La Grande High School Principal Brett Baxter, left, on Thursday, March 23, 2017, talks with Robin Maille, a member of the La Grande School Board, in the bio-med lab of the school's new Career Technical Education building.

LA GRANDE — When school resumes later this month, La Grande High School will have a new principal at the helm.

Chelsea Hurliman takes over as principal of the high school following the departure of Brett Baxter, who stepped down at the end of June to take a position as assistant superintendent of the Wallowa County Education Service District.

“I’m excited to move up to the high school,” Hurliman said. “I think that will be fun.”

Hurliman was most recently the vice principal of La Grande Middle School for two years and before that was vice principal of Baker High School as well as an English and science teacher at Baker Middle School for the 14 years preceding that.

“I love to see children succeed. I love having kids come up to me, you know, five years, three years (later), and I’m like, I’m doing this,” she said.

Hurliman’s years at the middle school brought many changes. One implemented change was that of common agreements among the staff. Common agreements establish a set of rules and expectations that all the teachers, paraeducators and students are required to abide by.

“I do think that having some sort of a universal standard, the middle school calls them common agreements, (is important),” she said.“These are the things that we are, as a staff, going to abide by.”

Hurliman’s plans at LHS go further than this. One of her most important initiatives, she said, is aimed at improving the culture at the high school.

“After talking with staff and students, the feedback that I’ve gotten is that they want to expand the culture here,” she said. “I know I heard they wanted to have more assemblies. It’s kind of that culture building type feel here. So I definitely want to enhance that and I think that starts with working with our student body, especially with our leadership kids.”

Popular among students

Ella Johnson, an incoming sophomore at the high school, expressed excitement over the prospect of Hurliman expanding school culture.

“I think that improving school spirit will be great,” she said. “I would love to see more kids get further into school spirit events and be able to enjoy their high school experience.”

Hailey Smith, an incoming senior and member of the high school’s student government, shared Johnson’s sentiment.

“Mrs. Hurliman’s goals are not only a great start to change, but also a great way to create a new environment for the high school,” she said.

One of Hurliman’s biggest concerns is the school’s attendance and graduation rates, both of which have experienced steep drops in recent years. The high school’s graduation rate went from 85.99% in 2021 to 64.94% in 2022. The rates for the class of 2023 have not been released yet. Hurliman does have a plan to combat these dropping rates, however.

“One of the main things I’m going to focus on is making sure we are tracking students from the time they come in,” she said. “If we notice right away that things aren’t going the way they should be going, (the student is) failing core classes, credit deficient, we need to step in and make changes immediately instead of waiting until the end of the term or end of junior year or whatever it is to catch these credits up.”

George Mendoza, the superintendent of La Grande School District, stated his support of Hurliman’s goals.

“Those strategies create success because we know their stories and we know the child,” he said. “If she does those things I think she will be very successful in achieving what we are working toward.”

Hurliman pointed to the success of the school’s Career and Technical Education programs as something she’d like to build on. The programs consist of classes that teach practical skills such as woodworking and welding. The classes are consistently popular and provide a steep increase in graduation rates for concentrators.

“The CTE program in my mind runs hand in hand with college. We do not have a workforce without having folks that have either gone to college or have a skillset,” she said. “I mean, we have to have people that do both and I’m in total support of any kind of CTE curriculum.”

Pat Des Jardin, the head of the science department at the high school, said he is eager to work with Hurliman.

“In 17 years at LHS, I have worked with an amazing group of wonderful educators and exceptional support staff,” he said. “I look forward to seeing how Mrs. Hurliman will support that system.”