It’s been a 36-year education-career ride for Donna Colosky.

She started out as a kindergarten teacher in southern California in the mid-1980s, and for the last three and a half years she’s led the Mercer Island School District as its superintendent.

Colosky visited with the Reporter earlier this month to discuss her career, and what it’s been like leading the district during the pandemic.

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** Tell us about your background and how you came to be the superintendent of the Mercer Island School District.

I was recruited and contracted (out of the University of British Columbia) to be a teacher in southern California, and spent 32 years working my way through a soCal district through many different positions. Of course, as teacher first, mentor, coach and then moved into administration to become an assistant principal, principal, curriculum director, senior director, assistant sup HR.

Then when I became an empty nester, my husband and I said, ‘Let’s see if we can get further north.’ (Back near her home in the Vancouver, British Columbia area.) So we moved to northern California and I had a superintendent seat there for a few years in a town that is really struggling right now called Paradise, that was devastated by the fires after I left. Coming to Mercer Island was really coming back to my roots and my home in the Pacific Northwest. The opportunity came and I jumped on it and was very pleased and proud to be selected.

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** What drew you to this position and being superintendent?

Going through all of the different types of positions: Loved being a teacher; when I left to be an administrator, you’re certainly so close to kids, but your work is more leading adults and teachers and supporting them in their craft of teaching. As a superintendent, I really still feel like that’s one of my most important roles is to really support teachers in refining their art and science of teaching and learning because that’s what makes the difference for kids. (She was drawn to Mercer Island because it’s not a large district, like where she worked before.) When you’re in a larger district, you really do become much more removed from the classroom and from students. I really appreciate the tightness of a small community like Mercer Island.

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** What were your initial thoughts when COVID hit last spring? Did you guys have a game plan in mind and what was it like pivoting to remote?

I don’t think anyone, me included, when we closed our schools on March 11 thought that we would still be in this place we’re in in December.

Our real game plan was we were going to be remote for a month, maybe through our spring break. We’d come back to in-person in late spring and be able to ramp up from there. As far as looking ahead for how long are you going to be in this?… We’re all doing our best to follow the Department of Health, how they’re guiding us, and a lot of superintendents and public educators will tell you, ‘I’m not an epidemiologist, I have to follow what others are telling me.’ I don’t think anyone thought that we would be in this phase as long as we are. But there’s been so many complications. As you’re out longer, it gets harder and harder to get people back to in-person, whether it’s students and their families or staff.

(Initially) it was a lot of emergency and crisis kind of mode. We had to pivot quickly because the governor closed schools, we weren’t even being allowed to reopen. In that crisis kind of mode, you really do have a different kind of planning that you’re doing, which is meeting those really basic needs of students: which is, do they have the devices they need, do they know how to log on, do teachers have the devices and the training that they need? And really pivoting almost daily as new guidance and recommendations are coming down and they’re pivoting within policy as to what is grading going to look like? What does your instructional year look like? What is assessment going to be? What is testing going to be? So all of those daily kind of pivots really consumed us for probably through about until the announcement by the governor that we were closed for the rest of the year.

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** You’ve had a lot on your plate from last spring until now (and beyond) — how have you dealt with the challenges?

(On reopening in the fall) we had a lot of guidance from OSPI, from Department of Health, frankly even the governor’s office, and all of the stipulations within that, again make it super complex. Our entire leadership team (including the district teaching and learning team, director of maintenance and operations, principals and more) spent the entire summer working on what would reopening look like? We spent a lot of time serving parents and staff as to would we have people who wanted to come back? We were starting to hear a lot of folks saying, ‘Not going to come back until there’s a vaccine.’ So having to manage, ‘All right, we’re going to have a couple of different modalities here.’ We’re going to have the folks who really want to be fully remote and want that for the entire year, as well as those who want to be back in classrooms immediately.

Over the summer, we expanded our remote learning platform (to a K-12 online system). Heard loud and clear from our parents that the lack of daily contact that students had to teachers in the spring was something that we needed to have ready to go come the fall. Which we did, we have a much stronger remote plan.

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** What’s the current schedule for bringing students and teachers back into the classrooms?

Washington state’s guidance, in what’s called the Decision Tree, which is in coordination with the Department of Health and the governor, is probably one of the most strict in the nation. We’re optimistic and hopeful that we’re going to be able to bring in more kids. We do have kids in right now, we have over 60 of our highest impact special needs students. We have had to move our date of kindergarten and first grade (in-person learning). I’ve been determined since last spring and we’ve got to get our youngest learners in, and so we now have a date of Jan. 6 (at press time), when we come back from winter break.

We’ve heard loud and clear that as much as folks wanted that daily interaction with teachers and their students, we’re also hearing now, kids really need to have that in-person learning experience. Not just with their teachers, but for their peers. They’re missing their teachers, but they’re missing each other, too.

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** What type of person does it take to deal with adversity and keep moving forward?

Optimistic. Always hopeful. I think those are probably the two big character traits that I think carry you through. This is really discouraging, trying times. It’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, so I think that optimism of we can get through this together. It is about team. There is no one person that can design or figure this out on their own, so I am super fortunate to have such a great team that I get to work with. Certainly my leadership team, including all of our principals and all of our leaders here at the distinct, but also our teachers as well. Our teachers really pivoted quickly in the spring when they had to send their kids home on a Friday and say, ‘OK, take everything you think you need,’ and really worked super collaboratively last spring. We know that there was some dissatisfaction with that, but they’ve pivoted again and had to learn a lot of skills in teaching in this format.

I think what carries me through it all is it has to be about students.

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** What type of feedback have you received from teachers and parents and students about remote learning and how have you responded to that?

It’s pretty interesting because right now we have a real sense that on Mercer Island, at least with our parents — it’s divided. When we sent out a communications saying, ‘We have to move our date,’ like we did recently right before Thanksgiving, it’s about 50-50 percent. Both teachers and families saying, ‘Thank you, the numbers are too high, I can’t imagine coming back in this,’ and another 50 percent who are angry and upset because they’re frustrated and they’ve got COVID fatigue and they’re seeing their children not enjoying their learning. Totally understand that as well, so got both responses.

** What do you tell those that are frustrated?

Mostly listen, and try to point them to all of the different complexities that we have to deal with in reopening. I work really closely with our PTA Council, our parents. I think that’s a really important connection. They are supporting us by gathering all these different questions for us to do our best to try and answer. They’re (parents) just frustrated and they need someone to listen, and we do our best to listen.

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** How are you feeling about yourself now coming out of this? Do you feel like you’ve grown as a person? These are life lessons that we’re learning here that we didn’t think we’d have to deal with.

I think we’re all learning every day in everything that we’re doing, whether it’s a pandemic or another crisis or good times, right? I always have called myself the ‘lead learner’ here on Mercer Island, because if you’re not learning, that’s not a very optimistic outlook.