By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
Lincoln County schools’ superintendent will retire June 30 after five years leading the district, including facing two major crises for much of her tenure.
Superintendent Karen Gray announced her impending retirement Tuesday night during the regular meeting of the Lincoln County School District board meeting in Newport. She segued into the news as part of a presentation on district accomplishments during the past five years.
The school board, with only one current member, Liz Martin, involved then, hired Gray in July 2018 after a long search process that drew 18 applicants, involved a 20-member screening committee, candidate interviews, meet-and-greet sessions, and background and reference checks.
Gray came to Lincoln County from the Parkrose School District in east Portland, where she was superintendent for 11 years. Gray was named superintendent of the year by the Oregon Association of School Executives and the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators for the 2017-18 school year. Prior to Parkrose, Gray worked in the Coos Bay School District for 17 years in a variety of capacities, including special education, speech pathology, as an assistant principal, principal, and her last three years as superintendent.
At LCSD, Gray oversees a general fund budget of $84 million, about 5,200 students and 600 employees spread over four high schools, 10 elementary and middle/junior high schools, one online K-12 school and three public charter schools. School locations range from Waldport in the south, Eddyville, Siletz and Toledo in the east, through Newport and north to Lincoln City.
In her presentation of district accomplishments Tuesday night, under the heading of superintendent, Gray listed the creation of a leadership team, implementation of a new student information system, partnerships with local governments, external involvement in community organizations including a seat on the Newport Symphony Orchestra board, and “successful navigation through a pandemic.”
Gray said all of the items listed should be attributed to teamwork.
“I will work until June 30 with gusto in moving the district down the line just the way that we have crafted it together,” Gray said. “We are on a particularly good track, and it’s taken five years of hard work, blood, sweat and tears to get through, and now the direction has been set, the train is on the track.”
The superintendent said she believed her successor was sitting in the room — there were about 20 people, many district employees including senior staff, seated in the Sam Case Elementary School gym for the meeting. But she declined to name that person, deferring to the board’s express mandate to select the district’s chief administrator.
Martin, in tears and recounting her participation in Gray’s hiring, credited the superintendent with skilled leadership under the uncertain, frequently changing state measures to curb Covid-19 in schools.
“I can’t thank you enough, you got us through a pandemic,” Martin said. “You got us through a lot of really tough times that a lot of other people might not have been able to.”
Board member Peter Vince, a former Toledo teacher who retired in 2016 and was elected to the board last year, said he marked a clear improvement from his time in the district’s employ to his experience on the board of directors.
Peter Lohonyay, a Toledo career-tech teacher and president of the teachers union who frequently took a firm public stance against administration policy during the transition back to in-person classes during the pandemic, had only complimentary words for Gray outside the meeting Tuesday night.
“We’ve done more than survive, we’ve grown,” Lohonyay said. “She’s promoted the increase of diversity and equity, and she’s taken care of the buildings in the district. Lincoln County School District has some of the best facilities in the best shape in the state of Oregon.”
Gray’s written list of accomplishments makes note of some of those capital improvements, including five seismic upgrades to buildings, new grandstands at Newport High, an artificial turf field at Sam Case, a new gym at Yaquina View in Newport, and a new forestry building at Taft 7-12 in Lincoln City.
“The Spanish program she’s brought, the music program she’s brought. She’s promoted (career-technical education),” Lohonyay said. “She’s done some very good things.”
In addition to the challenges of the pandemic, Gray’s tenure also saw a substantial number of its north county students at least temporarily homeless in September 2020 following the wildfires in Otis, which destroyed 300 homes and impacted hundreds in the LCSD student body. The district lost 95 students from its rolls as a result of displacement by the fires.
- Kenneth Lipp is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at KenLipp@YachatsNews.com
