Dale Lumley has always had Butler School District pride.

It isn’t only because he is a Butler High School graduate, or that he formerly worked as a teacher and administrator in the district, or that he is a district resident whose two sons graduated from Butler.

Much of it is that he is returning as superintendent of a district where he established himself as an educator.

“I started my career (at Butler) for the first 25 years, and I invested a lot of time into teaching and being an administrator there,” Lumley said. “When you do that for that long, it becomes really, your home, if you will.

“In all honesty, I kind of grew up there as an educator, so going back just seemed like the natural thing to do. In other words, you invest that much time in a place, it’s always part of you. So I thought that would be the place to return.”

The Butler School Board last Monday selected Lumley to lead the district starting in July.

Until then, he will continue to be the superintendent of the South Butler School District, where he took over in 2010. However, he also will have a foot in the Butler camp by poring over applications for two high-level administrative positions in the district — assistant superintendent and business manager, whose officeholders will retire June 30.

While his experiences as an administrator at other districts have been good, he said he’s happy to be returning “home” after nine years of working at the South Butler and Gateway school districts.

He says his time away has been valuable. Working as an assistant superintendent and superintendent elsewhere has taught him things since his days as principal at Butler High School.

“I guess each step of the way, in administration, your perspective broadens. ... You just have a greater understanding of how all the pieces fit together, from a district perspective. So probably what I’ve learned the most or gained is you see many different sides of how the programs fit together, curriculum wise, personnel wise,” Lumley said.

Lumley admitted the transition from one district to another will be a balancing act, but it’s a necessary step in being an effective administrator in both places.

“With the transition to Butler, I’ll be using some vacation time and some personal days to go up and meet with their administrative team, and I’ll really be balancing my time between my personal time, over the next couple of months to do some interviews, screen applicants, really as much as I can do,” he said.

Being a part of the administrative search is important to Lumley. It’s a big reason why the Butler School District wanted to hire a superintendent by March, to provide that person time to take an active role in the search.

He said he’ll be looking for an administrative team that works as well as the team he has in place at South Butler.

“I really like to take the team approach, and we have a great team at South Butler right now,” he said. “I want to take that same approach at Butler. I want to choose quality people for those positions ... and then really establish a team.

“And then, as a team, we’ll establish goals for what I want them to achieve, especially with the assistant superintendent. And then I trust them to follow through with those plans, but we’ll have periodic meetings to keep focus. So really, it’ll be a team approach.

“My priority is to get that framework, those people in place, and that approach in place,” he said.

Mike Leitera, who is the assistant superintendent at South Butler, will take over as superintendent once Lumley leaves.

While Lumley is excited to come back to Butler, there are a number of challenges and difficult decisions he’ll face in the coming years, from balancing budgets, changes in curriculum and standardized tests.

He’ll also face a specific issue: Determining what to do once the results of a district consolidation study are in. The 17-month study is in progress.

Progress on a study now being conducted by Thomas & Williamson on the district’s facilities, and whether any should be closed, was reviewed for the board.

The school board has been discussing the idea of closing Center Avenue Elementary School and shifting those students to McQuistion Elementary School.

“Any decisions that we make as we move forward will be carefully planned out. We’ll look at all the data, costs, the savings, what it will take to make any kind of changes, and then we’ll just communicate them very carefully,” he said.

“I’ve been talking about taking a very deliberate and measured approach in looking at all of that and doing what’s best for the district and best for the students and all the schools that are involved. We’re certainly not going to rush into anything.”

He intends to hold special meetings if issues arise for parents and faculty to talk with him. But also he hopes to use members of the Community Advisory Committee, the group that interviewed him when he was being considered for the superintendent position. He said the group may be able to provide insight for the community, and find ways for him to more effectively do his job.

Another challenge Lumley sees is a geographic and a size difference from South Butler to Butler. He’ll be moving from a district with 2,600 students to a district with 7,200 students, nearly three times the size.

“The difficulty at Butler will be that it’s so spread out geographically. Like here, at South Butler, obviously, we’re all on the same campus. So if I need to go to the high school, it’s three minutes away. If I need to go to the primary building, I will walk down the hall.

He said he will try to visit all of the schools as often as possible to get acquainted with faculty.

When he’s not working, he enjoys keeping tabs on the Pittsburgh Pirates, going to several games each year. He plays golf, “but not well,” he said.

And he still teaches a little bit. At Butler County Community College, he leads one evening English composition class each semester.

But his focus, he said, is on his job, which he hopes to do well.

“I know we have the big initiatives of educator effectiveness and transition to Common Core and Keystone implementation, all those kinds of things,” he said.

“So we’ll focus on those immediate needs, and then I’ll be assessing where I think we’ll need to go, where we need to put stronger efforts.”