This year at Salish School of Spokane, two new co-executive directors have stepped up to take on leadership roles at the school after longtime executive director LaRae Wiley (Sinixt) transitioned to a new part-time role as elder-linguist and to serve on the organization’s board of directors.
Brea Desautel (Colville Confederated Tribes) and Kim Richards, (Mescalero Apache) started a new chapter in the school’s leadership structure to guide the organization forward as they work closely with staff and handle day-to-day operations.
Both have already been working collaboratively as part of the administrative team for some time, particularly after Wiley experienced an injury in 2023 and they helped fill in while she was recovering.
Wearing many hats at Salish
When Desautel started at the school a couple years ago, she applied for a language trainee position and stepped into a role where she worked in administration, as an intensive language cohort and in the preschool. Essentially, she wore a lot of different hats and worked in several areas of the school.
Richards has worn a variety of hats as well throughout her time at the school. Back in 2018, Richards stepped in as interim executive director when Wiley experienced a head injury. Because she has done a lot of administrative work as well, she feels her role has not changed a whole lot. She has also worked as a teacher, a director of development, a mental health coordinator and a family services coordinator, among other roles at the school.
In their new roles, Desautel will be working in licensing and student and staff files, while Richards will focus on family and community services and connecting families to services that they need externally from the school. Also, Richards said there are plans for her to become a principal for the elementary school and for Desautel to move into an early childhood development director role.
“While we do have our specialty roles, we’re also aware that we are going to be jumping back and forth just to help the team propel forward,” Desautel said.
In this new role, Desautel hopes to continue prioritizing her language journey where she takes a language course and ensure it doesn’t fall into the wayside, as well as continue to strengthen and collaborate with the administrative team.
“We always talk here at school that we don’t necessarily believe in a hierarchy. We really like to even the playing field and help bring all staff up,” Desautel said. “We work more as a collective group in a collective mindset.”
As for Richards, she hopes to continue strengthening their community in accordance with their mission. They have been working with early childhood education interns who come in to learn language for the first half of the day. They also have professional development going on with their teachers already in the early childhood education and elementary middle school programs, and they ensure their teachers and community members can access their certifications.
Desautel is also excited to be able to work with Wiley more, describing her as a mentor and matriarch of the organization. She looks forward to asking her questions and getting advice from her.
Investing in mental health support
Richards is excited for the school’s future, broadening and strengthening their work and moving into the school’s new campus when it is built. She is also excited to grow their education support system and their mental health system for students.
They currently have a counselor who comes in and works with their classrooms bi-weekly. Through working with a therapist, Richards said students are learning how to talk about their feelings, feel their feelings and know their emotions.
Richards said they are putting in the work and deeply investing into their families and students so that they can thrive and “we can move beyond survival and have students that are confident.”
Part of building a stronger and healthier community, Richards said, is growing their educational capacity as well as their economic stability and political power.
Desautel said it’s important that people know their whole story. They don’t just have an immersion school, they also work with other tribes and help them develop language programs. They also host seminars and give community language lessons at night for adult language learners.
With staff, Desautel said they have conversations all time and are aligned with their morals and values in preserving language, culture, and traditions and trying to create a brighter future for the next seven generations.
“We always welcome people to come tour the school and check it out to see what we do,” Desautel said. “They see our staff speaking Salish, they see our kids speaking Salish and teachers speaking to the kids in Salish.”
She added that the staff commit to language courses daily, as well as kitchen staff and their accountant.
“The school has given our community a different future,” Richards said. “They have not just changed our lives but changed generations of lives. By revitalizing a language we’re also revitalizing and healing our families and our households.”
She added the school is showing why it’s important for them to be connected, to live a good and happy life, have access to their cultures and speak their languages. It all shows them how to be accountable and be stewards of the land, waters and skies.
This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.