By Tyler Dahlgren

For the better part of his first 25 years, Seth Sackmann was on the move.

Born in Illinois, he spent his early elementary years in Wisconsin, near La Cross, before moving to Orange City, IA, just in time for seventh grade. Sackmann graduated high school in 2011 and enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, where he studied business briefly before becoming bored and switching to a vocation his mom had prophesied when her son was just a little boy.

“My mom had said it my entire life, that I was going to be a teacher,” Sackmann said with a smile. “For a long time, I was a little reluctant to get on board with that.”

In high school, Sackmann received some work experience in an elementary classroom and loved it. Maybe Mom was right all along, he thought. Since switching majors freshman year at UNI, Sackmann hasn’t looked back. He spent a year at Mater Dei in Sioux City before a four-year stint teaching sixth grade at Sioux City West, earning an Education Administration degree from Dordt University along the way.

Sackmann’s always been comfortable taking the next step, as you can likely surmise by this point in his story. When the then 25-year-old Sackmann saw an elementary principal opening at Walthill Public School in the middle of the Omaha Indian Reservation listed in 2019, he went for it.

Until then, Sackmann’s life was go, go, go. When he found Walthill, he found a deeper sense of purpose. At 32, Sackmann is the youngest superintendent in the state of Nebraska, and in this 115-year-old building on the west end of the village’s Main Street, he’s found a home.

“It’s the kids and the staff that make this place special, and they kind of go together,” Sackmann said. “There are challenges. There are ways to measure a community, social socioeconomic status, poverty levels, homelessness levels, etc., and Walthill is the poster boy for a lot of those things. We have more homelessness than the entire state average. A large percentage of our kids are in poverty and come from single or no parent households. They’re raised by grandparents and great grandparents. It’s a struggle for some people, because it’s not a typical school.”

Sackmann has a unique ability to see the beauty in that struggle. His predecessor and mentor Kirk Ahrends and every single teacher who shows up to Walthill every morning, some commuting as far as an hour both ways, do too. 

“While our attendance rate or our test scores aren’t necessarily as high as some schools in the state, the amount of growth that occurs and the effort it takes even just to get here on a daily basis for our kids is incredible,” he said. “The amount of baggage they carry on a daily basis is more than I could ever imagine.”

Around here, triumphs mean more. And make no mistake about it, there’s plenty to celebrate.

“It is just amazing to me what our students are able to accomplish,” Sackmann said. “It’s frustrating sometimes, when you look at the data, but the data is such a small part of our story.”

It’s a frigid Friday morning in Walthill, and Sackmann has some time to talk. 

He meets me in the school’s central office and leads me through a maze of hallways, out a door, across some pavement, and into another that leads to the superintendent’s office. I want to ask him about being a superintendent at 32, about the challenges of leading a district like Walthill and about the importance of surrounding yourself with a strong network, but that’s not where we start.

No, we start at the beginning, with a snowman-building fourth grade teacher named Mrs. Schultz in La Cross, who would put a snowsuit on and spend her recesses knee-deep in Wisconsin powder laughing alongside a bunch of 10 and 11-year-old students.

“She was like another kid in the classroom,” Sackmann remembers. “I am sure she was a fantastic teacher, but I couldn’t tell you about the academic part. I just remember her and the love she had for kids. That’s when I was like, ‘That’s what I want to be. I want to be like her.’”

Not by total coincidence, those are the kinds of teachers they hire at Walthill. Relationships come before anything. That’s how Sackmann prefers it and, at Walthill, that’s how it has to be.

“We really want teachers who care about kids,” he said. “We’ve got to meet kids’ basic needs before we can educate them. If you’re a great person knowledgeable on social studies, that’s awesome. But if you can’t relate with kids and build relationships, it doesn’t matter and it won’t work here. Our kids are generally very hard-shelled on the exterior, but once they know you’re around for the right reasons and you’re going to stick around, they will open their entire world to you.”

When that happens, it’s magic. Those moments are the magnets that draw everyone here to this place every morning. With very limited housing in Walthill, they come from all over; Elkhorn, Wayne, Hinton and Sioux City, IA, where Sackmann lives with his wife and three young children.

“It’s for the kids,” he said. “They could easily get jobs in their own towns and have a two-minute commute every morning. But they come here, and they do that because they love the kids. That’s inspiring.”

This whole experience has been inspiring for Sackmann, who fell in love with Walthill right away despite the COVID pandemic throwing a total wrench into that first year. 

“We shut down in March, but even in that short amount of time I was able to build great relationships with the staff and the kids and their families,” Sackmann said. “I felt like, as a school system, we were definitely trending in the right direction in a lot of different ways, and it’s been fulfilling to be able to sustain that. I’ve also been really blessed to have a lot of good mentors along the way. I had some really good principals in Sioux City who helped me while I was getting my degree and I still reach out to Mr. Ahrends to pick his brain on things all the time.”

A few years into Sackmann’s principalship, Ahrends strategically let it slip that he was a couple years away from retirement. He beckoned his young elementary principal to go for one more degree. After giving it a brief moment of thought, Sackmann did just that, earning his Education Specialist Certification from Wayne State and officially stepping into the superintendency. Ahrends was around as a mentor that first semester, but made it very clear that this was Sackmann’s district to lead now.

There was much to learn, but his familiarity with the district and the school board helped to make the transition a smooth one. He wasn’t surprised by any of his new obligations, like meeting with the tribal council or the emergency planner, for example. His statewide network and a consortium of Native American School leaders through ESU 1 have been imperative, too. Sackmann took part in NCSA’s New Superintendent Workshop last year and has found it beneficial to put the skills he’s acquired at each stop in his career to use in his new role.

“Now, it's just kind of like, ‘Hey, I’m totally good. If you guys want to keep me around forever, I’ll stay forever.’” said Sackmann. “Right now, we’re working towards a building project, which is invigorating. I’m here for the school, and though I don’t live in town, I really care about these kids and this community.”

Last March, Walthill qualified for the state basketball tournament in Lincoln. Looking around the Devaney Center, seeing three out of every four people decked out in Bluejay blue, Sackmann had a moment.

“It’s a two-and-a-half hour drive to Lincoln from here, and a lot of our families don’t have a lot of money,” he said, “but they were there. They were loud, and they were there to support our kids. Just like they always are. That’s a testament to the kind of people we have here.”

And that’s what Sackmann wants every student in this old building on the west side of Walthill to know.

“Above all else, we had their back, and we tried our best to make them the best citizens they can be,” he said. “We want them to know that this is a place they can always come back to, a place they can send their kids to and expect the same thing. We’re going to do whatever we can do to give kids here in Walthill every possible opportunity to succeed.”

In the distance, a school bell rings, and the hallways at Walthill come to life. 

The youngest superintendent in Nebraska looks out his office window, and smiles.

It’s good to be home.

Getting to know Seth Sackmann!

Q: Favorite Restaurant?

A: There's a place called The Melting Cow in Sioux City, and they do old old-school barbeque that is incredible. Not super mass produced. When they're out, they're out. That's how you know it's good.

Q: When you're not in the office, where can we find you?

A: Usually I'm with my kids and my family. I've got three little kids, a one-year-old, a four-year-old and a seven-year-old. So we're either chilling at home or at different activities, gymnastics and cheer and basketball and all that good stuff. If I'm not here, I'm usually with them.

Q: You get one musician's catalogue for the rest of time, and only one, who are you going with?

A: This is funny, because it's going to be a little out there, but Lil Wayne.

Q: Favorite movie?

A: Remember the Titans.

Q: Favorite TV show?

A: Breaking Bad.

Q: Remember the Titans, did you coach?

A: I coached a little bit of everything in Sioux City. I did football, basketball, a year of soccer. I did two years of tennis, even though I know nothing about tennis and have never played in my life.

Q: Who are you pulling for in the Super Bowl?

A: Neither. My daughters are Chiefs fans, because of Mahomes and Kelce and Taylor Swift, so our house will be going for the Chiefs, but, truthfully, if they both could lose, I'd be okay with it.