Hall of Fame: Vicki Pick Tea Area School District inducts second Hall of Fame class

Vicki Pick got involved in the committee to split the district from Lennox when two of her daughters were in high school.

At the time, she and others came to the conclusion that they were soon going to be sending more kids from Tea than the rest of the Lennox district put together. A group of about 10 couples got together to work on circulating petitions to get a vote to split the district.

Pick also served on the committee to set up the boundaries for the district. Since forming a new school district was new to the state and they were at the mercy of the Lennox school board, it took some work to get a boundary plan that would be accepted.

“We had to have everything in order in order to even submit it to the state so we had to go through the state and we had to go through the Lennox school board,” she said. “There were a group of us and we all split up and took different aspects as to what we were going to be working with.”

Once the district split, then they had to get the District Education Center and Legacy buildings cleaned and ready for the first year as the Tea Area School District. At the time, she was a junior high teacher at O’Gorman so she had her summers off. Pick spent that summer working on scheduling and making meals for workers and cleaning rooms.

When they were putting up the stick-built buildings, she was the runner back and forth to Sioux Falls.

In addition to working on splitting the district, Pick and her husband, Conrad, were active on the athletic booster club. They sold Titan-wear and stored totes of it in their garage between football and basketball games. She also helped alter and make flag team uniforms.

Since retiring from teaching seven years ago, she has worked as a substitute in the district. With her degree in physical education, she can teach any of the grades but typically stays in grades 5-12.

Being inducted into the Hall of Fame is an honor for Pick. She and others on the committees put in a lot of hard work and long days.

“At the time we were tired but we didn’t think anything of it because we knew we wanted to achieve this. We were going to get this taken care of and get this done,” Pick said. “Hopefully people will understand where we started and what our values were. To be inducted as one of them that was very active with the school district is really an honor.”