MARK HOTTOWE, who was recently selected by Battle Ground School Board members as the new superintendent of Battle Ground Public Schools, is shown here speaking at the Community Forum held March 15 at Chief Umtuch Middle School. Photo courtesy of Battle Ground Public Schools
When Mark Hottowe received a phone call from search consultants Dr. Mike Boring and Dr. Al Cohen on March 24 telling him that Battle Ground School Board members had decided to offer him the position of superintendent of Battle Ground Public Schools, he said he was very happy and excited.
“I got a phone call from one of the search consultants and he told me they (school board members) were interested in me accepting the position and that they were going to vote,” Hottowe said. “He told me that I would receive a phone call after the vote had taken place. I was in a board meeting, too, so I kept running back and forth. I was in the board meeting waiting and waiting, and finally Dr. Mike Boring called me and told me the vote was unanimous.”
Board members Monty Anderson, Ken Root, Mavis Nickels, Jim Pegoraro and Stephanie McClintock voted unanimously to offer the job to Hottowe after discussing which of the three finalists to offer the job to during an executive session that lasted just a little more than an hour.
“I think we can all be pleased and happy that we’ve passed this and went through these steps,” Anderson, the current board president, said during the March 24 school board meeting. “We had three really solid candidates and I can say, for me, it was a hard decision.”
Hottowe, 60, is currently the superintendent for Ocean Beach School District in Long Beach, which has an enrollment of 975. His previous experiences include executive director of supervision and human resources for the Kelso School District, director of student services for the Kelso School District, elementary and middle school principal for the Kelso School District, principal in the Longview School District, assistant principal at the Sumner School District and a teacher at Central Kitsap School District. Hottowe obtained his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in 1975, his master’s degree in education from Central Washington University in 1982 and superintendent credential from Washington State University in 2013.
According to the Battle Ground Public Schools’ website, the Battle Ground School District currently has an enrollment of approximately 13,000 students. Although Hottowe currently works in a smaller district with only 975 students, he said he doesn’t think the size of the district will be the biggest adjustment for him. He pointed out that before taking a position with the Ocean Beach district, he worked for the Longview School District, which has an enrollment of roughly 6-7,000 students, and the Kelso School District, which has an enrollment of approximately 5,000 students. Sumner School District and Central Kitsap School District are also slightly larger districts.
Hottowe said it’s not the size of the Battle Ground district that will take the most work for him to adjust to. He said getting used to the culture and the community, and the historical context that the district’s residents have will be some of the biggest challenges for him as the new superintendent.
“I was impressed and taken aback by the people in the district that talked with me about the district,” he said. “Some can go back 10, 20, 30 or even more years (talking about the district), that’s a unique experience. I will be so new on the block when I get there, I’m going to take a great deal of time just trying to immerse myself in the school community and the Battle Ground community.”
Hottowe said he is excited to begin working with the Battle Ground School District because he believes that it offers some “really interesting opportunities for the near future.” He said he believes that the new school board members and the work that Interim Superintendent Duane Rose and Interim Deputy Superintendent Lynn Hicks have done is moving the district in the right direction.
“They’ve done some really important things to regain community trust and support, and it seems like the past is fading,” Hottowe said. “With the upcoming growth that I think is going to occur in the community, the future is going to be really exciting in Battle Ground, that was intriguing to me (when I applied for the job).”
Although school board members and school administrators have been attempting to regain community members’ trust after the district’s settlement with former superintendent Shonny Bria, Hottowe acknowledges that he will need to continue to help regain that trust when he officially begins his position as superintendent.
“I have a couple of thoughts on trust and the first is that I intend to be active in the community at a fairly high level and be approachable so the community can come to know me and know me as I am,” he said. “Secondly, if I and the district do our work at a high level with integrity and transparency and really focus on that area, I believe the rest will take care of itself. There are two fronts to rebuilding trust. We don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the community will support a district if they just do their work and do it at a high level.”
Anderson, the board president, said he is excited about Hottowe taking the superintendent position.
“To take something that he (Hottowe) said, ‘Battle Ground is on the cusp of great things happening,’ ” Anderson said. “There is a lot of potential for growth and we need to be ahead of that. When you have someone who can be ahead of the growth and someone that can bring the community together, that is good. Duane and Lynn have put the salve on the wound, there were a lot of things that were just haywire (in the district) and Duane and Lynn have put the salve on there. It’s at a delicate point now where that wound will either heal or open back up, and I think Mark will continue down that path to heal the wound.”
Hottowe and his wife, Marcie, currently live in Longview. He has one daughter, Patricia, who lives in California, and two grandchildren.
School board members have already started working on Hottowe’s contract with the district and Anderson said they are hoping to bring it forward in a meeting soon to vote on it. They may hold a special meeting for that purpose, as their next regularly scheduled meeting isn’t until April 14.
