Whitefish Superintendent Orozco to resign

Whitefish School District Superintendent Kate Orozco is resigning after four years.

Orozco plans to complete the school year through June. The Whitefish School Board will consider her resignation at a special meeting at 7 a.m. today. Also on the agenda is a discussion regarding a search to replace Orozco.

Orozco has been seeking superintendent positions for about a year in order to move closer to family.

Recently, she interviewed with East Valley School District in Spokane, Washington, as one of three finalists for a superintendent position. Although she was not selected for the position, Orozco decided it was time to make the move with her husband.

“Our youngest children live in the Idaho area and we feel a great need to be closer to them,” Orozco said in her office Thursday.

She added that she wanted to give the school board adequate time to find a replacement before the start of the next school year.

“I am just really feeling a great deal of empathy for our school board members and our administrative team and our schools because I think it’s not just my husband and I who have been in limbo — they have been in limbo and they have been patient, but you know, the longer you wait in any school year the more difficult it is to find the candidate that you really, really want,” Orozco said. “It felt like they needed some certainty.”

Orozco joined the district in 2011. Prior to her work in Whitefish she was an associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction for North Platte Public Schools in Nebraska for two years. Before that she worked for six years at an organization called the Small Schools Project in Washington. She also worked as an adjunct professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane and has 20 years of experience teaching primarily fifth and sixth grades.

She earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Gonzaga and has an administrative degree from the University of Nebraska Kearney.

During her tenure in Whitefish, a $14 million bond was approved by voters and a $23 million Whitefish High School construction project was completed and opened at the start of the 2014-15 school year. This was Orozco’s first experience with a major construction project. Orozco said it was a difficult but worthy undertaking.

High school curriculum blossomed to match the state-of-the art facilities, particularly in art, technology and science. Block scheduling was implemented, creating more time for hands-on activities. Student collaborations within the community also ramped up.

“There are no accomplishments that I would say are singular accomplishments, but we together as a community have done a great deal and I think just the dedication ceremony [of the new Whitefish High School building] is a perfect example of what our community can do here in Whitefish when they work together,” Orozco said.

While there were high points, there was also moments of controversy. In 2012, former Whitefish High School Principal Dave Carlson resigned when faced with a reassignment, and signed a “separation agreement” to keep details of the arrangement secret. School climate came into question during tense negotiations that lasted for more than a year in 2014 between the district and the Whitefish Education Association, but the silver lining was when a three-year contract for teachers was reached.

And the work is not done for Orozco. Currently, the district is exploring the possibilities of updating Muldown Elementary.

“We’re trying to be very thoughtful in a plan for that building,” Orozco said.

As for her legacy, Orozco said she hoped that visitors would see her thumbprint of leadership in the classrooms and among students and teachers.

“I think we have a tremendous teaching staff and administrators who are committed to a standard of improvement,” Orozco said. “And that only happens as adults when we learn together well in ways that we want our kids to learn.”

Orozco said she hopes to continue a career as a superintendent or in another leadership capacity in education.

“I see the school district as an upside-down pyramid, and at the bottom of that is the superintendent whose primary function is to be a servant leader, to serve and support those who are teaching and learning alongside our kids and I can’t think of a more important role or worthy work,” Orozco said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.