Ybarra to leave school board post Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Vickie Ybarra plans to leave her post as president on the Yakima School Board to pursue a doctorate degree in New Mexico.
Ybarra, who has been a school board member since 2002, has accepted a doctoral fellowship at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
She'll be going back to school in August.
"It is a big move," Ybarra said Tuesday. But, "It's the right time in my life with my oldest son going off to college. It's been on my list for awhile."
Her last day as the director of planning and development at the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic will be Aug. 3.
She expects to step down from the school board in June or July.
Ybarra, 49, has been school board president since 2005. Her current term expires in 2011.
"It's sad for me to think about giving up these parts of my life that I've been working on for so long and that I've put so much of myself into, but at the same time, it feels right to move onto something else where I can gain additional tools and skills to make a difference in a different way," she wrote in an e-mail Saturday to friends and colleagues, alerting them to her news.
