Juneau-Douglas High School Principal Ryan Alsup is resigning after three years in the job.
Alsup will leave his post on June 30th for what he says are “personal reasons.”
He says it was a tough decision because he and his family enjoy living in the capital city. He does not yet have another job.
Alsup moved to Juneau from Colorado in 2010, when JDHS was a larger school. But Thunder Mountain High School had just opened and budget cuts were looming. Alsup says he’s seen a number of major changes.
“We’re roughly 200 kids smaller, but we’re also roughly 25 staff members smaller as a result of budget cuts and things like that,” Alsup says. “The bulk of my job has been to maintain a high quality education as we go through the budget reduction processes that we’ve done every year since I’ve been here”
He says the opening of a second high school in a town is difficult for the existing school. He believes JDHS staff morale has improved in the last three years.
“I think when I started here there was still kind of the feeling of loss amongst the staff as far as the things that they were afraid they would lose with the opening of Thunder Mountain, and we’ve overcome that,” he says. “So that’s where I feel like we’re in a better place. It isn’t so much that our test scores are going to indicate that we’re better off than we were or any tangible piece of evidence. It’s just simply the overall feel of the school.”
School District officials are to meet with faculty and parents soon to talk about the search for a new principal. Alsup hopes his replacement will be hired before he leaves, which will help ease the transition.
