Interim superintendent dives into work

Published 10:22 am Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Now just shy of two months into her one-year gig as Vashon Island School District’s interim superintendent, Dr. Jo Moccia will soon reach the milestone of welcoming staff and students to the first day of school on Sept. 2.

Moccia was hired by the school board in mid-June to serve in the post throughout the 2025-26 school year as the board conducts a formal search to replace former superintendent Slade McSheehy, who left Vashon in June to helm the Bremerton School District.

She arrived in the district on July 1.

Moccia brings decades of relevant experience to the role and recently retired from a 14-year tenure as the superintendent of South Whidbey Island School District — a district not unlike Vashon’s in terms of its size, number of schools and demographics.

Still, in an interview on Aug. 15, Moccia said that since arriving on the island, she’s taken a deep dive into wrapping her head around the specific challenges and strengths of Vashon’s district.

To that end, she said, she’s met with staff members, stakeholders and, of course, school board members, with whom she has already had two board retreats on July 14 and 30. Another board and administrative staff retreat is on the books for Sept. 11.

“These are the things that we’re doing to create relationships and community and a leadership team that is high functioning,” Moccia said.

Board president Juniper Rogneby, in an email exchange, said that Moccia’s expertise and insight was already making a difference in many ways.

“I think I can speak for my board colleagues that we are overwhelmingly optimistic about the upcoming school year under Dr. Moccia’s leadership,” Rogneby said, detailing that the work Moccia has undertaken with the board has focused on “building trust and emphasized the importance of transparency in building a highly effective leadership team.”

Another major task for Moccia, following close on the heels of her arrival in the district, has been to bargain new three-year contracts with members of Vashon Education Association — a group including classroom teachers, school counselors and librarians — and Vashon Education Support Professionals, representing non-teaching staff in the school district including para-educators and office staff.

McSheedy had not completed bargaining with those groups prior to his departure, so the work fell to Moccia, who said she and the groups “did a really good job together” in coming to tentative agreements. The agreements were presented to union members for a vote on Tuesday, Aug. 26, with 100% of the members voting yes, Moccia said. The school board will vote on the contracts at its meeting on Thursday, Aug. 28.

Still, she said, as someone new to the district, it was not easy work.

In September, Moccia will also meet at the bargaining table with food service workers, custodians and maintenance workers represented by the district’s Service Employee International Union.

“The good news is that, should these agreements come to fruition, which I anticipate they will, it’s for three years,” she said. “So that gives the next superintendent time on the ground before they have to do that. That’s a very rough start, for any superintendent to walk into bargaining, right off the bat.”

Explaining her own steep learning curve, Moccia compared getting to know all the people she will be working with to “speed dating.”

“I have to get to know everybody very, very quickly, because I don’t have time,” she said.

Over and over, she said, she’s asked the same pointed questions in conversations with staff and community members: “What are the three best things about the school district, and what are the challenges? What should I be working on, and what do you need to be successful in your role? And what have you not told me that I should know?”

She said she learned much from these conversations.

“Pretty much the consensus of people I’ve talked to is that our community is our strength, that we have many community partners and many opportunities for our kids within the community, and that we have a dedicated staff — long term folks who really care about kids — and we are working toward financial stabilization,” Moccia said.

She also described her current understanding of the challenges the district faces, which include continuing to make progress toward financial stability while also working on “relationship-building, trust-building and transparency building.”

“The only way we develop trust is by having systems in place that work,” she said. “And I’m looking at all those systems, and for the ones that need fortifying — that’s what we’re going to work on. My goal is to leave [the district] better than I found it. So [when] next person comes in, they will have a good foundation, briefly built by me, but a good foundation. That’s what an interim is, right?”

The board’s search for a new superintendent — expected to be hired in the spring — will be discussed at a school board meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28. Two staff members of Hazard Young Attea & Associates (HYA), a national executive search and recruitment firm hired by the board, will make a presentation at the meeting.

Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to the labor group representing non-teaching staff in the school district including para-educators and office staff as Vashon Education Support Personnel — a name that in 2024, the group changed to Vashon Education Support Professionals. We regret the error.