Douglas F. Gray

Anchorage PAIDEIA Cooperative School
Anchorage School District
Anchorage, Alaska
gray_douglas@asdk12.org

Douglas Gray Jr. recently became principal of Anchorage PAIDEIA Cooperative School, where he has overseen the school’s transition from a charter to an alternative statewide homeschool program that actively engages students in developing their own learning plans. In his short tenure, he has increased enrollment from 130 to 216 students, shored up curricular resources, and built a name for the program as one that “will work with schools rather than compete against them.” Before taking on this role a year ago, Gray served as principal of Lake Otis Elementary School for six years. There, he increased family engagement by implementing data-driven Academic Parent Teacher Teams and fostered a peaceful school culture through Conscious Discipline strategies and schoolwide implementation of the CHAMPs program. By supporting his staff to establish shared behavioral expectations, Gray achieved a nearly 50-percent decrease in disciplinary referrals in the first year of the program. Throughout his career, Gray has used his leadership to deepen connections with local communities. At Clarks Point Elementary, for example, he oversaw an ethnographic picture book project that engaged all students in telling their community stories; the book is now housed in the Smithsonian Museum’s Alaska Native collection. Gray holds a K-8 Principalship Certificate from the University of Alaska, Anchorage; an M.A. in Special Education from Framingham State College; and a B.A. in Elementary Education from Notre Dame College.