Changes are ahead for South Whidbey School District leadership with the assistant superintendent retiring this year and the superintendent retiring next year. Both have been longtime fixtures in the district.
Superintendent Jospehine Moccia, who has been the district’s superintendent for 13 years, will retire in 2025. Her base salary is more than $200,000.
In an email to The South Whidbey Record, she said she will continue to live on South Whdbey, though she hasn’t made any other plans.
Currently, she wrote, the district is beginning the process to find a search firm to hire her successor. She suspects the superintendent search might begin this summer and end in March 2025, she wrote.
Moccia said she has enjoyed her time working for the district and appreciates the students, staff and the “very thoughtful and analytic school board.” Though she looks forward to retiring, leaving feels bittersweet.
The South Whidbey School District will no longer have an assistant superintendent once Dan Poolman retires, according to Director of Communications Kristina Macarro.
The assistant superintendent position will cease to exist as it was reduced in pay and responsibility and simplified to a director of finance role, Macarro wrote in an email to The Record. According to his contract approved in 2022, his annual base salary is $192,690, which has since increased by the consumer price index.
The position has already been filled by Paul Field, a capital projects budget analyst at Northshore School District in King County and Snohomish County. According to the job posting, his first day of work will be July 1, and his salary will range between $140,000 and $160,000.
In this role, Field will oversee “all district financial, accounting and payroll operations, including annual budget preparation and adoption, financial reporting and the district audit process,” the document says. He will also oversee the monthly district bank account and report on the district’s bonds and levies, among other tasks.
Field was not available for comment. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has been in his current position since April 2023. Between July 2022 and April 2023, he worked as the executive director of finance and operations at Lakewood School District.
The beginning of his professional experience in Northshore dates back to 2014, when he worked as the accounting supervisor for four years. In 2018, he became the capital projects budget coordinator, moving to the role of assistant fiscal director of support services in 2020.
Poolman’s last day will be June 28, according to a personnel report approved by the school board in 2023. In her email, Macarro said he has been in the position since July 1, 2012, and before that he worked as the executive director of business and operations.
Poolman was not available for comment.
