The Superintendents

THE SUCCESSION AS ESTABLISHED · STATE BOARD OF ACCOUNTS SCHEDULES OF OFFICIALS · AS OF NOVEMBER 2026

Dr. Paul M. White has held the superintendency since July 1, 2015, and holds it today. The Indiana State Board of Accounts' audit schedules of officials fix the modern line: the audit for July 1, 2014–June 30, 2016 lists Jim Dermody to June 30, 2015 and Paul White from July 1, 2015; the schedules that follow carry White forward without interruption, the July 1, 2022–June 30, 2024 reports (filed March 4, 2025) listing "Dr. Paul White 07-01-22 to 06-30-25." The corporation's current contract with him runs July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2031, at a salary of $152,250 beginning with the July 1, 2025 school year, $154,000 from July 1, 2026, and $156,500 from July 1, 2027. He presides over the board record read for this section throughout 2025 and 2026 — the Olive Elementary meetings, the middle-school succession, the ordinary business of the corporation.

Before White, Jim Dermody held the office from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2015 — the State Board of Accounts' audit for July 1, 2010–June 30, 2012 prints his term in its schedule of officials as "07-01-10 to 06-30-15," and he is the superintendent named in the corporation's 2014 bond statement. Dermody came up through the building he later governed: in 2001–02 he was principal of New Prairie Junior High, commended by name in the school's accreditation coverage. After retiring from New Prairie he served as interim superintendent at Knox and at Oregon-Davis.

Before Dermody, Philip Bender held the office and left it in 2010: the South Bend Tribune reported that year, under the headline "New Prairie chief leaving," that Bender had been appointed in April to lead Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 in Illinois. He was superintendent long enough to be a fixture of the corporation's buildings — Rolling Prairie Elementary's principal Angela Hambling, in a 2011 Society of Innovators profile, is described approaching Superintendent Philip Bender to take that school's principalship after it "had gone through five principals in five years." The year Bender's tenure began was not reached. Before Bender, Duane Wrightson held the office through the middle 2000s — superintendent in the South Bend Tribune's record in 2002, when he commended Principal Dermody's junior high, and in 2005, when he carried budget cuts of $563,875 for 2005 and $306,000 for 2006 — and resigned effective June 30, 2007, reading his resignation letter to a board whose president was Rich Shail. The line behind Wrightson, back to the corporation's first superintendent at the consolidation, was not reached in the records read for this section; it is carried as a named gap, with the State Board of Accounts' audit series — whose schedules of officials settled every step from 2010 forward — named as its settler.

Sources:

1. Indiana State Board of Accounts, NPUSC audit reports — schedules of officials in the reports for July 1, 2010–June 30, 2012; July 1, 2014–June 30, 2016; July 1, 2016–June 30, 2018; and July 1, 2022–June 30, 2024 (filed March 4, 2025).
2. NPUSC, Superintendent's contract for Dr. Paul M. White (corporation site) — term July 1, 2026–June 30, 2031, and the salary steps.
3. South Bend Tribune, via ProQuest — "New Prairie chief leaving" (2010); "New Prairie losing school chief June 30" (2007); accreditation and budget items (2002, 2005).
4. Northwest Indiana Business Magazine (2011) — the Hambling–Bender item; LaPorte High School Hubner Hall of Fame biography of Jim Dermody (2021) — his interim posts.