After decades as an educator across Idaho, Alica Holthaus will now help school district leaders in the northernmost part of the state solve their problems.

Holthaus, 61, will become the deputy superintendent of public instruction for North Idaho on July 1.

The job fell into her lap, Holthaus said. Spencer Barzee, who serves as deputy superintendent in southern and central Idaho, asked to meet with her and floated the opportunity.

“I honestly thought he was punking me at first,” Holthaus said. “I think of myself as just the average joe out there.”

State leaders thought her varied experience teaching elementary and junior high school students, serving as a principal and superintendent of small rural districts and leading the state’s first deconsolidation in 20 years, made her the perfect fit.

“When we look at how best to support schools across North Idaho, having someone with Alica’s depth of experience and understanding of those communities makes all the difference,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield said in a news release. “She brings both strong leadership and a genuine commitment to students, and we’re excited to have her in this role.”

Creating connection

Holthaus first started teaching in Kimberly, where she worked for two years. She then weaved her way from Payette to Prairie, for a 14-year stint.

She took her first administrative role as a principal in Kooskia, then moved over to Grangeville. After a bout of empty-nest syndrome took Holthaus and her husband to Missouri for a couple of years, she settled down as superintendent in St. Maries for six years.

Holthaus was ready to relax, so she retired in 2023. But a year later, the Mountain View School Board convinced her to step in as interim superintendent to get the district through the process of splitting in two. She left that role in December.

For many of those years, Holthaus and her fellow district leaders didn’t always have the best relationship with the state leaders down south.

“The state department was seen as the gotcha, the police of education,” she said. “It was like you were trying to keep them out of your business.”

Critchfield created the deputy position to help change that, and as an acknowledgement that her job frequently keeps her in Boise, Holthaus said.

“For those of us not in Boise, we often say, ‘Well, it’s not the great state of Ada,'” Holthaus said. “But we don’t really say that as much anymore because she has done such a great job of getting people out there.”

Holthaus takes over the part-time role after Wendy Moore decided to move closer to family in Michigan following the death of her husband. Moore was the first to take on the new role in September 2024 with a salary of nearly $115,000.

Like Moore, Holthaus hopes her existing connections to North Idaho superintendents make them comfortable coming to her with their problems.

She hopes to offer practical solutions as they implement new laws and unforeseen problems.

An example is the new bathroom law that will criminalize the use of a public bathroom not aligned with a person’s biological sex.

Many school districts label their locker rooms as men’s and women’s; those locker rooms are often used by visiting teams of the opposite sex. Only one gender would use the locker room at a time, in line with the intent of the law, but superintendents were still concerned about the technicality, Holthaus said.

Holthaus suggested labeling the locker rooms A and B or Visitor and Home to avoid any legal issues.

“Sometimes when there are rules that are made, applying them in a school comes to those little details,” she said.

When one school comes up with a great solution, Holthaus hopes to be the messenger and connector, spreading the idea to other leaders.

North Idaho faces its own unique challenges, too, with pockets of extreme poverty and long distances to travel for activities, she noted.

The districts are still producing students who do well at the collegiate level and are leaders in their communities, but “they’re having to go about getting there differently.”

The job, while unexpected, Holthaus thinks, is the ideal fit.