Jan Martin leaving school district for Crook County

Jan Martin has a big collection of vocational hats. She wears three for Sisters schools: administrative assistant AA to the superintendent, secretary to the school board and human resources manager.

If you get hired, fired, promoted, demoted or just moved sideways in the school system, your paperwork, and possibly you, will pass through Martin’s office. That office is next to the one occupied by Superintendent Ted Thonstad, symbolizing Martin’s status as the boss’s right-hand person.

Unfortunately for those who have come to depend on her, Martin is leaving. She has taken a similar job with Crook County Schools in Prineville. There, she will be school board secretary and administrative assistant to Superintendent Steve Swisher, an old friend and former employer.

Martin worked as Swisher’s AA throughout his seven-year tenure as superintendent in Sisters. He retired in 2003, took an interim superintendency on the coast, and landed the Prineville job in the fall of 2004.

Martin has been with Sisters schools for 13 years. Why is she leaving? “I heard that Steve’s administrative assistant was leaving and the job was going to be posted and I thought that would provide an opportunity to make a change. Thirteen years is a long time. I’m not disgruntled, upset, mad or anything. I figured I had one more good move left in me…I’m sad to leave Sisters after 13 years but I’m also looking forward to the opportunity of doing something different, still using all my school experience.”

It was not just a case of Swisher picking up the phone and saying, “Hey, Jan, why don’t you come to work for me?” She was one of eight applicants and went through a standard interview process. Nonetheless, Thonstad may be starting to feel there is more than a little symbolism in the Crook County name. This is Swisher’s second major personnel “theft” in recent weeks. Earlier, he lured Sisters High School Assistant Principal Jim Golden to Prineville to become principal of the significantly larger Crook County High School.

Thonstad issued a statement saying in part: “Jan’s resignation creates a big hole in the district office…and I hate to lose her. In her years with the district, Jan has become a key employee and there is no way to replace her knowledge of the district…Crook County is getting an outstanding employee who will be an immediate asset.”

Jan Martin and her husband Bob have lived in Sisters since the summer of 1991, when they moved from Tigard. “Why did we move here? Like almost everybody else, for a better way of life and to get out of the big city,” she explained last week. They had vacationed in the area for years and “just loved it.”

“I’m an Eastern Oregon girl,” she says. She was born and raised in Stanfield, near Pendleton, and graduated from Stanfield High School. She attended Northwest Business College in Portland.

Part of the move to Sisters was guided by the fact that the Martins had a seventh grade daughter and fifth grade son. They were aware that in 1992 Sisters would begin operating its first high school in more than 20 years. “If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have moved here,” Jan said.

She had an extensive background as an executive secretary and office manager in the private sector in the Portland area. She got a job with Sisters schools as an office substitute and in less than a year became executive secretary to then-Superintendent Judy May. Swisher replaced May in 1996 and kept Martin in the post.

Bob, a residential and commercial building contractor, also joined the school staff in 2000. He became the construction project manager for the second new high school, which opened in the fall of 2003. He remains the district’s facilities manager but now splits his time between Sisters and the High Desert Education Service District, based in Redmond.

Jan Martin just passed another professional milestone. In May she completed a one-year term as president of the Oregon School Personnel Association, the statewide organization for personnel supervisors.

Another milestone, this one personal, will come in August when the Martins’ backyard will serve as the site of their daughter’s wedding. Kristina, 26, works as a paraprofessional at Sisters Middle School.

Martin says she and Bob will probably look for a house closer to Prineville, possibly in the town itself.

In the meantime, she says, “I love the Sisters School District and it’s going to be sad to leave, but I’m also looking forward to the excitement of change.”