The year was 1987. Jamie Sheldahl was just 10 minutes shy of clocking out from his part-time job as a short order cook when Danny Garcia and Jerry Jondahl walked in. The pair were, respectively, a principal and associate superintendent for Yuma School District One at the time. Sheldahl sat down with them to chat and before he knew it, he was starting his career teaching 7th grade language arts at Fourth Avenue Junior High.
“The day before that, I had been, actually, at the teaching recruiting fair,” Sheldahl said in a sit-down interview with KAWC. “And it was a challenge at that time to find a job in Iowa because the legislature in Iowa had just increased the guaranteed minimum teacher salary to $18,000 ... By boosting the minimum teacher salary, the Iowa state legislature and governor, I think, made a wise decision because that either had caused a lot of teachers to stay, and it also brought in a lot of teachers into the state, but it made it much more competitive
“… At the time my brother was in Arizona – he was in Casa Grande as a middle school teacher and coach, and he later became an administrator. So I had kind of a link to Arizona, and then I had the good fortune of running into Mr. Jondahl, Mr. Garcia. So I thought, kind of, the arrows were all pointing toward Yuma.”
Having grown up in a small town near a suburb of Des Moines, Yuma was a very new environment for Sheldahl.
“It was a real culture shock for me, coming from a small town, Midwest, but I got to know the kids quickly and Yuma, I think Yuma still is this way to a certain extent, but at that time, the education community in Yuma was very tight knit, and it's almost like they were experts at assimilating young teachers who came in from other parts of the country because Arizona has always had a deficit when it comes to teacher supply,” he said.
Sheldahl thought he might stay in Yuma for a year or two and then head back to Iowa.
“But I didn't because I was really taken by the diversity in Yuma and the level of acceptance of that diversity in Yuma,” he explained. “It didn't seem to matter, at the time, from my perspective, what your background was, where you came from, what your race or ethnicity was; none of that seemed to matter. Everybody was very community-oriented and all part of that same community, and that was different from small-town Midwest, and it was really engaging … I really felt like this is the kind of community that I really can respect and maybe want to stay, so I got married, and here I am.”
Sheldhl spent eight years as a teacher and coach at Fourth Avenue Junior High before moving onto teaching English at Cibola High School. He’d already earned his master’s degree from Northern Arizona University by that point, but he went on to earn a principal’s certificate, too, and eventually became a department chair and an activities assistant principal.
After a decade at Cibola, Sheldahl spent a year and a half as co-principal of Kofa High School with Gina Thompson, who would later become superintendent for the Yuma Union High School District. He then accepted a new position as the opening principal for Gila Ridge High School and played an active role in developing the school while it underwent construction.
“I got to be involved in the construction weekly meetings,” he said. “We'd meet every Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. and walk the site, you know, from starting when it was just a big pile of sand until it was all the way finished and we were ready to bring kids in.
“[I] got to help pick out the colors and pick out the furniture and the fabric and the copy machines and every element that went into the school … also to hire the first faculty to open up the school. But, yeah, it was busy, but it was fun. It was exciting. Just that whole year of envisioning what it's going to be like when the kids are there.”
Sheldahl recalled meeting with parents of future GRHS students at Desert Mesa Elementary and together picked the name of the school, the mascot and the school colors. The name, he explained, came from the school’s proximity to the Gila River and the fact it sits on a ridge above the Gila River Valley. The blue was ultimately picked because of some dedicated North Carolina Tar Heels fans.
“I had our graduation provider just give me a sampling of all different color combinations of graduation tassels,” he said. “So we looked at all those, and we had some military folks there who were big North Carolina fans. So they were persistent about that Tar Heel blue color. They were very persuasive and the committee ended up choosing that Tar Heel blue color for the main color of the school, but yeah, it was a beautiful school, and it was exciting to open that up and to grow with the school.”
Sheldahl was able to watch the first Gila Ridge freshmen and sophomores graduate before he served as YUHSD associate superintendent for five years.
Then, in 2016, he became superintendent of Yuma School District One. For him, it was like coming home, but there were challenges from the get-go.
“When I got to District One, the district was trying to come out of a really rough period economically,” he said. “The 2008, 2009 housing bubble and the recession that followed was hard on everybody. But to add to that, for years, decades, really, District One had had a budget override that the voters had approved each time so that they could generate local revenue to increase their operating budget by 10%. Well right about the same time that the recession hit, the voters voted to not renew the override as well.
“So either one of those conditions for a school district, you know, would be really challenging, and everybody was reeling from the recession. But then to add on to that, having to cut back, I think it was, about two and a half million dollars a year on top of that in terms of operating budget really kind of put the district financially in a deep freeze.”
He explained that teacher pay had been frozen for years, but at the same time, in an effort to keep attracting talent, the base salary had increased.
“The kind of unintended consequence of that was when a teacher came in from somewhere else, they came in and they were making more money than somebody who had the same years of experience teaching for us,” Sheldahl said. “So that was a big puzzle to solve. Within two years, we were able to restore the teacher pay – I'd say equity – and just remove that inequity that was built into it and start to really make some major headway in giving teachers raises.”
Although he didn’t have the exact numbers for the interview, Sheldahl said that teacher pay has increased over 60% since 2016. While the district’s teachers were once the “lowest-paid teachers in the county,” salaries have since become competitive and that’s something Sheldahl is very proud of from his tenure as superintendent.
The past nine years in the position have been interesting for Sheldahl. In that time, the district built a new school, Dorothy Hall Elementary, thanks in part to a land donation from the Hall brothers. It also navigated the Red for Ed movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We had the Red for Ed teacher situation; that was interesting,” he said. “Our teachers were very active, but they were still very professional and respectful. Our parents were very supportive of our teachers. At that time, we were able to – you know, the governor's solution was called 20 by 2020, but we were able to give our teachers even more than a 20% raise over the couple years there. And then, of course, we had COVID.
“COVID, I feel like we responded very well, very quickly. We were able to get kids online within a few days. Lisa Thrower and this child nutrition department was able to start getting meals out to families … Obviously, you know, you look back five years later, hindsight is 20/20, but I feel like knowing what we knew, our team did a great job of working with our kids, with our community, with our parents.”
Sheldahl’s favorite part of the job has been working with people and visiting the schools. While he couldn’t go out to the schools as often as he’d like, he had a special field trip opportunity last month to chaperone a field trip out to Arizona State University and a Diamondbacks baseball game with Gila Vista Junior High’s AVID and leadership students.
“I rode the bus and chaperoned kids and ate hot dogs and got home at 1 a.m., but it was, yeah, it was such a great way for me to, in my last month as a superintendent, for me to have that opportunity again to go out and just spend a day with the kids; that's why we do what we do,” he shared. “And, yeah, our kids were just amazing and fun and just… great kids. We have great kids.”
When asked if the kids have changed a lot over the years, Sheldahl said, “Based on what I saw yesterday (May 27), I don't think they've changed a lot … They were respectful and they were polite and they were funny, and at the game, they cheered and made signs, and it was just a great way for–yeah, I don't feel like I went and helped them. I felt like they gave me a gift.”
Sheldahl will be kicking off his retirement with a vacation, embarking on an Alaskan cruise with his wife. What comes after that? It remains to be seen, but he’s open to whatever life throws his way.
“I don't have any expectations about how I will move forward as a member of the education community,” he said. “I have a great niece who goes to O.C. Johnson, so I'll try to stay current on that, you know, through her. She's only in kindergarten so I’ve got a ways to go on that. Obviously, I still have a network of friends that are still in the education business, so I'll be able to interact with them. “I mean, education has been my life forever. Like I said, my dad was an educator. He was my principal in junior high and high school. It's just kind of in my blood. I don't know what's next, but I'm just going to take some time to try to, I don't know, put it all in perspective.”
This reporting is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
