendent’s post with Rock Port R-II district in Rock Port, Mo., a district with 330 students. That district is in the northwestern corner of Missouri that state shares borders with Nebraska and Iowa.

Bollinger, an alumnus of Jayhawk-Linn High School, was hired as an interim superintendent at Prairie View in 2016 after the departure of Chris Kleidosty, who left the district for Tonganoxie USD 464 amid charges that he was aware that a Prairie View teacher had inappropriate contact with a student and failed to report it.

Bollinger subsequently assumed the superintendent post and has remained with the district since.

A graduate of Pittsburg State University with a degree in education, his first teaching job was at Cameron R-1 school district in Cameron, Mo., just east of St. Joseph, Mo. There he taught physics and chemistry.

In 1994, he returned home to JLHS to teach junior high Science as well as Biology and Chemistry and he also served as a coach.

In 1999, he became vice principal at JLHS and three years later moved up to principal.

In 2006, Bollinger was hired to take over a dual superintendency for the Highland USD 425 and Midway USD 433 districts in northeastern Kansas. There he oversaw a consolidation of those two districts into a single district, Donaphin West USD 111 in 2009.

The office for the new district was in Highland, a few miles south of where the Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri borders meet.

“We built a brand new school district from the ground up,” he said. “I was the first employee hired at USD 111.”

And of course, in 2016 he returned to Linn County to head the Prairie View district.

The Prairie View school board will hold a special meeting on Thursday night to begin the process of hiring a new superintendent.