Staff
As one of three new district administrators, Rachel Stucky said this is a year she plans to listen and learn more than it is a year to make changes.
She has changed one thing, though, the title of her office in the Sweet Home School District.
“This would be a good thing to clarify,” Stucky said. “This was previously called the Office of Student Achievement and we wanted to make it more real and so we’re calling it the Office of Teaching and Learning, because that really is what this office and our work is all about.”
She and the two other new administrators, Superintendent Tom Yahraes and Director of Student Services Jennifer Sedlock, have been meeting with each other and with building administrators.
“My husband (Rick Stucky) works in Salem for the Oregon School Boards Association, which is really handy for both Supt. Yahraes and I,” Stucky said. “Sometimes we can make a call and my husband can give us some pretty immediate clarification on policies, which is great.”
He is the policy services specialist for OSBA.
Discussions with their administrative team have centered on learning what they’ve been doing and how it’s working, what kind of supports they’ve needed, and what changes would help them get the job done, she said.
A common direction and vision is what Stucky said most administrators said they need.
“I think it’s a non-negotiable that the vision includes an increase in student achievement,” she said.
It’s not a new concept, she added.
“We don’t need to come in and tell people what to do,” she said. “People know, but they might need some different supports than they’ve had in the past in order to reach the goal.”
Creating consistently effective instruction is one of the issues they will be tackling.
“I really believe that we can’t afford to play educational lottery with our students,” Stucky said. “And when I say that, what I mean is that we need to be guaranteeing that every single classroom is offering exceptional experiences for our students. We don’t want to be playing an educational lottery and hoping that X child gets into X teacher’s class because we know that that’s a really rockin’ classroom, right?”
That’s what she believes all of the building administrators are asking for, along with supports to make sure they can guarantee that.
Stucky hasn’t met with any of the teachers, but has talked with Lisa Kennedy, the teachers association president.
“She, the superintendent and I sat down and looked at some structures that we might be able to put in place that would support teachers, support their leadership, move their own experiences forward in contributing to the direction this district is going,” Stucky said.
That would include continuing education and professional development for both administrators and the teachers that would lead, she said.
“They don’t need someone coming in from out of district,” she said. “We have experts right here in the district.”
They are looking at teachers as experts to help lead the district efforts and the school efforts for academic achievement, she said.
“That expertise is there,” she added. “We just need to tap into it more than we might have been doing.”
She said they would be setting aside time for collaboration between principals and a select group of teachers, but that schedule is still to be determined.
The purpose would be to help talk about specific topics, make some decisions, and help design and get ready to implement professional development that is consistent throughout the district.
“I think we’ll have it up and going this year, but it’s just a matter of making sure our communication is consistent from the central office, that we have all our ducks in a row first,” Stucky said. “We don’t want to build the plane as we’re flying it. We want to be crystal clear about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”
About Stucky
Stucky and her husband live in Silverton.
This is her 29th year in education. She was a classroom teacher for 10 years, a Head Start coordinator for the Salem-Keizer School District for four years, and a principal for 14 years.
“There was some overlap there, I want to make sure the math works,” Stuck said. “Most recently, I was the director of curriculum and instruction in Tigard-Tualatin.”
She also was a bilingual teacher.
“I loved that,” Stucky said. “I loved working with populations of second-language learners. We don’t have much of that in Sweet Home, but that was one thing that I found a lot of joy in. I think for me, the umbrella that oversees that or over-arches that, is that I love to advocate for the underdog. I think it has everything to do with that. So that is a joy for me.”
For the last 25 years, Stucky has worked with populations that are historically marginalized, or may have barriers, she said.
“Poverty is a population I have worked with very consistently throughout my career,” Stucky said “(They) bring me joy because it completes me in some way. It is at the core of who I am as a person, to serve others. I gain far more than I give, and I am much happier when I can do that.”
She did face some obstacles of her own in her childhood.
“I grew up in Salem and what I would say is that I had really outstanding parents,” Stucky said. “Though we didn’t have a lot financially, they helped to expose me to a lot of opportunities. So even though my parents are gone now, what they instilled in me is so much a part of me.”
Serving others in the community, especially through volunteer work, was one of the things they exposed her to.
“My first volunteer gig was actually not a volunteer gig because I was able to get paid coming from a low income family, but I was 15, and an assistant with summer school migrant program for kids,” Stucky said.
As an adult, she has volunteered with the Salvation Army and was on the board of the Gilbert House Children’s Museum.
“Connection with the community is very important,” Stucky said. “I hope to do the same here in Sweet Home.”
Part of what drew her to Sweet Home is that she feels like she can have a different impact than she did in those larger districts.
“The other part is that everybody has a certain set of skills and what I see and what I’m learning about our students in Sweet Home is that we could use some additional supports to make sure we get all of our students graduating,” Stucky said. “I can lend to that. I feel I need to do that for me. It’s a very important part of who I am, serving others, and I just feel great about being in Sweet Home.”
This will be her first experience with a smaller group of students, Stucky said, but when she was a building principal, she felt she had more impact on the students.
“I’m thinking it will be somewhat the same,” Stucky said. “The structure in the central office here in Sweet Home, there are less people usually, but not always. That means less red tape and so less roadblocks in getting where you need to get for kids.”