STANWOOD — Stanwood-Camano School District Superintendent Deborah Rumbaugh announced her resignation Tuesday.
Her last day will be June 30, 2025, she said in a Tuesday school board meeting. Rumbaugh said she met with school board leadership prior to her decision.
The board accepted her resignation at the meeting. The reason for her departure was unclear.
“I am very disappointed today,” board member Miranda Evans said during the meeting. “We’re losing a great leader for our district.”
The district made it official Friday afternoon.
“This decision was not made lightly and comes with deep respect for the district, its students, staff, and the community that has been the cornerstone of our shared promise to serve every student,” Rumbaugh wrote in a statement posted to the district’s website.
“Our collective efforts, collaboration, and resilience have been the foundation of our district’s success, and I am confident that, together, we will continue to create the conditions for all students to thrive,” she continued.
School board members Miranda Evans and Charlotte Murry are frustrated. Evans said she was not exactly surprised by the news.
“We created a very hostile work environment for her,” Evans told The Daily Herald on Friday.
The board has been plagued by infighting.
“Honestly, the last year has been hell,” Murry said Thursday. “It feels like, you know, being in the trenches, fighting a war that you just can’t win when you’re in the minority on a school board.”
Evans said it’s having an impact on students.
“In a district where we’re already limited on our resources, we are wasting resources on grown-up problems that could be better spent on children, not to mention the fact that our board members are publicly shaming our children,” Evans said. “One of our board members has made two of our student advisors cry during board meetings. That is not who I am as a board member, and that is not the board that we should be.”
Board member Steve King did not respond to a request for comment. Another member, Betsy Foster, wrote in an email she had no comment on the resignation. The board’s fifth member, Albert Schreiber, directed comment to the district office.
Earlier this year, Foster and King were behind efforts to remove certain diversity, equity and inclusion language in a policy proposal. Each year, districts around the state submit policy proposals to the Washington State School Directors’ Association at its annual meeting, which will take place later this month.
During discussion about that proposal, King and Foster made comments that drew rebuke from the Island County Health Board. King implied children from difficult backgrounds should not get the same level of education that children from other families get.
“We use a large part of our resources to help the 10% of the population, there’s the least potential for success, considering the family situation, and other things that are big factors.” King said at a March 19 board meeting. “Maybe like the home, for example. And the single parent, drugs and all that kind of thing. That kid has very, very limited potential to work with that background. And so they do need special help to get up to even the best they can be, functional level.”
Foster, meanwhile, said earlier this year she belongs to a group of about 100 school board members across the state who are pushing back on diversity language and other policies.
Rumbaugh took over as superintendent in July 2021. She previously worked in Highline Public Schools in south King County.
The district’s headcount is a little under 5,000 students.
Jordan Hansen: 425-339-3046; jordan.hansen@heraldnet.com; X: @jordyhansen.
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