“I wanted to put my name in to be the next principal at MHS,” Boliver said. “I thought I owed it to the community, the teachers here. There was an option to move me into the role, but everyone should have a voice on who should be their next principal. I applied like everyone else.”

He found out about the decision to name him the lead principal during the March 3 school board meeting.

“I was called by [Superintendent Theron] Schutte and offered the position,” he said. “I knew, pending board approval, I would be the next principal. [To] sit in front of the school board, superintendent and rest of the administrative cabinet and hear Dr. Schutte say they would like to remove the interim tag from [my] name, it felt really good. It was a surreal moment.”

The surreal aspect comes from his lengthy MCSD career, which began in 1997 as a special education paraeducator. In 1999, Boliver was a special education teacher at Anson Middle School before being transferred to Miller Middle School.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO — MHS Principal Justin Boliver is pictured after he shaved.

“There, I was in charge of a school-within-a-school,” Boliver said. “It was still in a special education role. Then, MHS was short on special education teachers, so they asked me to move to the high school. When I came to the high school, I was a behavior support teacher.”

In that position, Boliver helped students who struggled with behavior. He was essentially a case manager for five to 10 students.

“Students are making you angry, teachers are making you angry, things just aren’t going right, I helped them get through those days,” Boliver said.

He left the MCSD in 2020 to work for the Roland-Story Community School District north of Ames, where he stayed until 2023. However, Boliver wanted to return home, especially since his family was here and his wife, Nicole, teaches physical education at Miller Middle School. Upon his return in 2023, he was named the dean of students at MHS.

“I ended up having my class reunion when I was dean of students,” he said. “Some classmates joked ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if you were principal of MHS where we all went to school?’ Ever since then, it’s been in the back of my head as a goal, something I really wanted to do.”

Boliver, 51, was named the interim after former Principal Jacque Wyant became the new Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) Director of Human Resources on July 1, 2024. According to Boliver, Wyant is a good friend and great resource.

“I’ll call and reach out to her, we’ll chat and she’ll help me get through spreadsheets or paperwork, things I haven’t had a ton of experience with yet,” he said. “She’s really good about taking time to help me through those things.”

Changes

Boliver’s experience at MHS, as both a teacher and an administrator, has given him the knowledge and wherewithal of possibilities. He does have some changes he would like to make.

“Attendance has not been great in schools across the nation, so we want to move to get our rates up,” Boliver said. “I am happy to say we’ve had a slight increase. That’s just not MHS, but across the district. A lot of people are doing behind-the-scenes work with parents and the kids.”

To improve rates, he said students are required to have 90 percent attendance in order to go to the homecoming dance or prom. If a student does not come to school, Boliver said the attendance team will call and meet with the family.

“If there are barriers to attendance, we try to help with that,” he said. “We ask a lot of questions and try to partner with families to see what we can do to help them get to school. There are very few which had to be turned in to the county attorney because the family would not work with the school. A lot of the families work with us and try to help.”

The Iowa Legislature’s conversation regarding students using cell phones in the classrooms is another proposal he would like to see come to fruition. He described the issue as a “battle.”

“We need to get parents to understand, and it’s tough to get kids off their phone,” he said. “Our teachers have to battle that a lot. I hope we can get to a point where parents get behind us. They do for the most part. They do a great job when we call.”

To help with cell phones, Boliver said some teachers ask students to keep them in their bags and use them when class is over. Others have been creative, such as providing a stand in the back of the room where students can charge their phones or hanging a shoe rack on the door in which students can place their phones.

“The phones don’t disappear from the students’ views, but they are away and not a distraction,” he said. “That’s been helpful and there are a ton of students who are okay with that.”

The legislature’s effort to ban cell phones from the classroom altogether is something Boliver said would help the teachers.

“A lot of school districts, mental health experts, have done studies and shown the constant need to be on the phone, texting and tracking friends – it’s just not healthy to have that much screen time every day,” he said. “When students don’t have phones, you see them talk to each other a lot more. After the initial [anxiety over] not having the phone, even students are saying, ‘Hey. We like it. We talk to our peers more and have more conversations.'”

Two things Boliver believes in are healthy relationships and a positive environment.

“If teachers are happy, that will spill onto the students and they will be happy,” he said. “At the end of the day, parents want their kids to come to school and learn and have a good experience in school. With my teaching staff, that’s what I want to provide, and the staff, the students, the parents, everybody to build a positive climate here.”

Since placing more focus on creating a positive environment, staff have noticed students talk and joke with teachers more.

“A lot of students will stand around and even talk to administrators,” Boliver said. “That doesn’t happen a lot, but we’re seeing a shift this year, which has been fun.”

Clarity

According to Boliver, there is a belief MHS is only a school filled with fights, and he said that does not happen.

“MHS is an awesome place,” he said. “We’ve got people who love working with kids. We want the best for them. I think MHS gets a bad rep for whatever reason, but we’ve got great kids in Marshalltown. What’s awesome is when people come here to visit, they will say to me, ‘This is a great place.’ It just takes people to come in the door and see that.”

Going beyond the walls of the high school, Boliver said great support comes from the community of Marshalltown. With the community college and the businesses, MHS students have a lot of opportunities.

“We have a business community that stands behind MCSD like no other,” he said. “They will help wherever they can. It’s just an awesome place to be.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.