Two more familiar faces from school districts and Door and Kewaunee counties will be leaving their posts at the end of the school year.

Algoma Superintendent Nick Cochart is looking to move on to something new at the end of this school year. Cochart confirmed the decision via email earlier this week. He wrote that he is focused on getting the next superintendent hired in Algoma. Cochart, who became the superintendent in 2014, said that he wants Algoma to “remain the cutting-edge catalyst of innovation that has prompted so much state and national attention.”   He added there are opportunities for him to extend that work even further that he could not pass up. Cochart was a major driver of the Algoma Venture Academy and the broader Live Algoma Initiative. The coalition, which invites community members to engage in their personal wellbeing and overall health, helped Algoma earn All-America City status in 2020 and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation award winner in 2017.

Washington Island Principal and Director of Curriculum Michelle Kanipes is also leaving her role after being hired in 2018. Prior to her stop on the island, she served as the Dean of Students and the Athletic/Activities Director at Southern Door School District after almost 30 years with Ironwood Area Schools. According to the Washington Island Observer, Kanipes gave her resignation during a school board meeting earlier in the month as it wrestled with returning to school during a surge of COVID-19 cases. She told the Observer she was retiring but refrained from providing additional comment.

Kanipes and Cochart join Luxemburg-Casco School District Superintendent Glenn Schlender and Gibraltar Area Schools Superintendent Tina Van Meer in the decision to leave their administrative positions at the end of the school year.