Sunset Ridge superintendent looks back before moving on

Reflecting on his career in Sunset Ridge School District 29, Superintendent Dr. Ed Stange said “there’s been a lot of life here” in both the school district and the Village of Northfield.

Stange, who has been with the district for 20 years, the last 13 as superintendent, is retiring at the end of the 2025-’26 school year.

“I’m looking to give some more focus to my family, who has been sacrificing for the past 20 years while I did this incredibly demanding job,” he said. “And I live way up on the Wisconsin border, so it’s a long way away for 20 years to be driving every day back and forth. It’s just feeling like it’s time.”

Before joining D29 as the assistant superintendent in charge of student services, Stange worked for the North Suburban Special Education District, now the TrueNorth Educational Cooperative. In his role as an autism specialist, Stange said he traveled to the 20 school districts within the educational cooperative to work with students with autism.

It was through NSSED that he was introduced to D29.

“As an autism expert, I had been in every school district here on the North Shore, and they’re all fantastic districts,” he said. “But there’s really something special about (D29), and that was clear to me when I did consulting work.”

Stange compared Northfield to the fictional town of Mayberry from “The Andy Griffith Show,” while also invoking the village’s motto of “The Comfortable Corner of the North Shore.”

“It really like a place that I could make a difference and be a part of something really special,” he said of D29. “And I’d say it’s what I’ve experienced over all the years.”

In his time as superintendent, Stange said there is plenty that he is proud of accomplishing. In particular, he noted that he’s proud of how the district has balanced the needs of the community and students while also navigating the “increased rigor” of today’s educational expectations.

“When I started here, we didn’t have a director of teaching and learning. There was no oversight of curriculum and instruction,” he said. “We didn’t have a reading specialist or a math specialist or behavior specialist. We didn’t teach foreign language. We didn’t teach computer science.”

That’s all changed under his leadership.

“Now we have full-time Spanish,” Stange said. “We teach computer science to every kid starting in kindergarten. We have a full-time person that looks at teaching and learning.”

He added that Sunset Ridge was the first school district on the North Shore to use MAP data from the Northwest Evaluation Association to assess outcomes of students.

“Still, our mission is one child at a time,” he said. “It’s not just about numbers. It’s about the kids we serve, and I’m so proud of how we balanced maintaining the culture of the district while meeting the increased demands of rigor of education in the modern day.”

Other recent accomplishments include the construction of a new Sunset Ridge School in 2018, which Stange said is the first “LEED platinum solar-powered net zero designated public school in the state of Illinois.

“And we built it all, 100%, without a referendum, without asking for the taxpayers for a dime of that. And I’m just so proud of how it was really uniquely financed (with a mortgage),” he aid.

He also mentioned the recent successful referendum for Middlefork School improvements, which passed with 66% of the vote in March.

But while there have been many accomplishments he’s proud of, Stange acknowledged several challenges he and the district have dealt with during his tenure. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major obstacle, with Sunset Ridge deciding to open in the fall of 2020.

“We took the lead and we were open right back up in August after that shutdown in March,” he said. “We’re like the rest of the country, where half the population feels one way and half feels another way. But we navigated it together and problem-solved things.”

He also mentioned a recent incident where a camera was found hidden in a Sunset Ridge School bathroom, allegedly by a contracted custodian.

“That really rocked the district,” Stange said. “It rocked us internally. We had more than half of our staff that were impacted by that in addition to kids.”

He said they handled that “as a family together.”

“Going through the grieving process of one of our own, somebody we had worked with for years that betrayed us, and how we move forward from that,” he said. “How we move from that in safety and security.”

Looking forward to his plans for retirement, Stange said, with a laugh, “I’m going to make my wife lunch.”

But then he elaborated on what he meant by that.

“It’s a metaphor, but my wife put me through grad school, put off her career, then raised our three kids before she started her career, and I think it’s her turn,” he said. “And I want to be there to support her.”

Stange said he’ll miss interacting with students the most when he retires.

“The reason I came here was I had a really glorious job being the autism expert, flying into a school when there was a crisis and then leaving after it was solved,” he said. “And what I was missing was the connection with kids. And I have enjoyed such connections with kids.”

Even while serving as superintendent, Stange said he still finds time to be part of an extracurricular club, the Fish Tank Club. He said he teaches students how to care for fish, including how to measure ph levels and salinity.

“And I’m going to miss those connections with kids,” he said. “It just really reminds you of what life is about, and I’m going to terribly miss that.”

Stange also mentioned his thanks to former D29 Superintendent Howard Bultinck, who he said inspired him to be a part of the district.

“He tapped me on the shoulder when I worked in this district and said, ‘You know what? You’re the right person to take over here,’” Stange said. “And if it wasn’t for Howard Bultinck, I never would have been here. And it’s been an honor to carry on the legacy that he started here in this district, and I owe it all back to him.”

New superintendent to take over

Dr. James Eichmiller will be replacing Stange, with the D29 School Board approving his appointment at its Dec. 9, 2025 meeting.

Eichmiller, the current assistant superintendent for technology and learning for Downers Grove Grade School District 58, was selected after “an exhaustive search process” which began in January 2025, according to a press release from D29. Heading that search was former New Trier High School Superintendent Dr. Linda Yonke, with search firm School Exec Connect.

“Dr. Eichmiller demonstrated that he is a strategic thinker with a deep and broad knowledge base related to education,” D29 School Board President Holt Zeidler said in the release. “His approach is fully consistent with the District’s mission of ‘engaging hearts and minds, one child at a time.’ Dr. Eichmiller’s wide array of experiences in curriculum, technology, finance, professional development, contract negotiations and major facilities projects have prepared him well to step into the Superintendent role.”

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