A desire to help people is what got Kim Voile into education.
The longtime educator takes the helm of the Annex School District next year as superintendent.
Voile will be working under a three-year contract at $95,000 per year. She succeeds longtime superintendent Steve Bishop, who will retire after this school year.
Voile, a veteran educator, is currently a reading specialist in the rural district, with 78 students from kindergarten to eighth grade enrolled in 2023, according to the Oregon Department of Education. The small district is north of Ontario, across the Snake River from Weiser.
Voile was born and raised in Mossyrock, Washington, on a small farm like the one she and her husband raised three daughters on in New Plymouth.
She has been with the Annex School District for six years. When she came over from the Ontario district, she initially taught first and second grade before becoming a principal intern and then a reading specialist.
Voile worked as a reading specialist and instructional coach in Ontario for over a decade.
Early on, when she was in high school, Voile said she didn’t know what she wanted to do for a career. When she got to college, it was clear to her that she wanted to pursue education. She earned an education degree from Washington State University.
Voile, who taught third grade in the Hermiston School District for seven years, said she knew she wanted to be a teacher and the way to do it was to “just jump in” and she has “stuck with it since.”
After moving to New Plymouth 20 years ago with her husband who had been hired as the head of the invasive species department with the Idaho Department of Agriculture, Voile decided to earn her master’s degree in reading from Northern Nazarene University.
Voile hadn’t planned to become an administrator. She wants to build on what her mentor, Bishop, has created in Annex. She said the system is a data-driven approach that drives instruction to support student growth, providing professional development for educators to use data in their teaching. A focus on literacy and high-impact teaching strategies is also a focus in the district as well, Voile said.
She said she’ll perform as a principal and will draw on her experience as an instructional coach. An instructional coach helps educators hone their strategies and improve their skills.
“I enjoy being a support to others,” she said.
Education today is not without its challenges, especially for superintendents.
Those range from dealing with the learning losses students experienced during the pandemic to the political implications of education mandates handed down from the state.
Voile said Annex is closing the learning gap. The district saw a 9% increase in reading scores from 2022 to 2023 and a 16% jump in math scores. The district’s attendance rate was also above last year.
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