A Waterloo native has been named the superintendent of the second largest school district in Oklahoma, according to the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier. Jamie Polk graduated from Waterloo West in 1980. She has now been named the superintendent of schools in Oklahoma City. Polk, who is Black, was part of a desegregation plan implemented in the 1970s that bussed Black children from the east side of Waterloo to West Junior High and West High School. She says African-American educators would meet them as they got off the bus. Seeing educators that looked like her and her family’s history in education led her to going into education herself. The superintendent of the two biggest districts in Oklahoma, the largest being the Tulsa School District, are both now Black women for the first time in history.
