The NSD board of directors appointed Michael Tolley (he/him) as the permanent superintendent on March 17, 2023. Tolley has been with the district since 2019 and served as interim superintendent for the 2022-23 academic year. On Jan. 29, the board of directors announced Tolley’s plans to retire after 45 years as an educator; his term will end on June 30. On Feb. 13, Nordic News interviewed Tolley about his experience as superintendent and his upcoming retirement.
Q: Why did you decide to retire?
A: I have been working in the field of education for 45 years. And I had had an interest in retiring, actually a few years ago, but Michelle Reid decided to leave around the same time I was thinking about retiring, and I had an interest in maintaining some stability within the system. I had been working at a district for three years up to that point, and her timeline for leaving didn’t leave the district a lot of opportunity to do a full national search. So they were interested in an interim back then. I came in initially through an interim role, and I agreed to one year as an interim, but during that year, it was clear that there were some additional challenges the district was facing in terms of budget shortfalls and all those things. And I didn’t think it was a good idea for me, personally, to leave the district when there was so much more work to be done in that area. When you start into the superintendent role, you want to initiate some improvements. And I had done that during the interim year, and I wanted to try to move those efforts along.
So that’s partly why I decided to apply for the permanent position, to continue to support the district through some pretty tough decision-making times, and move the district in terms of some of the things we’ll probably talk about a little bit later, some initiatives that we had started during my interim year that I wanted to try to see if we can get some more traction in the district. So I’ve done that, and now it’s at a point where, when you think about some of the other things that are happening within the system, If I stick around one more year, a year from now, we will be going through a process of what we call bond levy decisions, a new bargain for teacher contract and and for a superintendent to step out or be saying that they’re leaving at the end of the 2026 school year, all of those things would be even more challenging. So then that means I would, if I don’t leave now, then let’s have to stick around for at least two more years. It’s just a long way to say there’s never a good time.
And so, why am I retiring now? It’s primarily, I think timing-wise, it’s the best for the system for me to do that, but personally, I need to spend more time with my family. I have older brothers and sisters that have all retired, and many times when I visit with them, they say, ‘When are you coming?’ ‘When are you going to spend time with us?’ ‘When are you going?’ I have, of course, my wife. In support of my efforts to be superintendent, she quit her job, and so she’s spending time basically waiting for me to come home. We have a house on Bainbridge Island. She was actually teaching in the Bainbridge school district, but we were apart during that interim year, and it’s just not fair to her for me to be away. The bottom line is I need to spend more time with family, and when I consider all the factors in terms of what’s the best time and what’s to come now, now is the best time. It was a long decision-making process where I started, you know, making the list, what are the pros and cons and all those things, and I came to the decision that this is the best time for me to do it. Long answer to a very short question.
Q: What are your plans for after retirement?
A: Spend a lot more time with my family, my wife and also my daughter and son-in-law. They actually teach in the Kent School District, and I want to make sure I’m available for that. I was just meeting with our Superintendent Student Advisory Board, and I just told them that I’m looking forward to pursuing some of my other interests. Prior to going into school administration, I had taught high school students science — mostly AP Biology and marine science — for 17 years. I also taught molecular and cell biology at the college level for 10 years, so I am very interested in having the opportunity to go back and basically work with students directly in the teaching of science and developing their knowledge and understanding there. Also, as a marine biologist, there’s an opportunity for me to pursue interests in those areas. I’ve always had a desire to get my captain’s license and do some offshore fishing and things like that. So it gives me an opportunity to do that. All to say, if there’s an opportunity for me to work with students directly — more directly — than I have over the last 30 years, I’m interested in that and pursuing some of the interests I have in terms of fishing and doing marine research.
Q: What was your favorite experience being a superintendent?
A: The best part of my job is working with students, talking with students, and that’s part of why I’m talking about possibly going back and trying to see if there’s an opportunity of at least substitute teaching, if nothing else. But I have, in my role, the opportunity to interact with students at all levels. I can actually be having a conversation with a kindergartner, talking about what they’re learning, and then an hour later, be at a high school talking with a group of seniors about the same thing. The best part of my job is actually having those opportunities to see what students are learning and what their interests are and making sure that I’m doing everything I can to meet their needs.
Q: How has your time as the superintendent affected your view of the school district?
A: I have become even more aware of and appreciative of the diversity of the district. Northshore School District’s student demographic and community has been shifting considerably over the last 10 years, and when I get to know the more diverse communities that we have, that to me is the strength of Northshore, and when you visit our schools and you interact with all the various groups of students and their ethnic backgrounds, when you realize we have 119 different languages spoken in our schools. One of the things I really enjoyed going back to the prior question, was having an opportunity to listen and learn from our families. So we had intentional efforts to bring our diverse family groups, cultures from, most recently, the Portuguese-speaking families, our black African, African American families coming in, our Native American families coming in and having been learning from them, as well as the Islamic community and so on. The diversity of our community is tremendous, and how much there is an appreciation for the education that your children are receiving within our schools, and the involvement I think we have in Northshore, 11,000 volunteers. We have 22,000 students, but we have 11,000 adults volunteering in our schools. And you don’t see that everywhere, and that’s, again, the strength of the district.
Q: What are you proud of accomplishing in your two years as the superintendent?
A: Three years, if you had the interim year. So we have again, going back to some of the things I just mentioned, one of the first successful things I did was during the interim year. I did the listen and learn tour, listening to our diverse communities. And one of the things we heard was that they know there are lots of resources and opportunities within the system, but there wasn’t a clear way for all families to know where to find it and access that. So we reorganized staff within the system and created what we call the Family Engagement Resource Center, and that has been one of the most powerful efforts that we’ve made in the system to engage families more than ever before, and that has led us to gaining even more understanding about our diverse community. That’s what I’m really proud of, our outreach to families, because parents are our students’ first teachers, and we need to know from them what works best for their students, and so we need to ask them.
The other one is student engagement. Again, I just met with the Student Advisory Board, and they, over the last two years, have really informed and advised me on some significant budget decisions. For example, last year, when we were looking at reducing the budget for the $26 million reduction, we heard loud and clear that the seven-period day at the high school was something they really valued and wanted to keep and so we still have a seven-period day in high school, largely due to their input. Right now, we are just in the process of looking at a mobile device policy. Their input into that policy development happened this year. We started implementing middle schools just a few about six, seven years ago, and now there is an opportunity to say, Okay, is it really working? Is middle school working for our students? Again, going and asking the students, they know best. They know they’re the ones sitting in the classroom. So I really appreciate the opportunity to engage with and learn from our students. So I’m proud of that work.
We also have seen improved outcomes in areas like creating a better sense of belonging for our students, which has been a focus for three years, and we see data improvements, where one of the measures that we’re using is through the panorama data, how many students feel that there’s an adult that they can rely on no matter what? That number’s gone from 76% a year ago in the fall of 2023 to this fall, it went up to 81% of our students saying there’s an adult they can rely on, no matter what at school. So those kinds of things we’ve seen improved academic outcomes, particularly at the elementary level, and implementation of new reading curriculum and so on. So, yeah, there are lots of success stories that have happened over the time that I’ve been in this role.
Q: What were your biggest challenges as the superintendent?
A: Oh, the biggest one is the budget. Obviously the continued underfunding of K-12 education by the state, and our having to make very tough decisions on how to have a balanced budget when we know that the inflationary cost of paying staff and just paying for insurance or fuel and all those things keep going up, but the state isn’t providing the funds necessary to keep up with inflation, and so then we have to reduce the overall budget to adjust to that, and it’s very impactful. So over the last two years, we’ve cut $46 million out of our budget, $20 million one year, and then last year, $26 million for this current year. And if nothing changes at the district level, just to balance our budget, we’re going to have to cut another $6 million out of the budget for next year. That’s why we’ve spent a lot of time communicating the need at the state level. On January 27 we were down meeting with all of our local legislators, students as well as staff and parents and NSCA members and PTA. We were all there making sure they understand the need for investing more. The biggest challenge is having to create a balanced budget, but it’s so impactful. So we’ve had to reduce programming, we’ve had to increase class sizes, we’ve had to do all these things that are, in my mind, not what’s best for our students, but necessary, because we have to have a balanced budget.
Q: What different What other challenges do you think your successor will face as superintendent?
A: With what we’re seeing happening at the federal level, unfortunately some of the decisions that are happening at that level, of course, are going to impact the state and local level, so it’s almost like we wait and see as to what the overall impact will be. We keep hearing that the federal-level Department of Education will be dissolved, and that department oversees lots of funding that comes to schools one way or the other, some of the requirements. Northshore School District does receive federal dollars in certain areas, particularly in special education, our English language learners and Title 1 for our low-income communities. We use those dollars to support those populations of students. If we were to lose those federal dollars, it would be very impactful. So the next superintendent is going to have to say, okay, how do we adjust to that? And of course there’s a bond levy vote. We rely on state funding, more than 70% of our budget is based on proportionate coming from the state. But a significant amount of our operating budget comes from local levies, and so every four years we ask our community to support our schools, and our community does a great job of investing in our schools so that way we can pass our levies. But also, if we want to do any capital improvements, building improvements, we have to ask our local community for them to approve a capital bond, and that’s coming up in a year from now, in February 2026, so making sure we communicate the ongoing need. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the major construction that’s going on in the district right now. We have schools like Wooden Elementary, Fernwood, Crystal Springs, Kenmore L and Baywood, all having additional classrooms added, buildings to replace portables with actual classrooms. But that’s all the result of the generosity of our voters investing in the 2022 bond election. We have another one coming up in 2026 so continuing to tell them about the good work that goes on the district, the next superintendent is going to need to be able to continue to communicate the importance of continuing to support the district that way.
Q: Two years ago, you said that Northshore School District’s greatest strength is our students and our diversity. Has our greatest strength changed?
A: The diversity of the communities, I’ve already said that prior, that is absolutely one of the strengths of our community. I mean, we are a majority-minority population of students in the community being served and being an old biology teacher, as I mentioned, diversity provides strength in an ecological view, but that’s true for any social society as well. We learn from each other and we support each other here in Northshore. The power of student voices is amazing. So as I just mentioned several times, my superintendent student advisory board gives clear input into some of the decisions that I have to make. That’s the best part of my job, as I said, talking to students, hearing what they think, to inform how best to make sure we’re serving and meeting their interests and ultimately, when you graduate from Northshore, you’re prepared for whatever you choose to do next. That’s what it’s all about.
Q: How effectively do you think you have addressed the concerns of the community around budget cuts?
A: So I think we have done a great job communicating the why, why we’re in this situation. In many ways, we’ve over-communicated, and for the vast majority of the community, parents, staff, students, they clearly understand why we are where we are, budget-wise. That’s based on the fact that we are constantly telling the story of why we’re needing to reduce the budget. At the same time we are also making efforts to address the underlying issue, and that’s underfunding from the state. As I said, we continually meet with our elected officials, they are the ones to have to make the decision and make that happen. I worked with the school board and met with most of our local legislators here in the fall and most recently, Jan. 27, we went down to Olympia, met with all nine of our state’s legislators. Students went with us as well. And critically important, coming up on Monday, Feb. 17, that’s another Day on the Hill for the PTA. The statewide PTA will be there, our PTA members will also be there again, talking to legislators, making sure they address this issue. So all to say, I think we’ve done a great job explaining where we are and why we are where we are budget-wise and understanding why we’ve had to make some of these very, very challenging decisions in terms of adjusting our budget.
Q: What do you think the future of the district will look like?
A: The future of the district is great. Because we have great students, and we have a great community, and I truly believe our community will make sure we continue to serve our students well, no matter what. I’m very hopeful in terms of the decisions that our state legislators will make in terms of putting additional dollars in K-12 education. I feel that that will happen. We will stabilize in terms of that to a degree. But then again, when you have so many involved parents and community members, again, 11,000 volunteers in our schools and the students all working together, the future is absolutely bright for Northshore.
Q: What legacy do you think your policies as superintendent will leave behind?
A: The two main things I’ve talked about, making sure we have parental engagement and voice in what we’re doing to serve our kids and students, having an opportunity to give voice to what we do to make sure they are receiving the education they want and deserve. So I think, going back to a previous question, what I am most proud of is being able to make sure our schools are welcoming environments and where staff, students and families feel like they belong, and then having that engagement. I think that’s because it’s an ‘us’ thing. We all have to be in it together, and that’s happening here in Northshore.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?
A: Oh, I can’t think of anything in particular. Well, Northshore is a system that is a high-performing district in terms of academic outcomes for our kids. It is a relatively large district within the state of Washington, and there’s a tendency for students to be lost in the bigness of it all, but not here. We do a very good job, and will continue to do a very good job, of making sure students are known by their name, by their strengths, by their gifts, their talents, but also our ability to meet their needs.
