Troy Whittle Chose Colfax for His First Superintendency

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Troy Whittle arrives in Colfax from the Clarkston School District, where he spent the seven years before this job as assistant superintendent. Before Clarkston, he was a high school principal for twelve years, at Columbia High School in White Salmon and then at Newport High School in Newport, and he taught high school social studies for seven years, he said in written responses to The WAEdTribune. The Colfax School District^↗ superintendency is his first.

That was the point. "When I began looking for my first superintendent position, I knew I wanted to find a smaller district with a strong sense of community, excellent schools, and a safe, family-friendly place to live," Whittle said. "Colfax offered all of those things." The Whitman County Gazette reported that the school board selected him after finalist interviews and a community forum, with a July 1 start, succeeding Jerry Pugh, who retired.

"It is a community that clearly values its schools, and I was excited by the opportunity to become part of that tradition," Whittle said. "On a personal level, its location also allows me to be closer to family, making it the right fit both professionally and personally."

A district that held its ground

Colfax runs two schools, an elementary and a high school, and enrolled 541 students in 2025-26, the most recent year in the state's published data. The current 2026-27 school year, Whittle's first, is not yet in the files.

The trend he inherits is unusual for a small rural district: roughly level. Enrollment dipped to 510 in the 2020-21 pandemic year, then came back, and has stayed inside a narrow band since: 541 in 2025-26 against 531 in 2021-22, a gain of 10 students across those four years, with the latest year up 5. The longer view is a modest decline, from 597 in 2014-15, or 9.4 percent, over a stretch when statewide enrollment rose 1.1 percent. The district peaked at 605 students in 2016-17.

At this size, single years mean little. Swings of a few dozen students, the kind visible throughout Colfax's history, can be a handful of families arriving or leaving.

Asked what is behind the steadiness, Whittle does not claim credit or certainty. "As someone new to the district, I'm still learning what has contributed to Colfax's steady enrollment, and that's one of the questions I'm actively exploring as I meet with staff, families, and community members," he said. He is also, he said, "interested in understanding the enrollment trends before that period and what we can learn from them."

Then he raised the bar on his own question. "While maintaining stable enrollment is encouraging, I believe our goal should be growth," he said, arguing that strong schools and stronger family partnerships "can make Colfax an even more attractive place for families to live and educate their children."

The grade table shows what growth would have to overcome. In 2025-26 Colfax had 28 kindergartners and 48 twelfth graders, small numbers that move with individual families, but a gap between the entering and leaving ends of the district that has to close before enrollment can climb. In the same year, 33.1 percent of Colfax students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch and 15.2 percent received special education services.

Listening first

Whittle describes his opening months in deliberately unhurried terms. "My first year is centered on listening, learning, and building relationships," he said. "Right now, I'm meeting individually with staff members to better understand what's working well, where we have opportunities to improve, and what makes Colfax such a special place." Those conversations, he said, will widen to students, families, and community members.

His leadership style, as he states it: "I believe in being visible, approachable, and transparent." And his commitment on change is explicit. "Before making significant changes, I want to understand our district's strengths, honor the great work already taking place, and work alongside our community to determine how we can continue moving forward together," he said.

For a district following a retirement, that is a deliberate posture: continuity first, growth as the ambition, and the listening tour as the method for deciding what comes after. The 2026-27 enrollment count, the first of his tenure, will be the earliest measure of the goal he set himself.

How we reported this story

Enrollment, grade-level, and student-group figures come from Washington OSPI enrollment data files covering the 2014-15 through 2025-26 school years. Quotes and career history are from Troy Whittle's written responses to The WAEdTribune. The board's selection process, his start date, and his predecessor's retirement are reported by the Whitman County Gazette.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Colfax School District - EdTribune WA - Washington Education Data

Troy Whittle Chose Colfax for His First Superintendency

A district that held its ground

Listening first

How we reported this story