Teacher resigning after husband fired in DOGE first wave

A sixth-grade teacher at Lake Roosevelt Elementary will leave to join her husband in Astoria, Oregon.

The school board voted Monday to let her out of her contract to leave before the end of the school year.

Ashley St. Aubin-Clark's husband, Sam Peterson, was a first-year National Park Service employee at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area when the Trump Administration started cutting federal jobs across government services, starting with employees in probationary status.

St. Aubin-Clark said after the school board meeting that she had hoped to stay through the end of the year to finish out her contract, but the logistics were proving to difficult.

Even though her husband, Sam, had been offered his job back following a federal court order that all fired probationary federal workers had to be reinstated, he had already accepted a position in Oregon.

Because the young couple had been living in NPS housing, Ashley had to move out when Sam no longer worked there. But housing is tight here and they have only one car, she told the board.

She said she planned to tell her students on Tuesday, having waited until she knew the move was certain.