The start of the school year on Thursday, Aug. 15 for the Platte County R-3 School District includes a pair of changes at Compass Elementary.
Archer
Last week the school district sent an email to parents that notified them that Dr. Kim Archer will serve as the interim principal and Derek Colburn will be the interim assistant principal for the 2019-2020 school year.
Archer, who joined the school district in the fall of 2013, has most recently served as the assistant principal at Compass.
The principal at Compass last year was Dr. Chad Searcey. The veteran educator has been suspended since June after an uprising on social media followed a reply to a message on Twitter from his personal account, not his school affiliated one.
Searcey apologized in the aftermath for upsetting people but the district placed him on paid leave.
His status for the upcoming school year wasn’t revealed to the paper. In the two board meetings since his suspension, he hasn’t been among a list of resignations.
Colburn
Archer is a native of Maryville and attended Northwest Missouri State earning a bachelor in education and master’s in educational leadership in 1998 and 2000, respectively. She worked for the Park Hill School District for 12 years before joining Platte County as assistant principal at Platte County Middle School in the 2013-14 school year. She later served as assistant principal at Siegrist Elementary and Compass, since it opened in 2016.
Archer and her husband, Jeff, have two boys, Cole and Tate.
Colburn joins the R-3 district after spending the past two years at the St. Joseph School District. A native of DeKalb, he earned his bachelor’s degree in physical education at Missouri Western and earned his master’s of education in 2008 from William Woods.
He spent 10 years working for the North Platte School District — where his wife, Lyndsey, is entering her 15th year as a teacher — and held numerous coaching positions for the Panthers. He was the girls track and field coach for eight years and a boys basketball assistant coach for three years.
Most recently, Colburn was assistant principal and athletic director at Truman Middle School in St. Joseph.
Colburn and his wife have two sons, Camden and Carter.
“I feel blessed to have this opportunity to be at Compass Elementary,” Colburn said. “I look forward to becoming part of the tradition and foundation that Platte County is built on and creating relationships with the staff, student and community.”