School Board Outstanding Employee Awards

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 supports.

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.