Jamie Kemats

SALEM — The Salem school board has selected the district’s new superintendent.

Following an executive session for personnel matters, the board voted unanimously to hire Interim Superintendent Jamie Kemats for the permanent superintendent position for the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 school years with a salary of $113,000 effective June 3 in a special meeting Wednesday.

Kemats has been leading the district as interim superintendent since March 18, when the board appointed her following the passing of the prior superintendent Sean Kirkland on March 16 after a year-long battle with cancer. Prior to serving as interim superintendent, Kemats had already been a member of the district’s administrative team as curriculum director since 2016 and has held her superintendent’s license for four years.

“I’m just looking forward to it and looking forward to opening our new K-8 campus and seeing everything through. We’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of years, and we still have a lot of work to do,” Kemats said.

Kemats, who has been with the Salem City School District for 16 years, said that she was honored and excited to be selected as superintendent and to oversee the completion of the district’s new $57 million K-8 school building project, on which she worked closely with Kirkland prior to his passing. She also said she was looking forward to continuing to work with the district’s administrative team and faculty, students and the Salem community.

“I’m just really excited. I’m looking forward to working with our staff, our students and the community. We have a phenomenal community that really supports its schools. I’m looking forward to getting started on all the initiatives and things that we’ve been planning and seeing our K-8 campus come to life,” Kemats said. “We have a lot of planning and things still to do next year so it’s going to be a busy year, but I’m looking forward to it.”

Kemats said that seeing through the district’s ongoing K-8 school building project would be her primary focus for the immediate future. However, she said that she also intended to continue working to expand the district’s career technical program and strengthen its academics and community partnerships.

“Planning for the opening of the new building. There’s a lot of pieces that need to fall into place. You know, planning for bussing, our teachers will need to move into a new building, scheduling, those kinds of things,” Kemats said.

Kemats said that within the next five years she wanted to see the district “close the gaps” for student reading and math achievement to ensure that all students remain on track with their grade level.

“When our students come in, they might not have had preschool or exposure to any formalized schooling. So, [it’s] getting them caught up where they need to be for kindergarten, first grade, second grade, keeping them on track with achieving those grade level targets,” Kemats said.

Kemats said she also wanted to ensure that all students graduate with a clear career pathway to help them be successful as adults “whether that be college, joining the workforce, technical school or the military.”

“We have a fantastic administrative and faculty staff that works together really well across the district to ensure our students have the best possible environment to learn and to really thrive, and I’m looking forward to working with them,” Kemats said.

Kemats is a 1995 Ursuline High School alumni and earned her bachelor’s degree in education at Youngstown State University and her master’s degree at Westminster. Kemats began her career in education as a special education teacher at Mineral Ridge Middle School, then served as a K-8 counselor at Leetonia schools and worked in special education for a year at Columbiana schools. She joined the Salem City School district in 2010 as a high school counselor and served in that position until 2016 when she was asked by then Superintendent Dr. Joe Shivers to serve as curriculum director.

Kemats’ family includes her husband, Dan, the principal of McKinley School in Lisbon; their son Jackson, who teaches in the Lisbon schools; their son Maxwell, who’s majoring in economics and public health at the University of Cincinnati; and their daughter Emerson “Emmy,” who graduated from Salem High School this year.