Friendship Follows New Principals To School

After seven years of Cougar football games and trading school pictures of their kids, Mike Dunn and Mick Miller will take their friendship to the office next year.

Dunn and Miller, hired by the Mead School Board Tuesday night to run the two district high schools, appear to be cut from the same cloth. Both are Washington State University graduates from education families. Both have young children and good rapport with students and faculty.

The two became friends while Dunn taught with Miller’s wife at Lewis and Clark High School. They have stayed in touch, as Dunn became principal of Shadle Park High School and Miller moved to Kelso, Wash., to head the high school there.

Their friendship will serve them well next year, when they ‘co-principal’ Mead High School for a year before Dunn goes to the new Mount Spokane - Mead High School in September 1997.

“Both of these people bring a strong sense of working as a team and a sense of working for the future,” said superintendent Bill Mester. “That’s a really exciting thing to us.”

A selection committee spent five months sifting through 62 applications, looking for principals who would fit the close-knit Mead community and would stay in the district for a long time. The committee settled on two young, experienced administrators with deep Spokane roots. And great references.

“I actually got goose bumps when I went to their buildings,” said Cindy Lupton, a search committee member and mother of three Mead students. “I heard kids say, ‘We don’t do anything at school and Mr. Dunn still knows my name.”’

The two are well-known in Spokane education circles. Dunn’s father, Clayton, now retired, was an assistant superintendent in Mead and school superintendent in Pullman and Medical Lake districts. Miller’s father, Don, is principal of Garry Middle School in District 81.

Miller said he grew up unsure if he wanted to be an educator, but had an epiphany his sophomore year.

“It was during an accounting test, while I was calculating the depreciation of a truck,” said Miller, 34. “I thought about it for a second and thought, I couldn’t care less. … I finished the test and immediately went to the administration building and changed my major.”

Dunn, 39, had planned to be a lawyer and majored in political science. He also realized education was his calling.

At Shadle Park, Dunn has included staff and parents in decisions normally reserved for school administrators. That has helped create strong loyalty, staff members say.

“Although his professional skills are unparalleled, the saddest part about losing Mike is that many of us feel like we’re losing more than a principal,” said Staci Veneske, a Shadle Park English teacher. “Mike is like family to many of us - he has been a shoulder to cry on, a cheerleader, a parent and a counselor.”

Gary Kinch, assistant at Kelso High School, said people who work with Miller are treated with respect and dignity.

“He looks for the best in people and really builds on it,” said Kinch.

Neither is concerned about sharing power for a year, during which the faculty for both schools will be at the Mead campus. Mester said Dunn will be making many decisions for the new school while he helps run Mead High School.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. MICK MILLER Age: 34 Family: Wife, Shannon; children Katie, 8, Don, 7, and Mary, 7 months. Education: Shadle Park High School; undergraduate degree from Washington State University; master’s degree from Whitworth. Professional experience: Taught English and was an administrator and athletic director at North Central High School for 11 years; named principal of Kelso High School in 1994. Salary: $73,688

2. MIKE DUNN Age: 39 Family: Wife, Teresa, a teacher at Lake Spokane Elementary School; children, sons Christopher, 7, and Aaron, 4. Education: Medical Lake High School; undergraduate degree from Washington State University; master’s degree from WSU; five credit hours away from a doctorate. Professional experience: Began teaching career in Ritzville, Wash., in 1979; taught at Lewis and Clark High School before moving to Shadle Park as assistant principal; named principal at Shadle in 1990. Salary: $73,688