Award winning teacher taking top job at new Kennewick school

An award-winning teacher is returning to the Tri-Cities, this time to lead one of Kennewick’s newest schools.

Jaime Silva, who spent 20 years teaching in Pasco schools, and won the Educational Service District 123’s Teacher of the Year award, will lead Kennewick’s dual-language elementary school.

The building is going up on the site of the former Desert Hills Middle School on 10th Place. It will house the dual language programs currently in Edison and Hawthorne elementary schools.

The building is scheduled to open in August 2018.

In preparation for the new building, Silva will spend part of the upcoming school year as the dual language instructional coach before he starts working on getting ready for the school’s opening. He will help dual-language students, families and staff transition into the new school.

“We’re excited to have Mr. Silva as the principal of our district’s first dual-language elementary school,” said Greg Fancher, the assistant superintendent of elementary education. “He brings a unique background of both personal and professional experience that has prepared him for this position.”

Most recently, Silva was an associate principal at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Vancouver. Before taking the position in Vancouver, he worked at Pasco schools, where he worked as a bilingual teacher at James McGee, Emerson, Longfellow, Mark Twain and Maya Angelou elementary schools. He helped launch the district’s two-way dual language program at Angelou.

This story was originally published August 7, 2017 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Award winning teacher taking top job at new Kennewick school."