Rudinsky named to Sisters School Board

Steve Rudinsky is a Beaver. Not much doubt about that. Born and raised in Corvallis, he was the son of two Oregon State faculty members. His dad was an entomologist and his mother an English professor.

Rudinsky himself earned an undergraduate degree in political science from OSU before taking a job with Macy’s in California. It didn’t last because “after 18 months I realized that retail wasn’t the industry I wanted to pursue, so I jumped into the computer industry and have been in it ever since.”

To fast-forward a couple of decades, Rudinsky is in the local news today because last week he beat out seven competitors to win appointment to the Sisters School Board (see related story Page 23).

The tall, genial young man from Corvallis eventually wound up in Chicago where he took an MBA from the University of Chicago. He then came back to Oregon, still in the valley but farther north, in Lake Oswego. He worked for several computer outfits in the Portland area, one of which was ultimately purchased by the California computer giant Sun Microsystems.

But he did not move back to California. Didn’t have to. Sun “has a very aggressive policy about people working from anywhere, so I took advantage of that.” He worked from his home in Lake Oswego for a while and then decided to build a vacation house in Sisters.

“I had always wanted to spend more time in Central Oregon, even as a child. The valley, as everyone knows, has a lot of rain, a lot of fog, kind of dreary,” he said.

But what started out as a vacation/someday-retirement house in 2001 turned into a full-time residence for his family.

“Rather than working from home in Lake Oswego it was just as easy to work from home in Sisters,” he said.

His interest in the schools stems in part from his three children: Lauren will be a sixth grader this fall, Jordan a seventh grader and Danielle will be in the third grade at Sonrise Christian School, where as of last year his wife is also a pre-kindergarten teacher.

He notes that in choosing a homesite in the region he had two primary criteria: It had to have a view of the mountains. And it had to be in the Sisters School District.

Given his interest in education, why didn’t he run for the board in the May election?

“I was contemplating that,” he said, “but I know Rob (Corrigan) and Mike (Gould). Rob was my daughter’s soccer coach last year and Mike’s son and mine have played soccer for four years. When you see two solid candidates like that (there is less incentive to run) because you say, hey, these are really good people.”

But he decided to take advantage of the next opportunity, created by Tom Coffield’s announced intent to resign.

As a new board member, does he have an incoming agenda? No, he said. But a couple of things come to mind as high-priority issues.

“If I had to put a ranking of things I’d say class size is going to be an issue for Sisters,” caused by enrollment growth in the elementary school. He foresees “a potential new school coming on line once some of these subdivisions that are proposed are built and filled in.”

More generally, Rudinsky said, he wants to help “maintain a high level of excellence, just making sure we continue to strive for academic excellence.”