Key Spokane Public Schools official leaving

Staci Vesneske, Spokane Public Schools’ assistant superintendent of human resources, is leaving to take a job in a Las Vegas school district. Vesneske, 45, has been working in Spokane’s largest school district since she started her career 22 years ago. Her last day is Aug. 12. “It was a difficult decision to leave such a great district – really, a district which has ‘raised me,’ so to speak, since my first year as a teacher at Shadle Park High School in 1989,” Vesneske said. However, Vesneske says couldn’t resist working in a state where legislators were “courageous enough to mandate student academic growth as a required part of teacher evaluations – 50 percent” and teachers with “two years of poor performance will be assigned probationary status in terms of statutory non-renewal.” Vesneske’s new job is the same position she serves in Spokane Public Schools, but it’s the fifth-largest district in the nation, with 309,000 students and 37,000 employees.