For Marianne Sletteland, relationships are everything — and she’ll do just about everything in her power to build and maintain them. Like stay overnight in her own “haunted” school, J. Russell Elementary in Moscow, to keep a promise to students who exceeded their annual activities fundraising goal. It was just her and the school’s old boiler (“It looks like it belongs on a steam engine from the ‘Polar Express,’” she says) all night.
“When I came out of my office the next morning, the janitor wasn’t expecting me,” she laughs. “He thought I was going to go home late at night and then come back early the next morning, and instead I scared the crap out of him there.”
Sletteland is definitely unexpected. She is a rarity: An administrator member of the Idaho Education Association. Before becoming principal at Russell, she was the co-president of the Moscow Education Association and she has maintained her longtime membership throughout her transition to administration.
According to Education Week, less than a third of the nation’s principals are represented under collective bargaining agreements. Within the IEA, administrators make up less than one percent of membership. It’s easy to understand why; members who move into administration must sit on the other side of the bargaining table. They may work with superintendents who don’t support their union participation or who ask them to end their memberships. And they may simply find it difficult to wear both hats.
For Sletteland, though, IEA has been instrumental in her career trajectory. Jason McKinley, a region director for IEA’s Northern Organizing Center, says she has transformed over her career. “I have worked with Marianne for over 10 years and have seen her grow,” he says. “I saw her potential from the get-go, and I saw her grow from someone who was driven and unsure to driven and confident.”
Sletteland comes from a family of educators and began her career as a special education paraprofessional in the Troy School District. “While I was there, I kind of grew into the SPED world and learned that’s really my heart,” she says.
Inspired to go further, she started work on her master’s degree in special education and teaching — and before she finished, she was hired by Potlatch Elementary School. “My principal at the time coined it: I was a diamond in the rough,” she says.
She may have been a diamond in the rough, but she was already polished enough to begin serving as the president of the Potlatch Education Association. She eventually took a job as a special education teacher in the Moscow School District, where she joined the Moscow Education Association and eventually took on the role of co-president.
As her career progressed, it seemed all roads ended in administration. “I had an eye-opening moment when an outside provider I had only worked with a few times pulled me aside and was like, ‘You should really go into administration,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, geez.’ ”
She finally made the jump in time for the 2023-2024 school year at Russell Elementary. “You know, once it was announced and people kind of got wind, those connections I made with other local presidents or just people that I’ve known through IEA helped,” she says. “(People were) congratulatory: ‘Hey, my husband is also a principal and a member. If you need something, contact him. Here’s his info.’ Again, it’s relationships.”
Not everyone was congratulatory, though. “The worst thing that was said to me was, ‘Oh, I heard you’re going to the dark side,’ ” she says. “I was told that several times. And I don’t see it that way.”
Instead, she has stuck with her philosophy of community-building communication. “It’s best to work together to have those conversations,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to have those conversations! In-person conversations are huge. I don’t think any of us go into being a principal with an I’m-your-boss-you-must-do-what-I-say-at-all-times mentality.”
It has taken trial and error to discover the best ways to include her in MEA events and communication, says Cyndi Faircloth, MEA’s co-president. MEA and Sletteland are learning how to be strategic in their communication. Sletteland doesn’t receive all of MEA’s emails, for example. If she needs to have an important discussion with a member, Faircloth says, Sletteland will request a third member be present to take notes.
“It’s been a good learning curve for all of us, because we want to honor both what she needs and then also what the teacher member needs,” Faircloth says. “And they’re all learning how to do this new relationship. The value is that she knows what we can do, and knows the process for having the association be present and advocate.”
That’s not the only learning curve Sletteland has had to navigate. Russell Elementary was the oldest established school in Moscow, and although the building was beloved, it no longer made financial sense to keep it open. It closed at the end of the school year, and Sletteland will soon start as principal at West Park Elementary.
The summer break hasn’t slowed her down, McKinley says — not that he would expect it to. McKinley mentioned she had texted him earlier in the day with a work request, “and she’s not on contract right now.”
“Somebody who works that hard is going to be successful,” McKinley says.
