After three decades in Kent schools, Hanks retires, but not ready to sit around

After 30 years in the employee of the Kent School District, Becky Hanks is moving on.

Hanks, who wore many hats and outlasted several superintendents, saw her last day July 1, with a retirement party at district headquarters.

Hanks, who ended her multi-faceted career as executive director of Community Connections (the district’s community-relations arm) said she chose to leave because she wanted a change, after years of putting in long hours as the district’s community spokesperson.

“It’s been a great life and I’m gonna explore other aspects of it,” Hanks said, noting she became eligible for retirement three years ago.

“I’ve been working 24/7 for a long time, and I’m choosing to do something else. I will travel and meet with friends. I’m just gonna play.”

Kent Schools Superintendent Edward Lee Vargas said Hanks will be a hard one to replace, given her wide knowledge of the district and a hardcore work ethic that had her e-mailing him in the wee hours of the morning.

“I tell you I am really going to miss Becky,” said Vargas, who recently saw his first-year anniversary at the district helm. “She did a herculean job here.”

Part of that job included running interference through a contentious teachers’ strike last fall. Vargas had been with the district only a few months, and he and Hanks worked side by side in the negotiations.

“I hit the ground running, with everything going on, and she was right there with me, every step of the way,” Vargas said. “She was so conscientious about everything needing to be done.”

Of the strike, which ended after more than a month, Vargas said he was amazed at Hanks’ work ethic – which apparently matched his own capacity to log in the hours.

“It was so intense,” he said. “It was 24-7. I think I spent a couple of nights sleeping on the table here.

“Every time I’d turn around she was doing something else. She will be sorely missed.”

How she got her start

For all the community activities in which she wound up involved, Hanks came to the Kent School District in a most unexpected way. She was a student counselor.

“I came in 1980,” she said. “I was hired half time at Kent-Meridian High School and half time at Kentridge. They kinda put this job together for me.”

So each school day, Hanks would start the first half of her day at one school, then drive over for the second half at her other school, chowing down on a sandwich in the car for lunch.

The next year, Kentwood High School was completed, and Hanks moved to a counseling job there, ending the lunch commutes she was doing.

“I was on the opening staff, which was a major thrill,” she said.

During her fifth year at KW, Hanks attended a baseball tourney in Wenatchee, watching a friend play. She happened to start chatting with a woman next to her, and they quickly warmed to each other.

That person? Suzette Cooke, now Kent’s mayor, but with business interests and community-oriented back then, too.

Hanks and Cooke started pitching ideas back and forth and with Marge Chow, an assistant superintendent at the district at that time, they developed the district’s first-ever business/education forum, bringing 35 members each from the teaching and business communities to address what each side could do for the other.

The keynote speaker was Terry Bergeson, at the time the president of the Washington Education Association, the state teachers union. She went on later to become state superintendent.

The forum has continued in different forms for Kent over the years.

Hanks’ job description just seemed to keep on growing as she jumped into one project after another.

“My job just evolved,” she said. “Frankly I just learned it as I went along.”

It went from counseling, to counseling coordinator, to business liaison to business partnerships coordinator, Community Connections coordinator, director of Community Connections and finally executive director of Community Connections, where she operated as the official spokesperson for the district.

Some assignments had a pretty steep learning curve.

“The Kent School District has had some pretty challenging media issues,” Hanks acknowledged.

Those included a 2004 lawsuit filed by the NAACP against the school district on behalf of 13 families, alleging district security officers had used excessive force in dealing with 15 black students. That suit was dismissed in 2005, but it did usher in much dialog in the district.

Another legal challenge involved a 2003 lawsuit by Kentridge High School students against the district, after the district blocked them from starting a bible club at the school. That case made it all the way to the State Supreme Court. But justices there voted not to step in against the district’s restriction on the club.

For Hanks, conveying the district’s point of view on these issues opened a whole new set of skills.

“We were dealing with an absolute barrage of understandable media inquires,” she said.”That really kept me running fast.”

Hanks said she understood the media were just doing their job, and that her role was to get them answers.

“People in communications need to have a clue that journalists are out to do a job finding the truth and sharing it with the public,” she said.

She also liked the fact she could be the go-between for district staff and the outside world.

“The flip side is that it’s gratifying to give support to the principals,” she said, noting she wasn’t coming in as an outsider public liaison.

“I’ve been in the building; I know what it was like,” she said.

Goodbye to all that

But the years of putting in long days and evenings were taking their toll. Hanks said her work was consuming her.

“I’ve not wanted to talk or see anyone on weekends because I’m so tired,” she said.

With the door to her old life now closed behind her, Hanks is ready for a new life.

She’ll have more time to see her dad Glen Hanks, 88, who lives nearby.

And, “I like to kayak, hike, and I’ve got friends across the country,” Hanks added.

“I’m just gonna play.”