EVERETT — More than two months before he begins, the incoming superintendent for the Everett School District has been quietly making the rounds, visiting schools and meeting key people in local education circles.
Gary Cohn also has been working his way down lists of business and civic leaders he wants to get to know, as well as chatting with others who just care about schools.
He has popped into classrooms, talked to high school students about senior projects, and has even gone for a spin on the USS Abraham Lincoln with ROTC students from Everett and his home district of Port Angeles.
“I’m hard at learning,” Cohn said Monday evening as he caught a ferry back to Port Angeles.
Monday was the eighth day he has spent in the Everett district since he was picked for the job in March. He has visited nearly half the schools and hopes to get to all of them by the time he begins his new job in the 18,500-student district July 1.
“What you are essentially doing is 110 percent learning,” he said. “Hopefully, it will make that start-up — the first 90 days, the first 120 days — that much more effective.”
He said each school has a culture of its own and the classroom visits are just an introduction to each campus.
Monday afternoon, Cohn went from behind the scenes to the forefront at a reception at school district headquarters. District staff, business people, parents and children greeted the new leader, who is now superintendent of a 4,000-student district.
Earlier in the day, he learned about the Everett Public Schools Foundation, sat in on budget talks and met with the district’s special education director and other staff whose focus is to get more students to graduate on time.
School officials say Cohn is covering a lot of ground quickly.
During a break, Cohn had lunch with Everett teachers union president Kim Mead.
“It was real low-key,” Mead said.
They didn’t talk about issues, such as upcoming labor contract negotiations with the 1,200-member union, but did get to know more about each other.
Greg Gelderman, an elementary and middle school principal in the Everett district before joining the faculty at Seattle Pacific University, was among the people who greeted Cohn at Monday’s reception.
They had once worked at the same time in the Lake Washington School District, but he knows Cohn mainly by reputation.
Gelderman said he was pleased when he heard Cohn was hired in Everett.
“I told my wife, ‘This is going to be great,’” he said.
Cohn has served as superintendent in Port Angeles since 2001. Before that, he was vice president at Lake Washington Technical College, a Lake Washington School District administrator, and a business and marketing teacher in the Northshore School District.
Cohn said he plans to spend four more days visiting Everett’s schools before July 1.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
