Thanks for your service, Woody!

Over the next few days, Kellogg School District superintendent William “Woody” Woodford will be cleaning out his office as he prepares to retire and make way for Nancey Larsen to take the reins as new superintendent.

Woodford came to KSD seven years ago after spending some time as a superintendent in a remote region of Alaska.

“I was working eight miles north of the Arctic Circle,” Woodford said. “Covering a district that had 350 students at eight different sites over a stretch of land the size of Michigan.”

After three years there, Woodford and his wife Rose decided to return to some more familiar territory in Idaho, near Woodford’s home in Montana and near their children.

Over the past seven years, Woodford has been steering the Kellogg School District into a more efficient direction as he has faced the challenges of declining enrollment, declining funding and higher costs of educating students.

But that struggle hasn’t taken the smile off his face.

“It has been tough trying to navigate all of these challenges,” Woodford said. “But I feel like we have one of the best staffs around, in fact I would put our staff up against any staff out there in terms of doing as much as possible with as little financial support as we have had. Especially our technology department.”

Upon arrival, Woodford instantly began cultivating personal relationships with the people in the Kellogg community who got to know him pretty well on his daily walks to and from the district office (an average of 2.5 miles per day).

“I definitely gained a following,” Woodford said with a chuckle. “I was determined to wave at every single person I saw no matter what their reaction was, and I got pretty familiar with those who would wave back or honk at me. But it gave me a chance to get familiar with my surroundings and it was absolutely invaluable.”

Woodford has seen the Kellogg School District through some very tough decisions, including the closing of two different buildings, but he believes that the positives have always outweighed the negatives.

“I think during my time here, we only ever had one levy not pass,” he said. “But other than that, we never had a levy that didn’t pass. We have always had very good community support, which I think that, even in the tough times is a very big deal for a district like this one.”

Woodford is most proud of the steps that were made in developing student engagement within the classroom.

“Over the past five years, we really tried to focused on student engagement,” he said. “It’s way different than most of our teachers were trained. It used to be very scripted and everything we did lined up with an exact blocked out lesson plan. That proved to not necessarily work for every kid because each student is different. If you can improve student engagement, with themselves, their teachers and their classmates, you can improve their student outcomes.”

Woodford will be retiring after 39 years in education, but even in his retirement he won’t be completely moving away from education. In fact, he will mentoring five new principals in different parts of the state as part of the Idaho Department of Education mentoring program.

But, when he isn’t doing that, he is going to spending time with 12 (soon to be 13) grandkids in his home region of western Montana.

Though he will be in a different state, he will always have a special place for Kellogg and its people — including his replacement.

“One thing that always stood out about this place was that it has the best people and Nancy (Larsen) is no different,” Woodford said. “To have someone who is from here and has a heart for the Kellogg School District is going to be terrific for this district. She is going to do great things here in her new position.”