Students returning to two Durango School District 9-R schools in August will find new principals at the helm, but they’ll be familiar faces.
Vicki Trousdale, who has been assistant principal at Miller Middle School for the past three years, will step up to the top position as Cito Nuhn moves to Fountain to become a principal at a school near Fort Carson.
Park Elementary School Assistant Principal Marie Voss-Patterson will become principal of Park, replacing Kathleen Lau. Lau will become the Child Find coordinator, helping connect children with disabilities from newborns to age 5 to resources, for District 9-R’s new Administrative Unit as it separates from the San Juan Board of Cooperative Services.
Trousdale, who came to Durango for the job at Miller, began her education career as a social studies teacher. During her final years in Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs, she was a master and mentor teacher and reading interventionist.
“I love this age group for their malleability,” she said about middle school students. “They’re trying to find out who they are, they’re interested in so many things. There’s a great opportunity for showing them new things.”
Their age can also be the greatest challenge, Trousdale said.
“The things we know about how their physiology changes, their brain development, their hormones – we know this is a time their brain is doing amazing work,” she said.
Trousdale plans to continue many of the programs and initiatives underway at Miller, and she wants to add a focus on positive behavior reinforcement. Among her first tasks will be hiring her replacement assistant principal and filling at least two teacher positions.
“I have an enthusiasm and love for this community,” she said. “I love coming to work every day. I feel like this is home, and I like working with the kids.”
Voss-Patterson joined the district and Park in 2015, but it was a homecoming of sorts for the Durango High School alumna. After graduating from Durango High School, she raced through Colorado State University in thee years and went to work for the Roaring Fork School District in Carbondale for 11 years. While there, she served as the gifted and talented director, fourth-grade teacher, GT teacher, math coach and teacher leader.
“Eighty percent of our students were English language learners, and 90 percent qualified for free and reduced(-price) lunch,” she said. “When they told me 44 percent of the students were minorities at Park, that’s what drew me here.”
One thing Park has that Roaring Fork does not is a generational feeling, Voss-Patterson said.
“We have families with roots at Park,” she said. “We had 700 people at our end-of-the-year picnic last year, grandparents who went to Park, parents who went to Park and now kids who go to Park.”
The school has been using parts of the Expeditionary Learning model, and staff and instructional leadership teams will spend the next year deciding whether that’s a direction they want to go, Voss-Patterson said.
“We’ve been EL-like,” she said. “We’re going to be further investing in high quality work and habits such as perseverance. And students will be doing an in-depth project based in the community.”
Trousdale and Voss-Patterson will start their new jobs on July 1, the beginning of 9-R’s fiscal year.
abutler@durangoherald.com
