Emergency subbing for the Long Creek K-3 teacher is just one of many duties Joan Walczyk picks up as she shifts from being a full-time teacher to filling the school district’s superintendent role. (Photo by Jake Arnold, OSBA)
Joan Walczyk went to the workshop building on the edge of the Long Creek campus to check on a shed the high school students had built and sold — typical superintendent stuff on a day in October.
Walczyk’s phone rang with news that a teacher needed to leave school for a family emergency, and she hustled over to the K-3 classroom to finish out the morning — also typical superintendent stuff for a small school district.
But for Long Creek, having a superintendent on campus every day ready to deal with whatever crops up is a new experience. The Long Creek School Board took the extra step of paying for Walczyk’s administrator’s license to make that happen. Walczyk works mornings as the superintendent and afternoons teaching grades four to six.
Long Creek is one of the extremely small and rural Oregon districts. The K-12 school about a 45-minute drive north of John Day has five teachers including Walczyk and fewer than two dozen students this school year.
The district has struggled to keep a superintendent for years. For the 2022-23 school year, the board hired retired superintendent Larry Glaze to work part time.
Glaze said he had only intended to stay a year but he saw things that needed doing. Without a regular superintendent, the district had grown “stagnant,” Glaze said, with decades-old curricula and little forward planning.
He agreed to stay a second year, but he wanted to set the district up for the future. Glaze saw possibilities with Walczyk, who had been teaching at Long Creek for three years.
Glaze said he saw a teacher with strong classroom management skills, good relationships with parents, respect from her co-workers and leadership potential. Glaze encouraged Walczyk to pursue her administrator license and suggested the school board pay for the nearly $19,000 licensure courses.
“If you know you’re getting someone you know and trust, the cost of a license is small potatoes,” Glaze said.
Jennifer Martinez, Long Creek office manager and administrative assistant, said the board’s investment shows a commitment to district staff for the long haul.
Martinez, who has been at the district for eight years, said it’s hard for outsiders to understand a place like Long Creek until they have spent time there.
Grant County is sparsely populated even by Oregon standards. The county’s largest city, John Day, has a population of roughly 1,600, smaller than the enrollment of some Oregon high schools. A recent Long Creek field trip to Pendleton nearly two hours to the north included a trip to a Chinese restaurant, a big deal for the students because there are no Chinese restaurants in Grant County.
“It takes a special kind of person to live in Grant County and Long Creek especially,” Martinez said.
Walczyk began her license work last school year through Lewis & Clark College in Portland while job shadowing Glaze. InterMountain Education Service District arranged the classes and the regional cohort that Walczyk is in. The class meets in Pendleton, but Walczyk mostly attends online because of the distance and the mountain roads that get dicey in winter.
Christina Dominguez, who teaches grades 4-6, said she looks up to Walczyk. This is Dominguez’s first year as a teacher, and she said it’s been hugely helpful to her to have a superintendent she can call on every day.
David Connor, who teaches grades 7-12 math and science, is in his 11th year at the district and said he is happy to see Walczyk take the job. He said when a district brings in an outsider, teachers don’t know what they will get.
“She’s been in the trenches with the rest of us,” Connor said.
Walczyk obtained a restricted license to run the school while she finishes up her program. The school board is paying Glaze to remain Walczyk’s mentor this year. Walczyk said she calls him a couple of times a week.
School Board Chair Marsie Watson said it’s hard for small and remote schools to get qualified staff. She said she sees paying for Walczyk’s license as an investment in the district’s future and hiring Glaze as mentor is insurance on that investment.
“He has experience coming out of his ears,” Watson said. “If you don’t have that mentor who has been there, done that, tried this, tried that, it’s really hard.”
Anyone who has worked in a really small district knows roles tend to bleed into each other and a superintendent needs to know a little about a lot of situations.
Between classes on that October day, Walczyk brought a glass of water to a sick student she was keeping an eye on in the nurse’s office while the girl’s parents came from John Day. In the afternoon while teaching a middle grades cooking class, she was also conferring with an inspector checking out the school’s fire extinguishers.
Walczyk has agreed to stay with the district for three years in exchange for licensure tuition. If she leaves early, she has to pay some of it back.
Walczyk said she doesn’t plan on leaving. Her husband maintains their home in Dayville about an hour away while she and her daughter, a sixth grader, stay in Long Creek during the week. Walczyk and her husband own land near Long Creek and their business interests are all over Grant County, making a more permanent residence nearby possible.
Walczyk said the school board’s support for her and their leadership are strong reasons to stay someplace she thinks she can make a difference.
“I definitely want to give back as much as I can,” she said. “They have hopes, and that meant a lot to me.”
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
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