TOM RICE SAYS HELLO
If you ever get an email from Tom Rice, the tagline below his signature will read “attitude matters,” because if there’s anything that the new superintendent at Menno Public School carries with him on his broad shoulders, it comes in the weight of those two words.
What’s your message to the staff in Menno, Mr. Rice?
“Attitude matters.”
What’s your message to the students, Mr. Rice?
“Attitude matters.”
What’s your message to the parents?
“I think you know,” he says. “It’s honestly that simple. School matters. Athletics matter. Relationships matter. Activities matter. All of it matters, but you’re not going to get anywhere without the right attitude.
“Attitude matters. How we do things matters.”
•••
It doesn’t take long upon meeting Rice to know that this is a man who walks the talk, and that his glass is — “99% of the time” — half full.
“Darn right it is,” says Rice, who comes to Menno from Gayville-Volin and began the first superintendent job of his 32-year career in education July 1. “I allow myself time to be down, and then it’s, ‘You better pick yourself up, because you’re no good to anybody if you don’t do it. In spite of obstacles, we’re going to lead and we’re going to achieve.’
“Attitude is one of the things that you truly can have control over during the day.”
It seems like Rice has always been this way. He recognizes he was blessed to be born into a good family, has never not enjoyed being around school and loved his years at the old Washington High School in Sioux Falls — “the rock,” as he calls it.
“I was in every nook and cranny of that building, even the ones I wasn’t supposed to be in,” says the 1986 graduate who was actively involved in a smorgasbord of activities, from swing choir and band to football and track and field.
“I actually ran hurdles; don’t let the body fool you,” says Rice, who picked up the discus and shot put in the last years of his prep career. “It was love at first throw.”
Love; that’s what Rice has a lot of. You can sense it upon meeting him and soaking in his big personality, and then hearing his story and understanding the way he interacts with people, and why he does what he does.
“I think I always knew I was going to go into education,” he says. “It was a matter of deciding how am I going to serve the Lord best. I loved coaching and I knew the impact that can have, not just for a day or a season, but for a lifetime. And I just thought to myself, ‘I need to be in the classroom.’”
Here’s what else he says.
About respect: “You can’t rib somebody for what they believe in; you’ve got to respect what they believe in, even if it makes your skin crawl, because we all have the right to think what we want to think.”
About understanding: “As a teacher I am going to tell you what I believe in, but I’m always going to tell you, ‘That doesn’t have to be your belief.’ There are a lot of things in this world that I don’t agree with and I’ll let you know it, but I’ll do it nicely. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.”
About integrity: “A jack of all trades, master of none, is what I am. Everything I do is with a faithful heart; I do the best I can.”
About humility: “I am so far from being the best man for the job, or the best example of what to do or what not to do; I am just coming at you with an open heart. If you want a guy who’s going to speak what he believes to be the truth, I’m that guy. But I’m also going to listen.”
Faith, family and friendships. For Tom Rice, that’s what it’s all about.
Those things, and football.
•••
There’s little doubt that Rice is a football guy. After a successful career at Washington High School, he went on to play as a four-year, all-conference starter for what was then known as Sioux Falls College, where he attended on a theater scholarship. He spent most of his career as a tight end before settling in as an offensive guard his senior year — “the best year of football I ever had,” he says. Rice also occasionally snapped, played defense and kicked for the Cougars; “It was funny seeing a guy wearing No. 78 punting, but I did whatever they needed.
“The good Lord blessed me with a little ability.”
In the classroom, Rice focused on mass communication, political science, history and education, graduating in 1990 with a degree in political science and history. Not surprisingly, he took on a coaching position at Colman-Egan immediately after graduating from college and embarked on a master’s in education degree from the University of South Dakota, which he earned in 1993. He also spent some time coaching football for the Coyotes and the Cougars and teaching at Roosevelt before a football coaching position opened up at Washington High School. He got the job, along with a middle school teaching position at Whittier Middle School, and his career was off and running.
The job in Sioux Falls satisfied two of Rice’s itches: coaching football and working with middle school students, which he decided was has favorite age group with which to work.
“Can I say that I don’t know if I’ve ever truly grown up myself?” he laughs. “I just really identified well with middle schoolers; I just know how tough that age can be — figuring out your place in the world, not only in your family, but in school and all the other uncertainty that’s in your life.
“Middle school kids are sponges,” he continues. “The mold isn’t set yet.”
Coaching football and being a classroom teacher afforded Rice the opportunity to be a servant through mentorships, friendships and relationships, and while he appreciated the chance to teach social studies to those “sponges” out there — and later at the high school level at Washington — being a head football coach in a big-time high school program is what really appealed to him.
“My goal was always to come back to Sioux Falls, or a bigger town, and be a AA or AAA football coach,” he says. “Funny how the Lord will help you see that that’s not the right path to follow. I needed to go someplace else where maybe you can affect even more change.”
That place turned out to be Beresford, and Rice’s professional trajectory was forever changed.
•••
It was 1999 when the head football coaching position for the Watchdogs opened up, and Rice put in his application. Jon Pedersen was the Beresford superintendent at the time and interviewed Rice for the job, which also included being a middle school social studies teacher. Rice was offered the job on the spot and says his life changed the day he signed the contract for Beresford at the Fryin’ Pan on East 10th Street in Sioux Falls.
Why?
“Because I was leaving what I knew — Sioux Falls.”
Rice says he spent eight wonderful years at Beresford, during which time he earned his specialist degree through the Professional Development Center at USD in 2003-04.
“Loved Beresford; great community,” he says. “I still have lifelong friends from that area who I talk to frequently, because I’m a relationship guy.” But in 2008 the pull of career advancement took Rice even further south of Sioux Falls — and several miles west — when he applied for, and was hired for, a middle school/high school principal job at Gayville-Volin.
Rice had had an application in for a job in Aberdeen at the same time, but pulled it after he was offered the position in Gayville on the spot after being the last candidate of the process to interview.
“It was a leap of faith,” he says of the career change, “but anytime my family has moved, we have felt that we were called.”
The “jack of all trades” certainly came out as he checked off the boxes as an influential member of the Raiders’ community; in addition to serving as principal, he taught social studies and occasionally PE, was the football and track coach, at one point the athletic director, and also drove bus from time to time. All of this came while living in a community of less than 500 people — a far cry from Beresford and an even further cry from Sioux Falls.
Gayville was quite a change from a Class AA or Class AAA head football coaching position that Rice had so much longed for years earlier, but there was no doubt in his heart of hearts that the move into the Gayville-Volin School District was the right thing to do.
“I answered the call; to me, it’s that simple,” he says. “Whether it’s a big city, intermediate or small, you have a small group of people that you work with and I view it as an opportunity to pass along some proper influence on other people.”
“I can’t explain it any other way,” he says. “It just felt right.”
•••
If football drew Rice to Beresford and a principalship drew him to Gayville-Volin, then it was the prospect of being a superintendent that piqued his interest in Menno. And so it was that when the Menno School Board of Education decided they wanted to take their administration in a different direction earlier this year, Rice was the one who would replace Dr. Charlene Crosswait.
Not that the decision to leave Raider territory was easy — not by a longshot. Rice is on his own in Menno, at least for the time being, because his wife of 27 years, Jenny, remains on staff at Gayville-Volin and his youngest son, Grayson (a name that means Divine Spark), will be an eighth grader there this fall. Not only that, but Jenny is in a fight against ovarian cancer.
And that’s to say nothing that the move came in the middle of a pandemic and the fact that both Tom and Jenny were confirmed positive for COVID-19 several months ago.
Not exactly the ideal time for a career change.
Rice certainly acknowledges and believes firmly that “we are nothing without our faith and our family,” but also that he has 100% support from his wife, Grayson and his two grown children: Megan, 25, who is a banker in Vermillion; and Grant, 21, who is studying biology and physical science (and playing football!) at the University of Sioux Falls.
“They know a superintendent job is something I have desired and that the only way I was ever going to leave Gayville was to make this move,” he says. “My hope would be that, in a perfect world, eventually my family would come up and follow me here. Would I love it to happen? Absolutely. Would I love my wife to be cured of cancer? Absolutely. We’ll see what happens.”
For now, Rice is trying to settle into a new rhythm. He’s got a place to live in Menno and comes in familiar with the school system and all it has to offer.
“I used to come to Menno to watch our kids play in sports when I was in Gayville, but I was also coming to listen to the band because they totally kicked butt,” he says, also mentioning a pre-existing relationship with folks like athletic director Jacque Liebl and coaches Ken Bruckner, Cindee Mutchelknaus and James Sattler.
“Gayville was a community of people with open hearts; here, the same thing,” he says. “This is a tight-knit community, but one with open arms. That’s been the greatest thing. Whether I’ve been in The Schnitz to get dinner, or Rooster’s, or going down to Klaudt Service or Total Stop or dropping into one of the hair places, wherever I’ve gone I’ve told them, ‘I’m Tom Rice, I’m the new superintendent, here’s what’s going on.’ And people have been just wonderful.”
Rice wants to raise the bar of academic excellence and fire up his staff. He wants to talk to kids and parents openly and honestly. He wants to help with the Menno/Marion football program, which he will do as an assistant coach to Austin Unruh. And he wants to be the best version of himself that he can be.
“If I ask you how you’re doing, I really do want to know,” he says. “If I put my arm around you because you’re having a hard day, it’s because I care about you. I’m not in this for a power grab; I want to be a steward. You only get to do this for so long. I don’t have a map, but I have ideas, and we’re going to figure it out together.”
More than anything, Tom Rice wants to represent Menno well.
“I’m going to be the hood ornament on the car – one of the first things you see,” he says. “It’s in the way I look and it’s in the way I act. I am an ambassador for this school and I want everyone to know that, ‘That’s Tom, and he’s with Menno.’
“Darn right I am.”
