Catherine Dalbey has been selected as the next Human Resources Director for the Hood River County School District beginning July. Her selection was approved by the School Board on April 22. Dalbey will be replacing Kevin Noreen, who has resigned the position effective June 30 to take a position with Forest Grove School Board.
Dalbey’s move to the District Office is the third change in principals announced this spring. Cascade Locks principal Kim Vogel will retire in June, and Kim Yasui was named principal of Mid Valley in March, to succeed Dennis McCauley, who will also retire in June.
Vogel began her career at the district in August 1990 as a fourth grade teacher at Cascade Locks and taught there for twelve years. In June 2002, Kim Vogel left the district to take a position as the middle school principal at Howard Street Charter School in the Salem Keizer School District. She worked there until 2006, when she returned to the Hood River County School District to be the principal at Parkdale Elementary while also serving as the Project PM Coordinator (an afterschool program in the district).
Sarah Braman-Smith will succeed Dalbey as Wy’east principal. Braman-Smith has spent the last nine years as an administrator at Madras High School. District retirees were honored Monday at HRVHS; details in the Saturday edition.
From August 2010 until this school year, Vogel had been serving as principal for both Parkdale Elementary and Cascade Locks. This year, she has served half-time as the principal for Cascade Locks Elementary School.
“Catherine Dalbey has demonstrated excellence in every position she’s held in our school district, from elementary school teacher through her 11 years of administrative leadership at Wy’east Middle School. In every position, Catherine has been dedicated to student success, to our school district’s vision, to all educators’ growth and success, and to our community partnerships. She has earned the trust of staff and community members alike and I have no doubt she will continue her commendable service to Hood River County’s children as the Human Resources Director for the school district,” Superintendant Dan Goldman said.
Dalbey was raised in South Dakota, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Spanish from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, and earned her Masters of Education in Administration from Concordia University.
Her teaching career began in 1996 in the Denver Public Schools as a teacher of English for non-native English speakers. She came to the Hood River County School District in 2000 to teach in the migrant preschool and Kindergarten at Pine Grove Elementary School. Dalbey became the vice-principal at Wy’east Middle School in 2004 and moved into the Wy’east principalship in 2006.
Dalbey is multilingual in English, Spanish and Russian, plays the viola and violin, and is married to Tom Dalbey, who teaches fourth grade at May Street Elementary School. Catherine and Tom have two children, both attending May Street.
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