Lowville superintendent plans retirement after 32-year administrative career

LOWVILLE — The Lowville Academy and Central School District superintendent plans to retire this summer after 32 years as a school administrator, the last 11 as superintendent.

“It’s time to pass the torch and move on to other things,” said Kenneth J. McAuliffe, who replaced William H. Wormuth as superintendent following his retirement in 2001.

Mr. McAuliffe, whose career in education spans four decades, plans to retire at the end of August to provide a two-month transition period with his eventual replacement.

“Ken has just done a marvelous job,” said John J. “Jay” Boak Jr., district superintendent of the Jefferson-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services, who will assist in the search for a successor. “He’s a very excellent superintendent, and we’re really going to miss him.”

Mr. McAuliffe, a New England native and 1969 graduate of Watertown High School, said it has been a privilege to be part of this small community for all these years and to be able to advance his career without moving elsewhere.

“I feel very good fortune,” he said. “I feel I’ve had very good luck in being here.”

Mr. McAuliffe said retirement will provide more time for him and his wife, Marion, a retired teacher from the South Lewis Central School District, to travel and spend time with family members. They have three children and three grandchildren living in New England and New York City.

Mr. McAuliffe said he has purchased a house in southern Maine but is not yet certain whether he and his wife will keep their residence in Lowville or move elsewhere.

Wherever he establishes roots following his retirement, the longtime administrator said he would like to do some college-level teaching or administrative-consulting work, if possible.

Mr. McAuliffe commended the Board of Education members, teachers and support staff he has worked with over the years for making his job easier. The students have also proven to be, for the most part, trustworthy, hard-working and achievement-oriented, he said.

Construction of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm and its subsequent annual payments to the school district of nearly $3 million has had a great impact, Mr. McAuliffe said. Wind funding has allowed the district to complete an extensive capital project, maintain programs and staff and avoid raising taxes for the past six years despite cutbacks in state funding, he said.

Mr. McAuliffe said the biggest change he has seen over the course of his career is in technology.

“When I started here, there were five computers,” he said. “Now, there are 1,100.”

The superintendent also pointed to increased integration of special-education students, a switch to all-Regents programming well before the state required it, extensive offering of Advanced Placement courses and the district’s 1999 designation as a “Blue Ribbon School” by the U.S. Department of Education as some of his many career highlights.

The school district has had only five superintendents since 1924, so Board of Education members will be looking for continued long-term stability in its next superintendent, Mr. McAuliffe said.

District officials plan to advertise statewide for candidates over the next couple of months. School board members would then select around six semifinalists for board, staff and community interviews in March, select two finalists in April and determine their top choice in May.

While the Board of Education will make the final decision, the selection process is to include plenty of involvement by interested teachers, support staff and community members, Mr. Boak said.

“The board is interested in really getting input from all the constituents they serve,” he said.

Mr. McAuliffe holds a bachelor’s degree from Milton College in Wisconsin and master’s and administrative degrees from SUNY Oswego.

He began his teaching career at Holy Family School, Watertown, in 1973, then taught for three years in the Tupper Lake Central School District before taking a job as assistant high school principal in Lowville in 1980. He was appointed elementary school principal at Lowville in 1981 and junior high school principal in 1984.

Mr. McAuliffe also served as an adjunct professor of education at Jefferson Community College, Watertown, from 2000 to 2007 and was a part-time instructor for the superintendent development program at SUNY Oswego in 2009 and 2010.

He has been chairman of the board of trustees for the Jefferson-Lewis School Employees Healthcare Plan since 2005, a member and past president of the Northern New York Community Foundation board since 2001, a member of the Lowville town and village Summer Recreation Program board since 1981 and a member of the advisory council of the Center for Community Studies at JCC since 2007. He is also a past board member at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Lewis County and the New York State Rural Schools Association and served for three years on the town of Lowville Board of Assessment Appeals.