AUDUBON — The Audubon Community School Board voted unanimously on Monday to approve sharing a superintendent with Exira-Elk Horn-Kimballton, putting the Audubon Community Schools one step closer to filling the position of superintendent after Eric Trager announced he would be retiring last month. His last day with the district is June 30, 2024.

Trager said the district had done their due diligence in considering their options.

“We had a work session back in October,” he said, adding that the board had spent quite a bit of time looking over those options.

Trager said Audubon schools had a good relationship with Coon Rapids/Bayard, the district he is also shared with, but Audubon wouldn’t continue to share with them when they moved to sharing with Exira-EHK.

The board also had a closed session which Trager said had “really stirred up lots of rumors,” but it was held to allow the entire board to interview Exira-EHK Superintendent Travis Miller. The board “ran him through a pretty rigorous interview process,” Trager said, adding they were “making sure all of the school staff, teachers, board and administration were comfortable with the choice.”

He said once all groups “were very comfortable that Trevor Miller is our guy,” the board passed motion that we would enter into a superintendent sharing (agreement), pending approval of that agreement with (the Exira-EHK) board.”

Once that was final, he said, the districts could begin “hammering out the details.”

In making the choice, Trager said, “We learned a lot time ago, it’s better to look for opportunities that exist and take advantage of those.” He said the board felt this was one of those opportunities, “geographically sharing with Exira-EHK makes the most sense for us to work with and explore (other opportunities).” Audubon already shares athletics with Exira-EHK and there might be other possibilities in the future.