Since 2009, Lori Volz has been working for the Albert Lea School District and currently serves as Deputy Superintendent. While students may not know her personally, her work is important to the district.
Volz has a background in business administration as well as a masters degree in educational leadership and educational administration and has been working in school finance her 32 year career.
Coming from a family of educators, Volz gained an interest in using her skills to support education.
Volz started her career as the Business Director of Blue Earth Area School District where she worked for 15 years, from there she worked for Austin School District as Director of Finance & Operation. Eventually, Volz relocated to Albert Lea.
The strong leadership in the school district and working with Superintendent, Mike Funk, as well as the town’s proximity to her farm was what brought her to Albert Lea according to Volz.
Improving student achievement is important to Volz and is one of the exciting parts of her job.
“Whenever I can maximize funding so that we can hire another teacher, or teachers, to me that’s a big deal,” Volz said.
While each day is different depending on the time of year, a typical day at work for Volz starts with checking her calendar and identifying important items for the day as well as following up with staff, administrators and answering the occasional question from a parent.
From there her work is directed to the district aims and goals set up by the school board.
“As I start each week, I look to how my department has aligned our goals to the aims and goals to see what we need to be completing this month,” Volz said.
Volz goes through many measures to make sure the district is getting as much money as it is entitled to through various funding streams, throughout her career, Volz has saved the taxpayers millions of dollars while still making large upgrades possible such as heating and ventilation upgrades to schools in the district.
A recent project Volz has worked on was expanding the pre-k program in the district through grants by adding a new program free to parents of children four years of age.
The district had two elementary schools qualify for the grant whereas many districts in the Big 9 had one or zero. To qualify for the grant, the school needed to have a certain rate of students who receive free or reduced lunch.
“Those parents that couldn’t afford a preschool program, they now have another avenue where they could have their child [aged 4 years old] serviced,” Volz said. The process of applying for the grant was done in a month filled with jumping through hoops as well as paperwork according to Volz.
About a month later the district was notified of the award with the program set to begin within weeks. Volz described the next few weeks as a “busy, busy time” for the district.
Getting the program off the ground in a short time frame was challenging and exciting for her.
To get the program up and running, Volz worked with the Coordinator of Early Learning, Jenny Hanson and her staff who worked hard making families aware of the program and getting them to register.
Another part of getting the pre-k education program ready was purchasing materials and equipment as well as finding space.
“This program hadn’t existed before so now we needed space in each of the schools,”
At this time of the year, Volz and the district starts gearing up for next year.
Preparation comes from many areas from facility enhancement projects, analyzing enrollment trends. Since enrollment affects funding for the district as well as the of the amount of staff in each building, it is important to get an estimate of enrollment is important to Volz.
Finding ways to save money as well as finding funding to hire more teachers is Volz’s favorite part of the job.
“They’re the ones that make student achievement happen,” Volz said.
After seeing the effects Volz’s work has had on the district as well as the taxpayers, community members were upset to learn that Volz had accepted a job offer in Mankato.
To express their concerns, more than 40 members of the community sent emails to Volz encouraging her to stay in Albert Lea as well as approximately 60 people who attended a boardworks session.
Volz was impressed and touched by the outpouring of support and communication. It made her take a second look and rethink her decision.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in public education, such an outpouring [of support] isn’t the norm necessarily,” Volz said.