Former teacher of year leaves CdA schools

One of the four Coeur d’Alene teachers honored as Idaho Teacher of the Year during the past seven years is leaving the school district to teach sixth grade at the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy.

The Charter Academy’s Board of Directors approved Nancy Larsen’s contract for the upcoming school year at its meeting last week. The Coeur d’Alene School Board was scheduled to approve Larsen’s resignation and other resignations and hires at its meeting Monday night but entered a closed-door session to discuss the personnel matters and hadn’t made a decision as of press time.

Larsen joins Geri Hagler, formerly a fifth-grade teacher at Atlas Elementary, as the Charter Academy’s new sixth-grade teachers. The school added a class of 25 sixth graders to the existing three for next year, and sixth-grade teacher Steve Taylor left his post to become vice principal when Dan Nicklay was promoted to principal.

Named Idaho Teacher of the Year in 2000, Larsen taught second grade at Ramsey Elementary School for 11 years, spending three as the school’s lead teacher. She’s been a teaching coach for the school district for the past four years. Budget constraints eliminated that position for the coming school year, Larsen said, and she was slated to return to the classroom.

She said she’d never considered leaving the district until she met Nicklay, a staff member at the Charter Academy since 2000, at a University of Idaho class this summer on school law.

“When I said that I was going to be going back to the classroom he said, ‘Why don’t you come work for me?’ ” Larsen said.

Larsen hopes to return to school one day to pursue a Ph.D, which the charter school would partially fund, she said.

“That’ll help,” she said.

The charter school also pays more, Nicklay said.

Nicklay praised Larsen as a professional who knows what she’s doing.

“We’re pleased that we could convince her” to join the charter school staff, Nicklay said. “I’m really excited about it. I don’t know any other word for it.”

Larsen has experience working with education-related issues at the state level and recently took over as president of the Idaho Council of the International Reading Association.

She said she wants everyone to understand that she isn’t leaving the school district because she’s unhappy.

“It’s going to be very hard to leave the district,” she said. “I just love the people that I’ve worked with over the years.”

With at least 15 years of teaching left in her, the 49-year-old won’t rule out the possibility of a return.

“Everyone has said ‘We hope you come back someday,’ so I’m thinking that perhaps my future (may bring me) back to the Coeur d’Alene school district someday,” she said.