The Klamath Falls City Schools Board of Education approved the hiring of the next principal at EagleRidge High School, starting the 2024-2025 school year. Terry Bennett will be the next EagleRidge High School Principal.
Bennett, from La Grande, will bring decades of educational and administrative experience to EagleRidge. The new EHS principal is no stranger to the Klamath Basin, however, after he moved to Klamath Falls in 2004, in part to be closer to his father who lived in Grants Pass.
To many, Bennett will be a familiar face in the community after he was assistant principal (2004-2006) and later school principal (2006-2013) at Mazama High School when it was part of KFCS.
Bennett took the footsteps of his father, a professor and Dean of Professional Studies at Eastern Oregon University prior to being the President of Rogue Community College from 1986 to 1999. His father came out of retirement to serve as the Interim-President at Umpqua Community College from 2002-2004.
“I followed in my father’s path and made education my career,” Bennett said. “I moved to Klamath Falls in 2004 to be closer to my father, who passed away in 2012.”
Bennett started his career in 1988, teaching and coaching in Huntington, Ore. along the Snake River, and finished his teaching career at Corvallis High School in 2000.
After being a teacher, Bennett worked at the state level as an Educational Specialist II at the Oregon Department of Education. In working at ODE, it allowed him to implement Measure 98/High School Success.
He served from 2019-2023 as an At-Large-Member of the Fair Dismissal Appeals Board.
Currently, as principal at Anderson New Technology High School in Anderson, Calif., Bennett helped transformed his school’s instructional model with the goal of growing the school’s enrollment. A year before his current position in Anderson, he was Superintendent of Schools at North Douglas School District.
“Within six months, we innovated a non-classroom-based, hybrid, collegiate model with a 'homeschool' independent study program. We witnessed a remarkable 25 percent growth in our enrollment in just two years,” Bennett said. “My focus at ODE was to enhance graduation rates through the implementation of Career and Technical Education and the removal of barriers to student participation, a mission that I am proud to have accomplished.”
In previous work, as the principal of Durham High School, Bennett developed two CTE pathways in Manufacturing Technologies and Vitculture, and added dual credit through a partnership with Southern Oregon University.
“Collaborating with other secondary administrators and Klamath Community College to develop the Advanced Diploma program, which some have said was a precursor to the Oregon Promise,” Bennett said. “Working with the staff at Mazama to improve student outcomes led to the school receiving an “outstanding” rating on its 2010 state report card.”
Bennett attended Oregon State University and earned a Bachelor of Science in Social Studies Education. He then earned a Master of Education in Educational Leadership from the University of Oregon and completed his Continuing Administrator license through Portland State University.