Graves: Steve Culhane, the very best business manager imaginable

Something rather odd will happen this Friday, June 30, 2023. Steve Culhane will rise from his computer-laden desk at the Mitchell School District Business Office, walk to the office door, lock it, and depart the MCTEA Building. And he won’t be returning on Monday. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. Or, to cut to the chase, ever.

On Monday, for the first time since the Reagan Administration, there won’t be a Steve Culhane in the Business Office. For Steve Culhane is retiring. That isn’t the end of the world. The district has an exceptional replacement, Theresa Kriese. But it is an extraordinary thing, nonetheless, and I’d like to share with you just why that is.

Over the space of the last 30 years, I have mentored dozens of prospective and rookie school superintendents. For some this has meant just a few conversations, a half-dozen phone calls. For others, it has meant years of meetings, days of training, and a formal mentor-mentee relationship. The rest have been somewhere in between. But with all of them, I have shared one unwavering piece of advice: hire the very best business manager you possibly can.

Sometime in the 1980s, somebody at the Mitchell School District did just that. They hired the best. They hired Steve Culhane.

Mitchell Republic file photo

So why is that advice so important? It is for many reasons but the most important one requires a brief history lesson. Up to the end of the 1950s, school districts and their boards required just a short list of tasks for successful superintendents. They summarized it as the 5 Bs: buses, boilers, buildings, beans, and budgets. That was the full range of jobs a superintendent was expected to do well. Keep the buses and boilers running, maintain the buildings, feed the students lunch, balance the school budgets. That last one, of course, has its tentacles in all the rest. You had to accomplish all the rest without busting the budget. Thus, superintendents back in the 50s would often be seen personally reviewing every bill, verifying utility costs, and basically checking every nickel that came in and went out the door.

Then things changed. Suddenly, superintendents were also expected to provide not just management but leadership. Boost student achievement, promote a positive school culture, pay attention to what is actually being taught in classrooms. This made the job much more interesting but, problematically, it didn’t remove the obligations of the 5 Bs. Thus, the successful superintendent had to be both manager and leader. And the most perilous part of the management job was that final, treacherous B, the budget.

With Steve Culhane as business manager it was not treacherous at all. He was the brahmin of budgets, the expert at expenditures, the superior to every spreadsheet, and the adept of ever audit.

To the extent that I had any success as superintendent in Mitchell, it was because I had the very best business manager imaginable.

Beyond that, he was also the very best friend one could ask for. He would drive his personal vehicle to pick me up in the wee hours of the morning when we needed to check weather conditions to make the school call. (My first year in Mitchell, I distinctly remember turning to Steve and wondering aloud just why my rear end was feeling hot. Yes, he introduced me to heated seats.)

When things were tough and we were under heavy criticism, to demonstrate he was in my corner, he said of a particularly vicious detractor, “Man, when that guy dies, I’m going to go visit the cemetery and relieve myself on his grave.” (OK, I cleaned that up.) To which, I responded, “And I’ll buy you the beer ahead of time.” Don’t worry, it was all for camaraderie’s sake. Steve doesn’t desecrate graveyards and I don’t buy alcohol.

At least a dozen times — during our more than two decades together as a very non-dynamic duo — I nominated him for SD Business Manager of the Year. Time and time again, he declined, refused to allow me to do so. He liked his job, loved working on behalf of the kids, wasn’t looking for any recognition.

And 30-plus consecutive clean audits, endless streams of balanced budgets, a never-ending commitment to prudently spending the taxpayer’s dime, and a dedication to the job that went far beyond any possible job description are nothing to be sneezed at.

But it remains true, nonetheless, that this Friday, the Mitchell School District will lose a friend, one of its best. It is only the fact that I left the district just a bid ahead of him that prevents me from saying, “and so did I.”