The commute for Allyson Cundiff just got a little longer.

A Poulsbo resident who works at a Bremerton school serving students in pre-kindergarten through third grade, Cundiff is now preparing to make the commute to the Olympic Peninsula as Helen Haller Elementary School’s newest assistant principal.

“Sequim is a beautiful location,” Cundiff says. “I was lucky to get an opportunity to work there … to be working a place people to choose to go and retire.”

Cundiff earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees at Western Washington University and taught kindergarten and second grade, with positions in Nevada and Washington.

For the past three school years she’s been a reading specialist at Naval Avenue Early Learning Center.

Cundiff says she knew she wanted to get into the education field by the time she was a third-grader.

“I was a struggling reader and didn’t necessarily have best support system,” Cundiff recalls.

In turn Cundiff began tutoring younger students — “making sure they didn’t struggle and suffer,” she says — in an activity that she says helper understand her own reading struggles.

That carried on into Cundiff’s teaching career.

“I feel like I can use those strategies and techniques (to help),” she says. “I like seeing their confidence go up. That’s a big thing for me, to feel positive (and) know they’re growing.”

Cundiff and husband Zach have two children: 4-year-old Annabelle and 7-month-old Nicholas.

Cundiff says she is planning to commute to Sequim from Poulsbo because her husband has a commute himself; he works in Fremont, a community on the shores of Seattle’s Lake Union.

Becky Stanton, assistant principal at Helen Haller in 2015-2016, moves into the lead administrator’s role this fall after current principal Russ Lodge took a principal position in the Deer Park School District just north of Spokane.

“(Allyson) has a great disposition and calm demeanor for an elementary building,” Stanton says. “All her experience is in the elementary building. It’s a good fit for our vision and goals for the next school year.”

Stanton says the staff at Helen Haller will be focused on targeted intervention, both in academic and behavioral fields.

Cundiff’s role, Stanton says, will include some instruction leadership, leading some grade level teams and evaluation of teachers.

“She’s got to be able to do it all and I think she can,” Stanton says.