A second 'super goodbye' tougher

WHO: Beverly L. Ouderkirk has been superintendent of the Morristown Central School District, Morristown, twice. She retired Wednesday for the second and final time.

WHAT WERE THE LARGEST CHALLENGES WHEN YOU TOOK OVER AS SUPERINTENDENT IN 1987? "The first time there were a lot of positive things going on in Morristown, but the facility was in dire straits. There had been deterioration of the facility, things that needed to be upgraded. After a few days on the job we lost total power in the building and come to find out we had varied cables that every time we tried to pull it out to try and fix it, it kept breaking because it was like 40 years old. It spoke to the fact that there were building needs.

"We also had a treasured old gymnasium that was also small for the times. It was in the middle of the building, so eventually we did a building project. I think that was about 1989 when we were big into checking for asbestos and we discovered we had some that needed to be dealt with in our project, so that was an added expense, but it had to be dealt with."

HOW WAS THAT DIFFERENT FROM WHEN YOU TOOK OVER AGAIN IN 2003 AS INTERIM SUPERINTENDENT AFTER BRUCE A. WAKKER WAS OUSTED FOR PROBLEMS WITH THE BOARD? "The district approached me, needing some temporary leadership, and I accepted the interim appointment for a year that somehow grew to six, and thus I'm retiring again.

"When I came back, I knew Morristown had been identified as a school in need of improvement and we were on the infamous list. That was a downer for the staff, a downer for the community and obviously a downer for the kids. At that time when I talked to students they would say they were ashamed to say they were from Morristown. We knew we needed to dig in and find out what was keeping us from producing the results we needed to.

"So we invested time and professional development. That's when we got into the whole reading first. We also had a math consultant and a middle school consultant working with some of the grants in terms of scheduling at the middle school level and making other improvements.

"In doing all of those things there were times where it was 'Wow, how much more is she going to ask us?' and I kept worrying 'what's the straw that is going to break the camel's back?' as we tried to right this ship called Morristown."

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE RETIRING FOR THE SECOND TIME? "It's different. I think this time, personally, I'm more ready physically, but it may be harder emotionally because I've spent a full decade here at Morristown Central School. That combination, aside from my teaching, was the longest that I've been at any place.

"This time has been very draining, very stimulating and very rewarding, because I returned to a small rural district. It brought back, very vividly, the immense challenges that small districts face today.

"The last time saying goodbye was more significant. Now saying goodbye won't be, because I'll still be part of the school community. The letting go might be more difficult now because of the closeness."

AT THE BOTTOM OF EACH SCHOOL BOARD AGENDA IS THE QUOTE FROM DORIS LESSING: "'LAUGHTER IS BY DEFINITION HEALTHY." IS HUMOR IMPORTANT WHEN YOU'RE LEADING A SCHOOL DISTRICT? "When you're investing deeply into serious stuff and you're trying to find out what's going to help us better prepare our young people for their futures and you're looking at the budgets and looking at leadership, you've got to have those moments of levity or else it gets to be too much. I just think it's important to keep a balance. You can't tackle as much as we've tackled without having some fun in the process. Sometimes the other choice is crying, and that's not productive."

If you have a suggestion for a Q&A subject in the Ogdensburg area, email Times reporter Max Mitchell (mmitchell@wdt.net).