School Board Outstanding Employee Awards

Nicole Brown, 3rd-grade Teacher, Sartori Elementary School

Nicole has served with distinction in the Renton School District for nearly two decades. She consistently goes above and beyond to support students and families, building meaningful relationships rooted in trust, communication, and care. Nicole actively seeks opportunities to strengthen her practice by engaging in PLCs, instructional labs, and ongoing professional development, demonstrating a true commitment to continuous growth and excellence.

She is respected among peers as a steady advocate for others: always listening thoughtfully, speaking up for the needs of her colleagues and students, and working tirelessly to ensure everyone feels supported and valued.

The same qualities that make her an exceptional teammate define her classroom practice: she holds students to high expectations while consistently advocating for their individual needs and thoughtfully differentiating instruction to help every learner succeed. In the 2024-2025 school year, her and 3rd-grade team scored 75% proficiency on the Math Smarter Balanced Assessment, surpassing the state’s 3rd grade math score average by over 20%.

Nicole’s dedication to learning, reflection, and improvement makes her an outstanding educator, an inspiration to her colleagues, a model for her students. Her impact reaches far beyond her classroom, and she exemplifies the very best of the teaching profession.

Teri Garrett, Physical Education Teacher, Lindbergh High School

Teri works hard to ensure students have every opportunity to succeed, in her class and in life. She is known to think of new, innovative ways to improve the lives of students. Including staying after school to teach students how to ride a bike (and teaching them how to repair bikes). She encourages and teaches students how to swim or take swimming classes so that they can be safe and enjoy life in the Pacific Northwest.

Teri consistently collaborates with colleagues on student needs, and volunteers to write grants to fund new games and sports. She created an adapted PE class to mix general education students with high-needs special-needs students to create an inclusive and educational environment. She has created new classes for students including walking class, yoga, outdoor education, swimming, life-guarding, dance and more. 

Teri strives to be the best PE teacher she can and goes to professional developments, state meetings, even testifying for PE legislation and serving as president on SHAPE Washington, a non-profit dedicated to advancing, promoting, and supporting high-quality health, physical education, dance, and adapted physical education programs.

Keith Eager, Physical Education Teacher, Renton High School

Keith has worked in the Renton School District for nearly four decades as a teacher, coach, and a confidant, touching the lives of countless young people to better athletes and individuals.

Keith serves in many roles at school: Family And Community Engagement (FACE) Team, head girls track coach, supervises after-school weight room activities, serves on the school’s Safety Team, is a past Department Chair, past head wrestling coach and has also coached football and volleyball. He is in the Washington State Coaches Hall of Fame for track and field. His commitment has championed several student athletes to stay in school and graduate and continue their education into college.

Keith has always been a strong believer in representing Renton High with Pride, Tradition, and Excellence. His commitment and service is respected and appreciated by so many throughout the district.

Nakeya Isabel, Restorative Justice Coordinator and Student Support, Nelsen Middle School

Nakeya always goes well beyond her job duties each day directly supporting hundreds of students. She leads class meetings, runs restorative conversations, creates advisory content, designs tier one lessons used by school staff, and routinely steps up when there’s a task outside of her responsibilities. Nakeya is service oriented centering students in all her work including identifying students and staff to be celebrated and valued.

Nakeya also extends her expertise in community building by highlighting our student school culture weekly through community-building videos. She has created opportunities for students through the dance club, basketball club, and more.

Nakeya works to incorporating academic expectations, behavioral reminders, and joyful celebrations o students and staff in her school.

Kelly Jones, Assistant Principal, Hazen High School

Kelly’s impact on the Hazen High community is immeasurable, building strong relationships with students, staff and families, and using those relationships to build a better Hazen and improve student experiences. Never hesitant to do difficult work, Kelly took complete ownership of the school’s testing and assessments, which led to a much more knowledgeable staff, more engaged students, and a smoother and more successful season of test-taking for the entire school.  

Kelly is committed to ensuring each student gets the most out of their high school experience by working to increase attendance, improve engagement, and creating a sense of belonging by all students and families.

Kelly Jones does so much to make the school a safe and welcoming space and continues to make the greater Hazen community stronger and a positive space for everyone.

Shyla Butler, Senior Budget Administrative Assistant, Career and Technical Education Department

Shyla consistently demonstrates outstanding job performance, active support, and dedication through exceptional attention to detail, proactive problem-solving, and a strong commitment to fiscal integrity and operational efficiency. She expertly manages complex budget processes with a high degree of accuracy and timeliness, identifying discrepancies in budget line items before they escalate, ensuring corrections are made promptly, thereby preventing potential compliance or funding issues.

Shyla actively supports departments throughout the district by anticipating budget needs, providing clear guidance on allowable expenditures, and assisting staff in navigating myriad budget procedures. She is the go-to resource for budget questions, offering patient explanations and solutions that support both fiscal responsibility and program success.

Shyla also holds roles as Renton Education Support Professional (Union) President and Skyway Community Advocate, serving as a bridge between schools and families; building trust through visibility, responsiveness, and cultural understanding which has a profound and far-reaching impact on staff, students, families, and the greater community.

Alisa Vinson-Ames, Kindergarten Teacher, Sartori Elementary School

Alisa is collaborative, humble and always open-minded and willing to learn new things, which not only allows her to strengthen her pedagogy, but gives her students more opportunities to be successful. Her clear and high expectations are evidenced in her fun, nurturing, safe, and productive class community. Alisa creates a learning environment that is well-organized and efficient, which makes her classroom management seem effortless. To have such great classroom management with students this age takes a lot of practice, patience, consistency, and clear expectations. Her students always know what’s expected of them.

Alisa’s positive working relationships with families doesn’t just occur during the school day. Outside of school, Alisa attends student baseball, soccer, and basketball games, and dance activities. With such strong support, students and families never forget the positive impact. Attending community events with families outside of school deepens the knowledge of her students’ backgrounds as well as allows her to discover more of her students’ interests. Because of this, Alisa plans activities in the classroom that honor students' cultural backgrounds and keeps them highly engaged. She is instrumental and influential to her entire school's community.

Jessica Malan, Hazen High School

Jessica lives with the life goal of seeing all students not only graduate but find success in their school and post-secondary careers. Her classroom is open to all students at lunch and many students not assigned to her class pop in for math support or general school support. She leads credit recovery classes responding and can be found responding to emails at 3 a.m. to open testing sections for students to access and complete grad required classes.

Jessica supports families as they reach out to better understand how to access resources, navigate post-secondary processes, and more.

The most important contribution Jessica makes to improve the achievement of students is fostering self-confidence and self-advocacy within students to help them realize they can achieve their goals.

Kara Crum, Lindbergh High School

Kara provides her students with great care and compassion. She has multiple languages spoken in her class and has created systems to support all of them, and she makes Lindbergh High feel like home to students and families.

Kara rewrote Career and Technical Education (CTE) frameworks for ninth-grade classes that was then piloted by her school. She also led efforts to team with Nelsen Middle School to identify incoming 9^th-graders who had academic and attendance characteristics that indicated they might struggle in the transition to high school. The outcome was that those 50 students passed 92% of Trimester 1 classes.

Rick Pitts, College & Career Specialist, Talley High School

Rick is a natural service-driven leader who works tirelessly to help students and families. He is caring, generous, humble, funny, and student-centered, and invests time, energy and love to students to ensure they feel supported, encouraged, and challenged. He has drastically increased the number of interest-based learning opportunities for Talley students and single-handedly organized and facilitated the district's largest career fair to present students with a tangible review of what their future could hold.

Beyond his work at Talley High, Rick also chaperons student tripos to Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) during his Spring Break.

Rick models dedication, excellence, high expectations, and selflessness to Talley High students, families, and staff and is a shining light in our school community. 

Bob Ettinger, Director, Curriculum & Instruction

Bob's work touches everyone throughout the Renton School District. He directly supports teachers and school leaders, which directly impacts students and student learning. His knowledge, personal learning, and experience in math, science, and language arts is fundamentally important in how the district provides support to educators to improve classroom learning for students. He supports the district’s core curriculum implementation, student assessments, libraries, district digital tools, induction of our new teachers, and more. He routinely meets with family and community members to work through ideas and processes curriculum and learning tools to better improve teaching and learning.

Bob makes an impact in every school, every day and is always advocating to improve instruction and resources for students and teachers. He is driven and committed to student learning and ensuring all students have access and options to be successful.

Rozlynn Dance, 1st Grade Teacher, Sartori Elementary School

Rozlynn always ensures her classroom is nurturing, welcoming, and a safe learning environment for all students. She knows and values each of her students individually, appreciating their similarities and differences, and works to meet their specific needs to keep them highly engaged. She incorporates knowledge of her student’s families and interests into their daily learning by engaging her students in authentic and meaningful tasks and activities. Beyond the classroom, Rozlynn coaches girls aged 8-12 in the Girls On the Run program, helping teach life skills through interactive lessons, games, and exercise. Girls who have never participated in running say Mrs. Dance helped them gain confidence, developed positive and meaningful relationships with their teammates, and feel better about who they are.

Rozlynn believes in sharing her experience with others: she is a mentor to first-year teachers, a speaker at national teaching conferences, and is a published author of “Thinking Together: 9 Beliefs for Building a Mathematical Community,” showcasing her beliefs about teaching mathematics as well as steps to lead with compassion and equity for all and promoting a sense of belonging in the classroom. Rozlynn demonstrates an unwavering commitment to ensuring that all students have access to high-quality instruction.

Michael Guimond, English Language Arts Teacher, Lindbergh High School

Michael is well loved and respected by Lindbergh High students, staff, and families. He works hard, well beyond his classroom duties to support the entire school as the lead for the 9^th-grade success program, the lead to help students with credit recovery, he leads staff in professional development work, mentors students, and even chaperones school dances.

This school year, along with his classroom work, Michael also partnered with school staff and administration to create a shared vision for 9th grade success, working to help students improve their first trimester on-track class passing rates by 13 percentage points: increasing from 66% last year to 79% this school year. The work has helped Lindbergh High be nationally recognized for their growth of 9th grade on track success.

Micheal’s willingness to take on many additional tasks and work has been in service of the entire school to help make success easier and more accessible for students. His positivity is contagious, and he exemplifies the type of teacher students gravitate to for education and empathy.

Rekeda Rountree, Counselor, Sartori Elementary School

Rekeda makes it her mission to create a safe and connected environment for all Sartori Elementary students, staff, and families. She has created many social groups for students experiencing various struggles in their family life and at school. She partners with teachers to present lessons on Social Emotional Learning (SEL), personal safety, and social justice. She created and facilities a student counsel group with representatives from each grade level to come together and discuss matters important to students.

To better support families, Rekeda helped start the school’s food pantry program to ensure students get enough to eat on the weekend, and a started clothing swap and coat drive for the school community. Rekeda also co-authored lessons supporting learning and celebrating the various components of identity as it pertains to race and culture for the school.

Rekeda’s work helps empowers students as leaders and changemakers, supports mental health of students, staff, and families, and helps connect families to needed resources and support

Rita Baccus, Athletics Office

For over a decade, Rita has consistently supported athletic programming in the district’s three comprehensive high schools and four middle schools. She coordinates hundreds of trips to athletic events, schedules officials for hundreds of athletic events, hires and provides certification for 250 coaches, schedules facilities, and communicates all of these games and responsibilities to all students, families, and staff. Rita builds teams of individuals who work football, soccer, and track events at the Renton Stadium, creates budgets for these events, and works closely with Human Resources and Business Office staff to help ensure our coaches and others are paid.

Rita even sets the field light schedule for our smaller fields at high schools for practices and community sports teams, ensures the I-Pads for ticketing sales are charged, and follows up to ensure the online links for ticket sales are up and running. She coordinates athletic schedules into the automated system and coordinates with the 24 Athletic Directors in the King County Conference.

Rita he is resourceful, dedicated, and consciousness. Her job performance, support, and dedication is truly outstanding.

Kerrie Thornton, Technology Support

Kerrie holds herself to high standards and goes above and beyond in her service to the school district. She is thoughtful, reflective, and dedicated, and understands that her work and responsibilities go far beyond her department. This year, Kerrie helped support learning across the district of the new Zoom phone system. She created incredible resources and scheduled visits to different departments and schools to ensure staff were familiar with the new system and that the systems themselves were functioning well.

Kerrie was instrumental in creating and posting informational resources on the district’s support platforms, she created the new Dual Language website ensuring the information was ADA compliant, adding closed captioning on screen recordings in both English and Spanish. She has a clear ability to problem-solve and make improvements help to ensure staff have the resources and information they need to better support students and families. Kerrie also helps with the district 1:1 laptop program and helps to resolve issues with Chromebooks, Device Protection Plan, and our hotspots for students in grades 4-12. The most important contribution Kerrie makes to improve the achievement of students is in her clear support for staff working directly with students by ensuring resources and information is continually updated, easily navigated, accurate, and positive. She continually seeks feedback in order to make improvements and remove barriers for students and staff.

Kerrie strives for excellence in all the work she does and gives every task her all ensuring it is thoughtfully planned, intentionally gathering and incorporating feedback, and proactively communicating with all vested partners.