Whitefish superintendent closes out 40-year career

After four decades in education, Whitefish School District Superintendent Jerry House is ready for a break.

House will retire June 30 after 40 years as a teacher and administrator. He has spent over a decade in Whitefish.

“It was just an absolutely blissful time,” he said. “Forty years goes by so quick. You hope you made a mark, a positive mark.”

Becoming an educator wasn’t always House’s plan. The Seattle native was initially a civil engineering major, but after a year and a half of math, chemistry and surveying classes at Central Washington University, he was ready for something new.

“I thought, this isn’t what I want to do. I want to teach. I want to coach. So I changed my major,” he said.

He was one quarter away from starting his student teaching when the U.S. Army drafted him. He spent three years in the Army; then, to earn money to finish school, he worked for a company that fabricated airplane “detail work,” including kitchens and overhead hangers.

After a year of work, a year of student teaching and one final quarter in college, House took a job in the Dieringer School District, a small elementary district in Washington.

There he taught English and social studies and coached track and field. He also started the school’s wrestling program. He had fallen in love with the sport in college and wanted to introduce it to his students.

House had only been at Dieringer for two years when he was recruited to teach English and social studies and become the head wrestling coach at a junior high in the Tahoma, Wash., district. In nine years there, he also taught journalism, photography, history and more.

“You name it, I had it, except for home ec,” he said.

His coaching duties expanded, too, to include cheerleading, baseball and high school golf in addition to wrestling.

House next took a job in Renton, Wash., as an assistant principal and activities director. He had wanted to move out of the classroom into administration, and the job seemed like a good opportunity.

Boeing was practically in the district’s backyard, he said, which provided spectacular opportunities for students, including field trips and airplane rides.

In Renton, House was part of a team that won the national School of Excellence Award, which recognized the community, business leaders and school staff for creating an excellent school. House and a group of students traveled to Washington, D.C., to accept the award and a U.S. flag from President Ronald Reagan.

House stayed in Renton for five years before taking a principal job in Yelm, Wash. The school, located between Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base, had many children from military families who moved frequently. It created a unique education situation, House said.

He was in Yelm for four years before moving to Granger, Wash., where he worked as district superintendent. That was another unique experience, House said; 84 percent of the students were Hispanic, and 9 percent were American Indian.

He remembers children who neither read nor spoke English moving into the district the day before state testing. That hurt the school’s test performance and subsequent funding, but Granger made up for it in other types of wealth, House said.

“It was a very, very poor school, but it was rich in culture and rich in traditions,” he said. “I got to learn a new way of life.”

After nine years in Granger, House was ready to retire from the Washington school system, but not from education.

“In Washington at that time, the retirement system really did not benefit you after 30 years or so,” he explained. “So those of us that still wanted to continue on [in education] would retire in the state of Washington and go to another state.”

House was prepared to take a job in Oregon when he got a call from the Whitefish School District. He’d never heard of the town and began researching it online. He checked out the local newspapers and explored the historical society’s website.

Then he found a site by Robin Zeal, a Whitefish teacher.

“She had such a neat website for a classroom teacher. I thought, whoa, this is the place to go,” House said.

The day he flew in for an interview could have been lifted from a Hollywood script, he said.

“People were out jogging, walking, riding bikes. I thought, this is an energetic place,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was the first sunny day since winter. I had no clue it was cabin fever.”

Even after he discovered how gray Flathead Valley winters can be, House never regretted his decision to move to Whitefish. This is his 11th year in the district.

During his tenure, the district rebuilt Whitefish Middle School and with help from a massive community fundraising effort renovated its auditorium. House is proud of those accomplishments.

“That has been a really nice thing for all of our staff and our community,” he said.

He said he has also been impressed by the district’s trustees.

“Whitefish is very fortunate — and they don’t know it — in their school board,” House said. “It has had a continuation of school board members who really care about the school, really care about academics, really care about student success.”

Two longtime trustees were just as complimentary about House.

“It’s easy to approach him about concerns if you have questions. If we need more information, he’s always there to provide it,” said chairwoman Pat Jarvi, who has been on the board for nine years.

Dave Fern, who has been a trustee for nearly two decades, was on the committee that hired House, whom Fern called “a wise selection.”

House has worked well with everyone from the board to school staff to employees unions to the public, Fern said. He also praised House for being readily available.

“He literally has an open door,” Fern said.

Muldown Elementary School Principal Jill Rocksund has known House since she was hired nine years ago.

“I think he has been a great boss, a great superintendent,” she said. “He takes everybody’s input into account, and I think he’s very good at getting community input and building grassroots support.

“We’re really going to miss him.”

Chances are, school staff will see House again. Although he plans to travel to Italy, England and France with his wife, Debbie, he also wants to find work in the public sector.

“You can’t fish every day. You can’t golf every day. There’ll be something out there that I’ll find for myself,” he said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.