Othello alternative school gets new name and location

OTHELLO - The alternative school opened for the 2013-14 school year with a new location, a new name and new principal.

Actually, Desert Oasis High School (formerly the Alternative Learning Placement Site) moved to its new location right after spring vacation 2013, Principal Russell Kovalenko. The building is the former Othello Church of the Nazarene and was remodeled to include four classrooms and computer lab.

The name change was the work of former principal Leonard Lusk, Kovalenko said.

Desert Oasis is Kovalenko's first job as a principal, he said. He's been teaching for seven years, he said, four of them in alternative high schools in Yakima and Wahluke.

Currently Desert Oasis has 74 students, and most are there because, for whatever reason, they had trouble gaining traction at Othello High School, Kovalenko said. Some are working to catch up on credits and eventually will return to OHS, while others will graduate from Desert Oasis, he said. The district also has an online program and works with Washington Employment Security on a GED program, he said.

Alternative school works best with a high degree of collaboration between teachers, and in fact the entire staff, he said. Everybody all the way up to the principal is involved, Kovalenko said; he eats breakfast and lunch with the students every day. "Every single day I'm seeing every single one of our students face to face."

The daily relationship between students and teachers helps when kids run into a rough patch, Kovalenko said. "It's those small interactions and day to day" contact, he said.

School officials also try to promote a sense of community at school, he said. Before Halloween most kids went on a field trip to a local pumpkin patch, he said, and every kid at school carved a pumpkin.

Teachers and administrators keep a close eye on student performance, and it's important to emphasize academics and productive, positive behavior, he said. Many of the kids at Desert Oasis face challenges when looking at post-secondary education, Kovalenko said, so they need to know why it's important. "The big idea is to look beyond the high school diploma." One way to do that is to show kids how their career prospects improve with additional training, he said.

Kovalenko said very few people in his family attended college, and he didn't think about college as it pertained to a career. But he could play football, and went to the University of Montana to play football. "They said, 'What do you want to do (after college)?' And I had no idea," he said.

His family had always worked outdoors, he said. "The only thing I could think of doing indoors was being a teacher," he said.

But injuries cut his football career short, and he transferred to Central Washington University. "It turned out to be the best thing that happened to me," he said. He switched his major from PE to business education and joined the rodeo team; "riding bulls was a lot of fun, but I was terrible at it."

After graduation he went to work for a local Ellensburg business, and it was a good job. "But there was something missing," Kovalenko said. He applied for a job in Yakima and got it, and once he was there "I kind of hit the ground running," eventually obtaining principal's credentials.

It's both a blessing and a burden when kids are depending on their teachers and administrators, he said. Failures hurt, "but when you have your successes they're really rewarding and powerful," he said.

When some kids reach high school graduation, "it's like they won the Super Bowl," he said. "It's a pretty amazing feat, and it's great to be a part of their team."