After 11 years at Roosevelt High School and nearly two decades at Seattle Public Schools, Principal Kristina Rodgers announced April 30 that she would be accepting a position as principal of Bainbridge High School for the 2021-2022 school year.
Rodgers says that though she has not been actively seeking a new position, when the job was mentioned to her, it allowed her to reevaluate the next steps in her career. “I think in our quarantine, [I’ve] spent some time thinking about what’s best for our family and reassessing our current realities,” she says. “I thought it might be interesting to consider what could be next steps for me.”
After being in the Seattle Public Schools system for so long, Rodgers says she’s eager to take on new challenges. “I’m excited to work in a new school district and understand how the policies and procedures in the Bainbridge School District compare to those of Seattle,” she says. “I’m interested to understand and unpack what that looks like in a smaller district that’s much flatter as far as the leadership goes.”
Throughout her career, she has primarily been working at large school districts like Seattle, and wondered “what it would be like to be in a smaller district.” So, when the opportunity arose, “I thought I would act upon it,” she says. In contrast to being one of 12 high school principals in the district, Rodgers will be the only high school principal in the entire Bainbridge Island School District.
For Rodgers, the decision was one that would not only mark a new stage of her career, but also for her family. With this new position being a ferry ride across the water, Rodgers plans for her family residence to move to Bainbridge Island for the start of the school year. “I have a son that’s currently in first grade, and I have twins that will be in kindergarten next year,” she says. “With my twins starting kindergarten, it feels like a natural break, to enroll them in [a new] school as kindergarteners, before they’ve begun to make friends and dig into any kind of school community.”
While Roosevelt students know her as Principal Rodgers, Rodgers’ history at Seattle Public Schools goes back before she began teaching. Rodgers is a born and raised Seattleite, where she made her way through Eckstein Middle School and eventually to Roosevelt High School.
After graduating from Roosevelt, Rodgers attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, majoring in Spanish language and literature — and she wasn’t the only one from her class to do so. For Rodgers and many other students around her year, Lynn Kodama, former Roosevelt Spanish teacher who retired in 2017, was an inspiration to pursue higher education and careers in Spanish. “I know countless individuals that have graduated from Roosevelt, around my year, that are all high school Spanish teachers throughout the whole region, and they all had Lynn Kodama,” says Rodgers.
Rodgers found her passion for teaching when she began volunteering at Walla Walla Public Schools while studying at Whitman. There, she got her start mentoring elementary students who needed reading support.
But for Rodgers, working with high schoolers is truly her passion. She says she wouldn’t work in any other level of schooling. “I like the dialogue with high school students, … that high school students are finding their voice, that they’re not afraid to ask good questions and have an engaging conversation,” she says. “I love watching the change in students between freshman and senior year. … Sometimes students who’ve had a hard time in ninth grade, … figure it out, and develop and mature.
After finishing her master’s in teaching, Rodgers went on to teach at Highland School District for a year, after which, she began her work at Seattle Public Schools at Ballard High School. Rodgers taught “pretty much all levels” of Spanish throughout her time as a teacher, and also used these skills as an English Language Learner (ELL) teacher.
To this day, Rodgers says she still misses teaching. “There are many days where I dream about being a teacher again,” she says. “It’s the best way to have the most direct impact with students, form really strong relationships, and get to know them really well.”
But she also says that her current role as an administrator is still a teacher at its core. “I think it’s really important that administrators always think of themselves as teachers first, because we still are, it’s just a different way,” she says. “Sometimes it’s teaching adults, sometimes it’s teaching students, sometimes it’s families, but there is still a teacher aspect to the work. That’s what leaders do, even if it’s not formally in a classroom.”
It was actually at Ballard that Rodgers was first encouraged to apply her skills towards an administrator position. She had never considered it before Kim Whitworth, former assistant principal of Ballard High School, referred her to the idea. From there, Whitworth began coaching and evaluating her for the position, and every night after teaching for two years, Rodgers studied at Western Washington University to be certified in school administration.
Throughout her time studying to become an educator and administrator, Rodgers never expected to end back up at her own high school.
When she began attending Roosevelt High School in the ‘90s, it was completely different to what it is today. From the building remodel in the 2000s, to the changes in policies and student busing across the district, and aside from staff that still work here, much of it was nearly unrecognizable to Rodgers when she came back to work at Roosevelt.
“I have memories that are in a completely different building,” Rodgers says. “Roosevelt was completely remodeled when I was here, our current library was the theater — I took my PSAT in our now library which was the theater. … You know, it smelled old, and the lighting was different. It was a really different school, and it really needed to remodel by the time it got remodeled, it was really rundown.”
Rodgers began as assistant principal at Roosevelt in 2010. From there, she became reacquainted with the community, including coaching Roosevelt soccer for six seasons. After former Principal Brian Vance stepped down in 2017, Rodgers took on the new role as principal of Roosevelt High School.
As principal of a comprehensive public high school in the 21st century, it’s a big leap from any other administrative position. “Being an assistant principal and being a principal are really, really different in a way that I didn’t understand at all. … People have to adapt and see you differently, and you also have to adapt and see yourself differently in the same community,” she says. “It’s hard to do that simultaneously. … For my first year, it felt … like building the plane while I was flying it.”
But it was also a beneficial experience for Rodgers, saying that her pre-established bonds with the community allowed her to fill the position more seamlessly: “I have [and had] really strong relationships with a number of staff; The staff knew me, I knew them. That transition in roles was a positive.”
And as for the next principal? Rodgers says, “I think that individual is walking into a school that is really primed for collaboration. We have wonderful staff [and] so many leaders who are stepping into important roles and in the work that we’re doing.”
Ultimately, Rodgers does not think the change in principals will impede Roosevelt’s continued cultural and equity work. “Essentially, a new principal is going to walk in and have all of this disaggregated data and feedback from these listening sessions to really get to know the community and what are the gaps, and what are the needs. … The timing is really good for continuing the work.”
“I wish our students the best, I care about them,” Rodgers says. “I know that they will do great things, and I appreciate their support and their push over the last many years.”
