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NYLE KARDATZKE
WHY NYLE KARDATZKE
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When Dr. Nyle Kardatzke came to Sycamore, he was armed with knowledge and experience that would propel the school forward on a course to making it one the country’s top gifted private school. “I had spent 15 years in two other independent schools, so I began to make recommendations that would lead Sycamore to more consciously become an independent school.”
Kardatzke became Sycamore’s third Head of School in January of 1994, succeeding Alice Bostwick, who had served nearly seven years following the retirement of the original Head of School, Gene Eib.
“When Nyle arrived at Sycamore, he brought calm and order to the school during a very difficult transition period,” says Dr. Susan Karpicke, who recently retired after 25 years as the Director of Admissions. “He came with knowledge about private schools. He was able to put the school’s first administrative structure in place, encourage professional development, and lead the school through its first full ISACS accreditation in 1998.”
During Kardatzke’s first school year, student enrollment reached 400 in Preschool through Eighth Grade, with more than 50 faculty and administrators. He restructured the administration to allow
for Division Heads, a Plant Manager, and a full-time Admissions/ Counseling Director. He began his tenure with a long-range plan with the Board of Trustees to set in motion activities to strengthen and improve the school, both in the facilities and with the people who would work to create a strong school environment.
“He brought the necessary administrative structure the school was lacking,” Karpicke explains. “He had outstanding leadership, experience, wisdom, professionalism, and he was an excellent role model for staff and kids.”
Current Head of School, Diane Borgmann, credits Nyle with understanding what was lacking and how to add. “Nyle brought his knowledge of independent school governance and infrastructure to Sycamore. Sycamore was started by parents and teachers who were most familiar with public schools. Nyle created an independent school model, with appropriate administrators and education for trustees so they would understand their role. The development that Nyle brought to Sycamore created stability and permanence.”
Much of the school’s growth, from 1994 to 2000, is a reflection of his long-range plan, which led to developments that included:
• Clarification of the school’s mission
• Establishment of a regular cycle of curriculum
Writing and refinement • Introduction of non-salary benefits for all
Staff members (1995) • Purchase of the campus (1996) • Full accreditation by isacs (1998) • Successful completion of the school’s first
Capital campaign (2000) • Expansion of the building to add an early childhood wing and expand spaces for art, music, computers, science, and spanish renovation of the middle school wing of the building (2000)
Kardatzke spent his boyhood near Toledo, Ohio, living on a country farm until 1957. He left to attend Anderson University, graduating in 1962. His first job was teaching math and science as a member of the first Peace Corps group in what was then part of Ethiopia. It was there that he became interested in the struggles of under-developed countries. When he returned from Ethiopia, he earned a doctorate in economics at UCLA and became a professor of economics at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
His next career path started when he was asked to become the headmaster in 1978 at a private school, Brookfield Academy, in Wisconsin. From there, he was Head of School at Wichita Collegiate School in Kansas before coming to Sycamore School. In total, he was a leader at private schools for 28 years before retiring.
Now he spends his time with his three adult children and 10 grandchildren. He has become a prolific author, writing four books, the first which was published in 2014 (see sidebar). His most recent book, The Summertime of our Lives: Stories from a Marriage, was published in 2019 and recounts the story of his late wife, Dr. Darlene Sayers Kardatzke, who discovered her life’s calling as a pediatrician while still a college student at Anderson. This book
LEFT: NYLE KARDATZKE OFTEN RETURNS TO SYCAMORE FOR SPECIAL EVENTS, INCLUDING AN APPEARANCE IN 2012 DURING HALLOWEEN.
DIANE BORGMANN, HEAD OF SYCAMORE SCHOOL
recounts her journey as a doctor, wife, and mother through years she called the “summertime” of her life.
Early believers found ways to help Sycamore survive. The school had made it through the early years with that group of committed parents, teachers who believed in the idea, and the faith that they were doing something that was needed in Indianapolis. Without the work of those who felt the need to start a school from scratch, Sycamore would have never been in a position to hire someone like Kardatzke, an experienced leader who could see the future.
“Sycamore had a very strong identity as a gifted school, but not as a private independent school. This was problematic,” says Karpicke. “Once Sycamore embraced its identity as a gifted school and as a private independent school it became much easier to market the school appropriately.”
After the bumps of growth, Sycamore was a private school poised to grow. “When I came to Sycamore, the school was eight years old,” he says. “It had been formed by a large group of parents who wanted a school of a kind that didn’t exist in the public or private schools here. Few of the parents had previous experience with independent private schools.”
Some of the most important changes he oversaw included engaging in a fundraising initiative and instituting a plan for the school’s growth. “The first thing we did after I arrived was to ramp up the Annual Fund. It had been a small effort before, and we began to make it more systematic. I also began to work with an excellent board and brought in an experienced consultant to lead the school’s first long-range planning in early 1994. That set the school’s course for the next five years and led us to purchase the campus in 1996.”
From 1985 to 1989, Sycamore’s original home was a building leased from a Unitarian Church near Butler University, hosting 110 students in Kindergarten through Grade Five. As enrollment expanded, Sycamore outgrew the space, even after adding portable facilities. The search for a new location centered on finding a
Since 2014, Nyle Kardatzke has authored four books, tapping into his memories of growing up in Ohio, his long marriage to his wife, Darlene, and how faith has shaped his life. “Since 2014, I have been writing and self-publishing books based on various aspects of my personal history.” All the books are available for purchase online. Here’s more about each book:
WIDOW-MAN: A WIDOWER’S STORY AND JOURNALING BOOK (2014)
Nyle’s wife, Darlene, died in 2010. He notes that widowed men are vastly outnumbered by widows, and they receive disproportionately little attention in their time of grief and recovery. Though widowed men have much in common with widows, their sisters in grief, their journey is uniquely male. The author shares his practical responses to many issues faced by widowed men, including grief, changed relationships, anger, forgiveness, cooking, housekeeping, holidays and weekends, steps toward healing, dating, the possibility of remarriage, and the ways the readers and their wives may be remembered. The Kindle edition contains brief stories about the
widowed life with questions for the readers’ thoughts. The author calls himself a “widow-man,” a term of his own creation to avoid the title “widower,” which he finds unsavory. n
THE BROWN HOUSE STORIES (2015)
While World War II raged elsewhere, a three-year old boy was awakening to the world in the Ohio farmhouse where he lived with his parents and two brothers. Most of the stories of that awakening time are based on the author’s detailed memories, including “Scaring the Brown House Bear” and “Stolen Fudge.” Other stories are fictionalized accounts of events the author knows only through his parents’ accounts. Such stories are “Pearl Harbor Day” and “Tragedy Roars By.” The stories may be especially appealing to older adults who experienced the early 1940’s. n
THE CLOCK OF THE COVENANT (2016)
A passenger train collided with a family car in 1913, killing a mother and a firstborn son. Out of that tragedy, a small church of farmers, factory workers, carpenters, and teachers formed in a northwestern Ohio town. One Sunday in 1945, a young boy thought he heard his minister say that God’s people had carried the promises of God wherever they went in the “clock of the covenant” and assumed it was the very clock that hung in the boy’s church in Elmore, Ohio. That revelation and the boy’s best memories about that small church, its people, and their ways of “doing church” in postwar America became the basis for this collection of stories, The Clock of the Covenant. The book includes comical stories (“Grandpa Webert’s Pants” and “Saying Amen in Church”), historical events (“When the Trumpet Sounded” and “The Hundred-Year-Old Man”), and serious descriptions of church beliefs and practices (“Grandpa Comes to God” and “Baptism in the Portage River”) and more. n
THE SUMMERTIME OF OUR LIVES: STORIES FROM A MARRIAGE (2019)
Darlene Sayers Kardatzke, M.D., discovered her life’s calling as a pediatrician while a college student in the city of Anderson, Indiana. This book recounts her journey as a doctor, wife, and mother through years she called the “summertime” of life. Her example of living life to the fullest in the face of her struggle with cancer later in life is an inspiring tale of love and commitment. Darlene herself coined the term, “the summertime of our lives” less than a year before she died of metastatic breast cancer. Her childhood and school years are recounted as well as her decision to enter the field of medicine. There are stories of tent camping with her husband and their experiences as relatively old firsttime parents. As a pediatrician, Darlene was deeply committed to the well-being of infants and toddlers, especially those with developmental issues. Some stories are funny. Others are grim as the realities of cancer treatment are told. Her cancer journey will be especially meaningful to cancer survivors and to friends of current and past cancer patients. n
vacant public school building. Sycamore School completed an agreement in 1989 with Washington Township to lease the current facility, the former Grandview Elementary School, and with the new building, began to serve students through eighth grade. At the time, it was a 14-acre campus with a 56,000-square-foot building. The campus has since expanded to 16 acres, and the building is nearly four times larger with 200,000 square feet under roof. While “Dr. K” hasn’t been in his role as Head of School for nearly 15 years, he is still a regular presence at Sycamore events, lending a welcome continuity to the maturation of the school and a link to a time when Sycamore was going from startup to recognized leader in gifted education, made possible by the guy in the bow tie.
“The school’s mission sets the school apart from others in Indiana and in the nation,” Kardatzke says. “It also had a powerful, visionary start with a large number of founders. The founding Headmaster, Gene Eib, gave it early credibility, and the leaders were single-mindedly focused on having an excellent school for gifted kids.” Kardatzke also says the teachers gave the school an extra advantage. “The mission has always been implemented and refined by the teachers. They are guided by a detailed curriculum plan that was well advanced on paper when I came. We always looked for teachers with gifted training, credible experience, and personalities that would energize their classrooms.”
He is also cognizant of the important role the parents play at Sycamore. “Parents have always had an essential role,” he says. “Most importantly, they support their kids and the teachers in a program that requires a lot of work from the kids and home supervision by the parents. Parents have always been key volunteers in fundraising and fun-raising. The auctions, bingo games, and Gifts Galore were part of the nature of Sycamore.”
Looking back on his years at Sycamore, Kardatzke is proud of what Sycamore was able to accomplish. “The school took major strides while I was there, and it has gone far farther since I left in 2006. Fundraising has gone from a tiny, half-hearted annual fund to several very successful capital campaigns. Academically, the school never stops improving. There is an obvious sense of confidence and clarity of direction.”
“I enjoy my limited involvement at the school because of the joy I had there for 13 years and for my friends in the staff and in the broader Sycamore community,” he says. “Every time I pull into the parking lot, I marvel that I ever had a job here. I’m happy to be one of the ancient historic figures at Sycamore.”
“I still meet with Nyle a few times a year to learn his perspectives and update him on Sycamore,” Borgmann says. “His independent school experience is broad and deep, and I love to explore viewpoints with him and to exchange ideas--not to mention hearing stories about the olden days.”
After Kardatzke left Sycamore, he transitioned to a three-year culminating career at Liberty Fund, an educational foundation headquartered in Indianapolis. “That short career took me back to my earlier days as an economics professor, and it gave me travel opportunities I couldn’t have had otherwise.”
“Nyle’s presence at Sycamore always provides comfort and calm and exudes love and passion for Sycamore.” Karpicke says. “Sycamore should be forever grateful for Nyle Kardatzke. He was the right person in the right place at the right time.” n
ABOVE: KARDATZKE DURING THE FAREWELL CELEBRATION FOR EILEEN PRINCE, SUSAN KARPICKE, AND DUSTY BURWELL
