After nine and a half years of caring for the Vashon school district’s buildings, fields and grounds while navigating massive changes that come with new facilities, the district’s director of facilities has resigned.

Dave Wilke has accepted a job at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo as its facilities director. His last day at Vashon Island School District (VISD) is Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Reached last Thursday, Wilke said his time as VISD’s facilities director has been “a huge, huge, huge time of learning and expanding” and that the job has become larger as time has passed. His job at the zoo has a “much narrower focus,” he said, which he’s looking forward to.

“At the schools, even as the facilities manager, I ended up surprisingly deep in conversations around education and teaching,” he said. “While maintenance and facilities do touch those things, it was an interesting lens with which to do facilities management.”

Wilke began at VISD in 2007, at a time when the district did not have a consistent facilities department. He said his responsibilities started with being the sole administrator for the “woefully understaffed” custodial and maintenance departments, but gradually increased as the school worked to pass bonds for a new high school in 2009 and 2011.

“By 2011, there was a shift, and I took over capital project management,” he said. “For the better part of seven years I was highly involved in the planning and passing of bonds. That was significant … and the facilities director position became broader.”

But Wilke always made it his priority to build a stable facilities department with a consistent maintenance plan, VISD Board Chair Bob Hennessey said. He said Wilke brought much-needed “professionalism and rigor” to the maintenance department, a feat that shows Wilke’s leadership abilities.

“I think the district does a much better job now (with maintenance). It takes leadership and vision,” Hennessey said. “Spending money on maintenance is not sexy. It’s the first area to get defunded in hard times and the last to get funded when money comes back.”

He said Wilke has been an advocate for spending the money necessary to preserve public facilities and Wilke says that approach has worked. He believes the district is more in touch with its facilities now than it has been in the past 15 to 20 years.

Wilke was also involved in the district’s dealings with the Vashon Park District and negotiations around community use of public facilities. As both organizations built facilities and put in significant resources to maintain them, it became necessary to create an agreement allowing school and park facilities to be shared by all members of the community. Hennessey said the managing of the agreement is one of Wilke’s biggest contributions.

“There have been lots of conversations between the park district and the school district about maintenance and community use of facilities,” Hennessey said. “It is in everyone’s interest to collaborate, and Dave has been a huge part of building that relationship and smoothing over relations between the two districts.”

The current Interlocal Agreement, as it is called, allows the community to use school district facilities — fields, gyms and meeting spaces — after school hours and on weekends by scheduling use through VPD.

“We worked often with Dave on scheduling and maintenance needs, so certainly enjoyed and are grateful for his professionalism and commitment to community service,” Vashon Park District Executive Director Elaine Ott said in an email last week. “Of course, we wish him well on his next adventure, but Dave will be greatly missed.”

Wilke will stay on the island, as he and his wife, the reading specialist at Chautauqua Elementary School, have three children still attending VISD schools.