Clark

MILTON-FREEWATER — Rob Clark spent nearly his entire educational career in Washington, and the six years he didn’t, he was stationed just a few miles away from the Evergreen State’s southern border.

Now, the Milton-Freewater Unified School District superintendent is readying for a home state return.

According to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Clark announced that he was resigning to take an interim superintendent position with the Sequim School District in Washington at a school board meeting Tuesday.

In an interview with the East Oregonian Thursday, Clark explained why he was leaving Eastern Oregon for Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

Clark said he already owns a condominium in the area and the move would put them closer to him and his wife’s families.

Additionally, he spent 28 years of his career in Washington before relocating to Milton-Freewater and he’d like to work at least two more years in Washington for retirement purposes.

Clark admitted his departure comes late in public education’s hiring season, but his soon-to-be predecessor took a job outside the K-12 system and he didn’t announce his resignation until early May.

“I’m ready to start my new adventure,” he said.

For the school board’s part, it doesn’t seem to be sweating the prospect of finding a new leader in a short time frame.

“We’ll look at what we want, and during this coming year we’ll probably have an interim superintendent,” Milton-Freewater School Board President Duane Geyer told the Union -Bulletin. “We’ll let the dust settle so we can have multiple options. We’re not required to look outside the district, or we can. I think it’s great when someone can come up through the system. We’re in good shape.”

The school board will hold a special meeting June 24 to discuss the transition period.

With Clark set to depart from the district on July 3, he can now put his time in Milton-Freewater in perspective.

Clark said the highlight of his tenure with the district was passing a $12.5 million bond in 2016, a development that built Milton-Freewater’s first new school in nearly a century.

The district was aided by $19 million in state and private grants that were contingent on the bond passing, but supporters were still trying to convince a voter base that hadn’t approved a bond since 1982 and had rejected multiple attempts since that time.

Once the bond passed, the district was able to renovate all of its schools and completely reconfigure its elementary schools.

The bond funded the construction of Gib Olinger Elementary School, a multistory building that serves K-3.

With so many students being moved to Gib Olinger, the district was able to demolish Grove Elementary School and put a sports complex in its place and repurpose Freewater Elementary School for other programs.

Clark said he was also proud that he was able to raise the number of Latino teachers and the district’s academic performance.

In a district where more than half of the students identify as Hispanic or Latino, 16% of Milton-Freewater’s faculty was considered “racially/ethnically diverse” in 2017-18 up from 10% in 2013-14, according to the 2018 Oregon Educator Equity Report.