Mead High Principal Retiring To Raise Cattle, Study Bugs

After 16 years at the helm of Mead High School, principal Steve Hogue will resign in June to raise cattle and play with bugs.

Hogue’s doctoral thesis at the University of Idaho was on insects and he has continued to study the little critters as an educator. The two go hand in hand, he says.

“You have to be a little buggy to be a principal,” said Hogue, 55.

Hogue is retiring as the school district is preparing to open a second high school in September of 1997. He had planned to retire at the end of the 1996-97 school year.

The district will soon post openings for two principal positions - Hogue’s job at Mead High School and the other at the new, unnamed high school.

“It’s increasingly obvious we need to have leadership of two new principals,” said Hogue, a youthful 55 with a gray crew cut. “That is the best for the Mead community.”

Hogue has spent 34 years in Spokane public schools, his first job teaching biology and chemistry at Lewis and Clark High School in 1962. Like most educators, Hogue can speak at length about his job. Unlike many, Hogue has an almost spiritual devotion to teaching.

“The thing that is really special about Steve is his philosophy about meeting the needs of all kids,” said Conn Wittwer, Colbert Elementary School principal who has know Hogue for 21 years.

Hogue says he is most proud of the lengths Mead High School goes to make students feel welcome. The school’s no-cut athletic policy helps develop a sense of community, he says. Teachers lead weekly support groups for students with eating disorders, anger management problems, divorced parents or death among family or friends.

Mead Educational Alternative Division, or M.E.A.D., the district’s alternative school, was also started under Hogue’s leadership.

Hogue says those programs help the school meet the “social, physical and mental needs of kids” - social service burdens that are increasingly falling on educators.

“If their heads are filled with pain, you are not going to reach kids,” he said.

“If you get kids who have fun and have a sense of belonging, they’ll be there.”

One of the most difficult periods of his career was during the early and mid-1970s, when Vietnam protests spurred anti-authority attitudes in students.

“We learned that the length of hair or length of a girl’s skirt does not have any correlation to learning,” said Hogue.

Married with four children, Hogue said he will stay busy in retirement. He plans to travel, fish, raise limousin cattle and study bugs.

Hogue said he will, at the school board’s request, help with staff and curriculum issues as the district prepares to open the new school.

Planning committees are working on a smorgasbord of decisions - from school boundaries to school colors. Most teachers and staff already know which school they will be working at in 1997.

But to ensure full classrooms at the two high schools and ease overcrowding at the middle schools, ninth graders - now at the junior high - will be moved up to study with the big boys and girls.

That means significant shifts in curriculum and teaching styles, said district spokesman John Keith.

Hogue feels it is time to retire, but that doesn’t prevent feelings of sadness.

“After this long a period at Mead, you get acquainted with a lot of special families and special kids. It has become like a family to me,” said Hogue.

, DataTimes