By PAUL BALCERAK
Staff writer
The Central Kitsap School District recently welcomed a new face into the fold. David Beil started as the district’s new director of communications and community relations on Jan. 28.
The community relations office is a kind of go-between for parents, community members and CKSD staff and students looking to get information from the district. The office also communicates frequently with local media.
Beil, who succeeds Melanie Reeder, said he’s been “doing a lot of listening,” since starting on Jan. 28, as he gets up to speed with all the inner-workings of CKSD.
“Communication is a two-way street, so I feel like that listening piece is important,” he said.
Beil will have plenty to catch up on during the next few weeks in a school district that’s dealing with ever-intensifying debates on secondary reconfiguration and school closure. Beil has experience in the unenvious task, having been with Spokane when that district closed Pratt Elementary School last year.
School closure and reconfiguration is nothing unique to CKSD, Beil said. “The same conversations that this community is having … are the same conversations that people in Spokane are having.”
Beil is new to the West Sound, after growing up in Spokane and attending college in Ellensburg at Central Washington University.
He majored in video communication at Central, where he said he first became interested in school communication.
He spent the last six years as a communications specialist for the Spokane School District, where he said his passion for school communication blossomed.
“The reason I’m here is my experience in Spokane … really exposed me to school communication,” he said.
He counted the ability to do “a variety of different things” each day as his favorite part of his job, but said he gets frustrated that school districts’ many accomplishments often get overshadowed by the occasional misstep.
“It’s unfortunate that it turns out that way,” he said.
He’ll spend the near future communicating with various key members of the school district and the Central Kitsap area.
“I’m just looking forward to getting to know the community (and) schools,” he said.
His first official public function with the school district will be at a special session to discuss secondary configuration options on Feb. 6 at 4:30 p.m. at the Jenne-Wright Administration Center.
