If you've spent time in the Pacific Northwest K-12 HR world, there's a good chance you already know Jennifer Duvall. She spent 23 years in K-12 HR in Oregon, most of it as HR Director at the Corvallis School District. Few people better understand the struggles of navigating technology implementations that over-promise, workforce challenges that never seem to ease up, and the daily work of supporting the people who support students.
She did her undergrad at Oregon State University and her master's at the University of Oregon. If pressed, she'll quietly tell you "Go Ducks," just not too loudly given that her hometown of Corvallis is right in OSU's backyard.
Now, as Red Rover's Principal Advisor, she's bringing that firsthand experience into conversations with districts across the country. Having sat in the HR Director's chair for nearly two decades, she gives Red Rover a direct line into what districts are actually thinking, feeling, and needing from their technology partners.
In this Q&A, Jennifer shares her path into K-12 HR, the challenges she watched evolve over her career, and what she's hoping to bring to districts in this next chapter.
It really wasn't. My mom was a teacher and counselor, and I knew early on that I didn't want to be in the classroom. But after finishing my business administration degree and having my first child, things shifted. I found a position at an ESD in a support role and discovered I really liked working with people connected to schools and kids. When an HR support role opened up in my local school district, I applied and the work just clicked. It's never boring. What you're really doing is supporting the people who work with kids every day. If you can't be a teacher, or don't want to be one, it's still a meaningful way to contribute.
It's humbling, honestly, because we all have our areas of expertise and we all have something to learn from each other. For me, it was always about sharing experiences and creating space where people could do the same. When you're in K-12 HR, you're often the only one in your building who really understands what the work involves. Getting into a room with colleagues who just get it, that collegiality is so valuable. And our work is deeply connected to finance, to operations, to everything that ultimately supports employees and, in turn, students. Anytime I could help strengthen those connections, that felt meaningful.
One of the things I'm most proud of is helping build a grow-your-own program. I didn't fully realize the impact until my last week, when a group of our bilingual teachers came in together just to say thank you. Watching them go from educational assistants, taking classes and doing the hard work, to becoming certified teachers, that stays with you. Beyond that, I was always focused on systems and consistency. Working through difficult situations with our associations, going through bargaining, building relationships grounded in trust. The through-line for me was always: we're all in this together, so let's figure out how to move forward.
I've been through enough implementations to know the pattern. You get shown the shiny new thing and told it will fix everything, and then there's frustration because the system can't do what was promised, or because no one took the time to understand your processes first. What districts need is a vendor who asks the right questions and wants to understand how you work before telling you what the solution is. Through my work with OSPA, I helped a lot of colleagues think through product evaluations, talking through what to ask, what to watch out for, and what made the difference in my own experience.
Staff absenteeism and leave. More of it, more unpredictably, and the ripple effects just compound. Covering classrooms last minute, the burden it puts on colleagues, the sub shortage everyone has been talking about for years. And underneath all of it, the impact on student learning and employee retention. It never felt like a problem with a clean solution, just one you were constantly managing. On the other side, what I never stopped finding hopeful was the people who choose to go into education anyway. The ones who genuinely love working with kids. My own daughter is one of them. That dedication is still there, and it matters.
I'm not sure they do, and part of it is that HR teams are often so reactive that there's no bandwidth to zoom out. You're trying to get things done, so you're not stopping to ask what the root causes are or how the pieces fit together. Workforce management, HR, and payroll end up siloed, even though they're deeply connected. What I'd love to see more of is districts looking at the full picture: how time tracking, sub coverage, attendance, and employee data all flow together, and how a system can support that whole process instead of just one piece of it. That's where the efficiency gains actually live, and that's what creates space to be more proactive.
I put myself back in the seat I used to sit in. When an HR director is talking to someone who actually understands their work, the processes that make sense internally but would look like madness to anyone else, there's a different kind of conversation that happens. You're not being judged for how you do things. You're being met where you are. And from that place, it's a lot easier to get past the surface-level answers and into what people are actually struggling with. I've also found that districts learn a lot from each other in those moments. Someone mentions how they use a system in a way no one else has thought of, and suddenly that opens up a new way of thinking for everyone in the room.
That the right tool will fix everything. It won't. It just needs to help you work more efficiently. And to get there, you have to be willing to slow down and walk someone through your actual process, step by step. What does your day look like? Where do you lose time? What would it mean to get that time back? Sometimes HR teams don't even fully understand their own systems until they start talking through them with someone else. That conversation is where the real evaluation happens, not in the demo.
I want to be useful in the way I always wanted vendors to be useful to me: someone who's been in the chair and can actually help you think through the work. Whether that's a technology decision, a workforce management challenge, or just helping someone feel less alone in what they're navigating. HR in a school district can be pretty isolating. Not everyone understands what you do. So if I can show up as someone who does, and who also happens to have access to a platform that genuinely listens to its customers and responds, that feels like the right way to spend this next chapter.