Rochester School District Superintendent Kim Fry has been chosen by the Washington Association of School Administrators (WASA) for her outstanding contribution to education to receive the Leadership Award for the 2019-20 school year.
“The WASA awards program seeks to identify and highlight the very best in leadership for, and commitment to, public education,” said Joel Aune, WASA Executive Director. “This year’s award recipients are indeed shining examples of individuals who are making significant contributions toward the advancement of public education here in the state of Washington.”
A Rochester native, Fry graduated from Rochester High School and got her first teaching job out of college at the Rochester Primary School. She later worked as the principal of the primary school and has been serving as the district’s superintendent for the past 11 years.
A full-circle moment, Fry’s current office as the superintendent used to be her second-grade classroom before it was renovated to act as the district office building.
Fry said her leadership style is collaborative in nature and she works to develop leadership skills in everyone.
“I think a key to being a good leader is building leadership characteristics in other people and that’s important to me. I think that everybody has leadership capacity within them and oftentimes people don’t recognize that quality within them,” Fry said. “It takes someone else to say ‘if you only had as much confidence in yourself as I have in you — you could make amazing things happen.’ Sometimes it just takes that little nudge.”
Fry said her goal now is to be in communication with each student and family and meet them where they’re at. She said that used to just mean where they are at academically by making sure they are still being challenged if they are excelling or not letting struggling students fall behind. Now, “meeting students where they’re at” includes their physical location since students are now learning remotely.
“Being incredibly nimble is important and helping people sustain this constant change because people are tired of change. We really have this desire to make sure each student makes a year or more of growth in a school year — COVID or no COVID we still want that for our kids,” she said.
Fry said she believes hope is contagious and if she is able to instill hope in her administrators, then it will trickle down to the teachers and then the students. She said that although the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the schooling system operates and the way she communicates with people has moved to the virtual arena, the heart of what’s important to her as a leader hasn’t changed.
Like many other rural school districts, Rochester has struggled with internet connectivity but has overcome it by using hotspots or allowing students that cannot connect to come into the school buildings in small groups during the school day.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that it’s OK to be vulnerable as a leader and to say you don’t know. People are understanding of the fact that you don’t have all of the answers, all of the time, immediately,” Fry said. “Being OK with that is important.”
She said that building good relationships and investing in people is an important part of her job.
“There’s no single person that can do the work. It really is the collective experience and insight that everyone brings — that’s students, parents, community organizations, the staff — when we can put all of that information together, we can make really strong decisions for kids,” Fry said.
The Rochester School District has worked over the past few years to make sure each student, K through 12, has a Chromebook and knows how to use it.
“They’re used to using technology prior to (COVID-19 pandemic) and holy cow has it paid dividends. That was a learning curve that kids didn’t have to endure on top of everything else,” Fry said.
