If there were a diploma for graduating principals, Dave Ellick would have received one with the Class of 2003.

The longtime Bainbridge High School head announced his departure this week, effective June 30; the close of the school year marks his retirement after 30 years as an educator in Washington state.

Ellick leaves for Southern California, where he will serve as principal of 2,600-student El Toro High School in Mission Viejo, for the Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

His slot at BHS will be filled, on an interim basis by Brent Peterson, the district’s former assistant superintendent for instructional services.

“The timing is perfect for me,” Ellick said. “My retirement (plan) is capped at 30 years; next year, I’d be working for 40 cents on the dollar. It’s a disincentive to stay.”

Ellick came to BHS in 1985 from Olympia High School, where he had served as vice-principal. His 18-year tenure at BHS was about five times the average for a principal, but Ellick was convinced he had the best possible spot in the state.

“Where else could I have gone that would have beat this?” he said.

There have been changes during the nearly two decades of his administration, but parents’ and community support of the schools has been a constant, Ellick says.

“A real plus for the schools has been the real intense passion our community has for education,” Ellick said. He points to the passage of every education levy and bond as examples of Bainbridge-style support.

For the school-funding campaign of 1997, Ellick was drafted by co-chairs by Doug Picha and Ken Breiland to give wavering voters tours of the school.

“I must have given 50 tours that year,” he said.

During his tenure, Ellick presided over high school improvements and building campaigns that included a new stadium, a new gymnasium, and a new music band facility, as well as remodels of the 100 and 200 buildings.

Ellick recalls one memorable construction campaign that saw the campus split between the east and north wings of Commodore with other students housed in on the main campus.

“That was the year we had no gymnasium,” Ellick said, “but the girls won a basketball championship anyway.”

The island too has changed, he said, and those changes have been reflected at BHS.

He has seen the high school grow from 900 to 1,400 students. He presided over the loss of some island landmarks, like the 1940s-vintage wood grandstand, torn down to make way for the new one.

Ellick learned island lore from older teachers.

“When I got here, there was lots of anecdotal stuff relating to ‘Old Bainbridge,’” Ellick said. “There were still teachers who remembered living on the waterfront.”

The teachers were often caretakers for the “summer people,” Ellick says, occupying the rustic cabins nine months of the year.

“They got to enjoy pristine panoramas,” he recalls, “but they had to be out from June to August.”

Ellick contrasts teachers’ living circumstances today, when many can no longer afford to live here.

Some events have been difficult passages.

The murder of three BHS graduates in 1990 and the loss of science teacher Dwight Herren and his family in a mud slide in 1997 still stand out for Ellick, as does a 1993 awards assembly in which a student forced a teacher to the podium at knifepoint.

Ellick and another student disarmed the youth – suffering wounds in the process.

“That was pretty traumatic, having that happen in front of the whole student body,” Ellick said.

But those isolated events have been far outweighed, he says, by year after year of “wonderful kids, absolutely outstanding students,” and “superb staff.”

Two of Ellick’s three sons graduated from BHS, Michael in 1992 and Sean in 2000.

“I can’t tell you how many times someone will tap me on the shoulder at their supermarket, usually the parent of a graduate gone a year or so,” Ellick said, “to tell me how well-prepared their son or daughter was for college – or a business venture, or travel – by the education they received…”

Ellick deserves some of the credit for the high school’s strengths, according to Superintendent Ken Crawford.

“In my 32 years of experience with 20 high school principals, I consider him the finest high school principal I’ve ever worked with,” Crawford said.