Dr. Eugene Medina, superintendent of the North Kitsap School District, will retire this month after a 40-year career in public education. His nine-year tenure in the district began with a capital program and community-based “Creating Our Future” process in 2000, and culminated with the opening of Kingston High School and a district-wide transition to a K-5, 6-8, 9-12 grade level configuration in 2007.

As superintendent, Medina worked to involve the community in developing the vision, strategic goals, and capacities to foster a 21st century learning community. His legacy includes a heightened degree of community connectivity and collaboration, fostered through dozens of coffees held in parents’ and community members’ homes; regularly held meetings with interested community groups, service clubs and business leaders; support for Common Threads, a community organization promoting communication and multicultural understanding; and collaboration with Suquamish and S’Klallam tribal leadership to improve educational opportunities for tribal students.

He is firmly committed to the ideal of “Success for All Students” and known for frequently reminding staff members that “all means all.”

On a recent morning, Deirdre Duffy chatted with Dr. Medina about his work, views on the future of public education, and his approaching retirement.

DD: The North Kitsap School District has undergone many changes since you arrived in 1999, particularly in how people communicate with each other. Looking back to your beginnings within this community, how did you approach the issue of communication?

There were several pieces to my arrival that stand out. I remember that within days of my selection being announced. I got e-mails from people with special interests … they wanted my ear, and they wanted me to push their issue when I got here. Another piece was that I knew about the place from reading about it, but I didn’t really know it: I had a list of observations I had collected during my interviews, and I wanted to know about the community, too. I remember I had a significant personnel issue I had to deal with, and about 40 administrators I had to understand. I also had to learn all the relationships and how they operated in the system, that type of thing. I came in knowing that listening was huge, and what I did those first couple of months was meet with every one of those people for half an hour. I had three questions: What’s working? What would you make different if you could? And what’s important for me to know? I started there, by trying to learn peoples’ stories.

DD: How, in your view, did this type of approach foster a learning community in North Kitsap?

At the first retreat, I brought in a third-party facilitator, asked people to get into small groups and answer the questions “What do you expect of me?” and “What do you expect of yourself?” and I did the questions “What do I expect of you?” and “What do I expect of myself?” They hadn’t done anything like that before … and I think a lot of where we are now came out of that first gathering. At the time, we had no operating principles about how we were going to work together – like if I’m pissed off at you I don’t go tell someone else, I go tell you, and I bring someone with me – that type of thing. There was no decision-making matrix, none of the structural things you need to lead were there.

I spent a lot of time listening, and I think it took three years before some people felt we could have a conversation. There’s a difference between having a conversation and being the superintendent in a role … we’d have role talk but not people talk. We’ve worked on this kind of stuff for nine years now, from very little beginnings to asking, “Wow, how did that happen?” These types of changes take a long time. When people begin to have a relationship they look back and say “How did we get here?” And the answer is “A lot of hard work, that’s how.”

This type of shift is huge because if you can’t speak what you want to speak – with sensitivity, obviously, or sometimes, not – then, what kind of conditions exist within that organization? To me, the relationship stuff is huge, because it gives joy to the workplace, and it allows us to do our work, which is to help grow kids.

DD: In your view, what’s the biggest challenge facing public education today?

I’ve been talking about this for years: public education in this country is way under-funded. It’s a miracle the kinds of improvements that people are making, with forward movement and all that stuff, with the limited resources we have. In the long run, that’s probably going to be one of the deepest impacting issues in our society, in a real concrete way. And this is the larger challenge … its not about education, it’s about growing and learning and the services we provide to the families within our communities. I’m not convinced that, as a country, we care about our children, because when you look at places where it’s really about children, you see different kinds of health care, different kinds of education, different services provided to mothers and fathers after the birth of a child. It’s a significant issue.

DD: What won’t you miss about being superintendent?

I think the thing I won’t miss is the anxiety you feel the night before when you’re not sure how the weather is going to be, trying to get some rest but knowing you’re going to wake up at 4 a.m. to make a decision about schools’ opening or closing. I will not miss at all that feeling in your gut when you’re checking out the weather, worrying if you know what you need to know in order to make a good decision. It’s pretty disconcerting: all people know is ‘he closed schools’ or ‘it’s running late,’ but the decision is a tough one … it really is hard to do.

But here’s what I like about it, crazy as it sounds: I have one of the most fantastic Directors of Transportation in the world, Ron Lee, and we both enjoy talking to each other on our cell phones as we’re driving around on the roads, and I love the quiet and peacefulness of the roads at that hour. I will miss that.

DD: What’s next for you, post-retirement?

I want some downtime to clear the field … one of the things I’ve heard from friends is we really don’t recognize the stress and pressure we’re under until it’s away. Short term, we’ll be doing some sailing this summer. Beyond that, I’d like to go to language immersion school in Pueblo, Mexico – I minored in Spanish in school –and I’m connected with an organization called Global Network. They go to different parts of the world and build houses, water systems, that type of thing. I’m also involved with a new non-profit, the Olympic Public Leadership Institute, and long term, I’m going to continue this work, and I’ll probably be consulting in public education, but for a while I’d like to take some time to reflect, to see what’s on the other side of the fence.