Team-building is Kalispell educator’s forte

As a child growing up in British Columbia, Darlene Schottle found stability hard to come by. Between kindergarten and her senior year of high school, her family moved 14 times. Schottle often found herself not only attending a different school one year after another, but sometimes more than one school in a single year.

Her father was always looking for work, and neither of her parents graduated from high school. And yet Schottle found that she not only did well in school, that she thrived. She discovered, for example, that she could make connections with teachers and other students, even if she did not know most of them for very long.

“I just sort of found a passion for education,” the Eugene School District superintendent finalist said last week during a telephone interview. “It became the first stable part of my life.”

She graduated from high school in Langley, B.C., in 1970, earning an academic scholarship to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she earned a degree in education.

Her first job out of college was teaching second grade in Squamish, B.C., for a year. Then she married and moved to Tooele, Utah, with her husband, Ron, whom she has always called “Butch.” She worked part time there for years as a special education teacher while raising two young sons and a daughter.

When her husband got a job with a mining company in Reno, Nev., in 1984, Schottle got a part-time job with Reno’s 65,000-student Washoe County School District, working with special education and disabled students, eventually becoming a full-time teacher again. She also went back to school, receiving a master’s degree in special education and a doctorate in education leadership.

She would serve as an elementary school principal for three years, then become the Reno district’s senior director for special education and psychological services. In 1999, she was hired as one of the district’s four area superintendents, a region with the equivalent amount of students as the 16,500 in the Eugene School District.

Then, when the superintendent position opened for the 5,200-student Kalispell Public Schools in Kalispell, Mont., Schottle jumped at the chance to not only lead an entire district but to return with her husband to his home state.

Now, she wants to jump again, for one final shot at helping a school district rebuild and re-energize. She is very happy where she is, Schottle said, but the “professional excitement” of the opportunity to work in the Eugene district is too much to pass up, she said.

Not that Schottle was looking to move. Iowa-based Ray & Associates, which led Eugene’s superintendent search process, contacted her, she said. And she has only considered leaving Kalispell once, when she applied for the superintendent’s position in Spokane in 2008. One of two finalists for that spot, Schottle withdrew so that a 30-year Spokane district employee could take the job after she saw how divided the school board and community were over the decision.

“Sometimes when you meet with a community, you know if you’re the right person at the right time,” she told Kalispell’s Daily Inter Lake newspaper at the time. “I decided to withdraw my name and give them the opportunity to go with their inside hire.”

In 2011, the Eugene district finds itself in a precarious fiscal position, looking at trimming an estimated $24 million by closing schools and laying off staff to balance its budget this spring. Asked why she would want to lead a school district at such a time, Schottle said she would welcome the challenge.

“Sometimes, in times of great stress and change, it’s also a time that pulls people together,” she said.

Her strength, she said, is team-building.

“It’s a matter of doing collaborative planning,” Schottle said. “And, quite frankly, it can be easier doing that coming from somewhere else.”

Oftentimes, a leader coming fresh into a situation can lend perspective that maybe the last administrator had lost because he or she had gotten too close to the situation, Schottle said.

You have to rebuild a school system, and also rebuild morale, she said.

Don Murray, a Kalispell attorney who spent 12 years on the school board there until last May, said he is a big believer in Schottle’s team-building skills.

“What stands out more than anything is how she brings out the best in her administrative team,” Murray said. “She empowers them, and uses them as a group and gives them professional independence.”

And she’s easy to get along with, Murray said. As an example, he said that when Schottle was hired eight years ago, she was chosen over the district’s assistant superintendent, Dan Zorn.

“You can imagine how difficult that was,” Murray said. But the two have worked together closely to the district’s benefit, he said. “And I think that speaks volumes,” Murray said.

Few controversial issues have arisen in the Kalispell district during Schottle’s tenure, Murray said. So could she come in and lead a district that’s under the sort of stress the Eugene district is experiencing?

“I think that kind of appeals to her,” Murray said. “I think that’s where Darlene would stand out, because she’s very measured in her approach. She knows how to assemble all the stakeholders.”

Kalispell may not have closed a school during her time, but Schottle said she does have experience with grade reconfiguration, something Eugene is looking at.

When she came aboard, Kalispell’s elementary schools were K-6, with seventh-graders attending classes together in what the district calls a “learning center,” and eighth- and ninth-grade students in junior high schools. She oversaw the restructuring to the common K-5 elementary school, 6-8 middle school and 9-12 high school structure.

Current school board member Tom Clark said he is impressed that Schottle was able to oversee the building of a second high school, something the community had talked about for years. The gleaming new Glacier High School opened in the fall of 2005, Clark said.

“She did a very good job getting that started,” said Clark, who also alluded to Schottle’s team-building skills.

Schottle, apparently, sees it as a crucial talent.

“I believe a leader is only as good as the strength of your team,” she said. “There’s nothing as powerful as a good team. And I think that’s true in business, as well. You can’t be a good CEO unless you’ve got your team working with you.”