A New Effort Aims To Get Vashon Alumni Connected

Published 1:30 am Thursday, May 13, 2021

By Susan McCabe

For Vashon Island School District

A Vashon education often gets high marks in the outside world, but Vashon grads don’t always hear about their peers’ achievements. But now, a team at the school district is working to get alumni connected.

As soon as May 18, Vashon Island School Board member Rheagan Sparks, with help from Vashon Schools Foundation (VSF) member Nicole Martin, VHS Technology Director John Stanton, VHS principal Danny Rock and McMurray Principal Greg Allison will launch something new — the Vashon Schools Alumni Association.

The goal, according to Sparks, is to create community and opportunity for former Vashon Island School District students.

Because Vashon’s district is one of the smallest on this side of the Cascades, the pursuit of an officially sponsored alumni association has been back-burner for years due to limited resources for the project and the complexity of finding people.

“An alumni association is something the district has been considering for years, but the technology for efficiently collecting and utilizing graduate data hasn’t been available until recently,” said Sparks.

That’s where John Stanton and Danny Rock came in. Once Superintendent Slade McSheehy got excited about the prospect, Stanton and Rock went to work creating tools to simplify the search. It will start with a survey and a Facebook page. The survey goes to those graduates for whom the District has contact information and the Facebook page will start to fill in the blanks. Each tool will ask graduates to contact others who might be interested in joining the alumni association.

“It’s definitely an opt-in process,” Sparks said.

Every graduating class is different. Some, according to Sparks, are more cohesive than others. Until now, it’s been up to individual motivation to stay in touch. The district hasn’t been collecting post-graduate email addresses — that’s been an untapped resource.

The School Board found out just how much island graduates are still invested in Vashon when the suggestion to change the VHS mascot came up. Alumni came out of the woodwork to oppose the change, Sparks said, adding the communication clarified how connected graduates are to the district.

The time is right, the team thinks, to tell the story of how Vashon kids go on to do great things in the world — communicating about the successes of Vashon grads from around the country and many who are living abroad. The stories of these graduates’ lives, they said, will be a source of pride for VISD students both past and present.

While the development team plans to start slow, they envision a future where the alumni association will amplify the sense of community already built into Vashon schools. They anticipate a living resource list connecting current students with alumni for internships and job opportunities, social events and more.

“The sky’s the limit,” said Sparks. “Our first step is to ask alumni what they want from the association.”

Hence, the survey going out this month. The Alumni Association team is creating a framework into which they plan to add input from alums provided by the survey. Eventually, the team said, they hope to create a more solid network as other alumni associations offer for current students and graduates. These alumni can also, in turn, support the district either financially or with their talents, or provide opportunities to expand the reach of the school district.

The Alumni Association will operate under the auspices of the Vashon Schools Foundation (VSF), much like the PTSA has been added as Family and Community Engagement (FACE).

Vashon alums are encouraged to keep an eye out for the survey in their inboxes and to submit their ideas on how the organization can expand the Vashon community’s scope beyond high school to the broader world beyond Vashon’s shores.

As Schools Foundation Member Nicole Martin put it, “Vashon graduates share a special bond because of the unique place in which we were raised. We’ve always helped each other, but this association provides a greater opportunity for connection and organized support. Plus, it’ll be fun too.”