PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles School District assistant superintendent Michelle Olsen had just sat down for lunch at the Sunset Grill in Gig Harbor on Thursday when board president Sarah Methner called to tell her she was being offered the job as the district’s next superintendent.
Olsen was returning to Port Angeles with the high school girls basketball team, which had fallen 38-33 to Columbia River in the Class 2A state tournament the night before at the Yakima Valley SunDome.
“I love Port Angeles and I love our schools,” said Olsen, who has worked in the district for 23 years, starting as principal at Roosevelt Elementary in 2002 and advancing to her current position in 2020.
The board of directors announced it had selected Olsen as its choice after deliberating for more than an hour in a closed session on Thursday. It voted 5-0 to extend her an offer.
The board kept the names of applicants and candidates confidential throughout the hiring process at the recommendation Human Capital Enterprises, the firm it hired to manage the superintendent search. It intended to keep the result of the search confidential until contract negotiations were over, but because Olsen was an internal hire, it made its choice public immediately after voting.
The deliberation process took one day more than originally planned after the board said it needed more time.
The extra time was needed, board president Sarah Methner said.
“We each called references — labor leaders, school board directors, boards of directors, principals, anybody they had worked for,” Methner said. “These were people identified by the search firm and not listed as references by candidates.”
That directors knew Olsen “didn’t hurt,” Methner said, although it was not the deciding factor.
“Michelle has put in the work, she had made efforts to know all the different facets of being a superintendent, which is vastly different than being an assistant superintendent,” Methner said.
While her duties as assistant superintendent primarily concern teaching and learning, Olsen will have a different focus in her new role.
“The job of superintendent is to have the vision for the district and to carry out the vision of the board,” Olsen said. “That’s such a great responsibility and it’s the part that excites me, that you have the opportunity to build on relationships and partnerships within the community.”
This was the third Port Angeles superintendent search in which Methner had been involved since being elected to the board in 2009 and the first in which the process was confidential.
“I’ve done this both ways, and I would say without a doubt that confidentiality made a big difference,” Methner said.
The high quality of the candidates made for a lot of back-and-forth among directors. It was not an easy decision, director Kirsten Williams said, calling the process “intense.”
Olsen’s official start date is July 1. In January, the board approved a salary of $220,000 for the position.
Olsen will replace Marty Brewer, the district’s superintendent for the past seven years who is stepping down at the end of August.
Under Brewer’s leadership, the district embarked on a 30-year capital improvement plan in 2020. Construction of a new Stevens Middle School funded by a voter-approved capital levy will begin this spring. A 20-year, $140 million bond passed in 2024 will fund construction of a new high school and Franklin Elementary School.
All three schools are slated to open sometime in 2028.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
