PORT ANGELES – Listening well and making decisions based on data is the core of Ray Terry’s leadership style, he told the Port Angeles School Board on Tuesday.
Terry is one of two finalists for the superintendent position. The present superintendent, Gary Cohn, is leaving in June to take the top post at the Everett School District.
Superintendent finalist Jane Pryne of Tucson, Ariz., will be interviewed today.
The board expects to have hired a new superintendent by May 22.
“What you see is what you get,” Terry, the superintendent of Beaver County School District in Utah, told the board.
“I’m not a Donald Trump CEO. I’m more of a listener, a feeler.
“I know it sounds egotistical, but I don’t have much of an ego.”
Terry talked with the School Board, community members and district staff throughout the day Tuesday.
He was asked several times how he would think “outside the box” to help with declining enrollment.
He responded that he would be as creative as the community would allow.
“It all comes down to communication and what the wants and needs of the community are,” he said.
About 25 people questioned the candidate at the public forum Tuesday evening.
Pryne today
The School Board will interview Pryne at 1:30 p.m. today at the Central Service Building board room at 214 E. Fourth St. in a session open to the public.
Members of the public can ask Pryne questions at 6:30 p.m. tonight at the Port Angeles Senior Center, 328 E. Seventh St.
Pryne, associate professor at Northern Arizona University, is the former superintendent of Marana Unified School District and Continental School District, both south of Tucson.
She received a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Arizona in Tucson in May 2002, earned a master’s degree in special education with an emphasis on learning disabilities in August 1981 and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education in May 1977.
Terry said he and his wife, Selena — who is also an educator — are about 10 years away from retiring and had discussed northwestern Washington state as a potential spot for retirement.
“So when this job came open, it just seemed like fate,” he said. “For me, coming here would be completely selfish. We are just at a point in our lives where we can do what we want.
“The kids are all on their own, so that opens it up for us to decide what we want to do when we grow up.”
He said that his most meaningful experience as an educator was working with students at the alternative high school in Beaver, where he served as principal for several years.
‘Meanest principal’
“I still have kids who will come up to me in the store — kids who I wasn’t very nice to — and they’ll introduce me to the wife and children and tell them that I was the meanest principal they ever had,” he said.
“But then they’ll tell me, thank you.
“To me, that is what education is all about.”
Terry emphasized the importance of tolerance.
“I am very intolerant of intolerance,” he said. “I think I’m an open person and non-judgmental; I accept people for who they are and what they are.
“I don’t try and force square pegs in round holes.”
Terry said he would build trust in the schools and the community through communication and honesty.
He said that when he took his current post, the district was in the middle of extensive state audits for financial issues.
“Nothing criminal had gone on, but some money from one pot had gone into another,” he said.
“We went to the community, faculty members and the state superintendent office and said, this is what happened.
“Through that we were able to build back the trust of the community.”
He said he would try to draw the business community into the schools.
“Schools are the center of the community,” he said.
“We live and die with taxes, so the better the businesses are, the better off we are.”
Terry also held principal positions at North Sevier High School and Salina Elementary School, both in Salina, Utah.
He earned his doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2005.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.
