Former Wiscasset School Supt. Alan Hawkins has came out of retirement to serve as the interim superintendent for Regional School Unit 12. Hawkins assumed the responsibilities on July 1 and will serve while the RSU board searches for a long-term hire.
Outgoing RSU 12 Supt. Greg Potter left the RSU 12 on June 30 to take a job as superintendent of RSU 19, which includes schools in Newport, Hartland, Corrinna, Etna, and St. Albans.
Hawkins, who served in the Wiscasset school department from 2002 to 2005, retired in 2010 following a 45-year career in education. He left Wiscasset to become superintendent of Cape Elizabeth’s school department, a position nearer his Portland home he held until his retirement in 2010. Prior to coming to Wiscasset he served as principal of Memorial Middle School in South Portland (1989-2002).
“Cape Elizabeth was two miles from my front door,” Hawkins said. “I really struggled with leaving Wiscasset. I loved working there, I had an amazing administrative team. My vision was that I would retire from there.”
Had the job not opened up he would not have left, he said. “Every town has a group of people who would like to drive you crazy,” he said. “Wiscasset has them, every town has them,” he said.
During his tenure in Wiscasset, Hawkins accomplished passing a budget referendum to renovate a wing of the middle school which closed in 1999 due to indoor air quality concerns.
This time around Hawkins said does not want to be thought of as the superintendent of just Wiscasset. “I am the superintendent of the entire system and so I need to go into each of those buildings. I want to be absolutely sure that’s clear with everyone,” he said.
RSU 12 comprises eight towns, Chelsea, Palermo, Somerville, Whitefield, Wiscasset, Alna, Westport Island, and Windsor. Hawkins said he plans on getting to know the schools and staffs in each town.
On July 5, after three days on the job, Hawkins said he had spoken with principals at the Wiscasset high school, middle school, and the Chelsea school. He will have his own office in each location, he said, and plans to visit at least once every two weeks. He plans to be at the Wiscasset High School every other Friday, and the Assistant Superintendent Patricia Watts will be in Wiscasset on alternate weeks.
“I want to get to know the schools, and to make sure they’re all communicating together,” he said. “I don’t expect everything to be the same between schools, but I expect the education of kids to be the focus, and that we are doing everything we can to best educate them.”
Hawkins said he has very strong feelings about education and how to educate children. He said he plans to work with the administration and the schools to understand how they educate, what is working and what isn’t.
Hawkins said he plans to work closely with all of the principals in RSU 12, and said communication goes both ways. “I said to the principal of Chelsea, if I am doing something and you don’t agree with me, come to me, talk to me about it,” Hawkins said. “I am not going to fire you, I am here to make sure we work well together. I am hoping they will come talk with me.”
While he serves RSU 12, Hawkins is renting a house in Windsor so as to be nearer the RSU towns. “I think it is important to have the superintendent readily available when you need him,” he said.
One of the issues that has come up in recent months has been the New England Common Assessment Program scores for RSU 12. RSU 12 board members Chris Johnson of Somerville, and Melinda Caron of Whitefield, among others, have expressed concerns that many students in the RSU are underperforming in writing.
Hawkins said he is not an alarmist regarding the NECAP scores, because he sees the scores as just one piece of data, but he does believe assessments can help tell if a child is not gaining ground.
“It is possible to lose a child much too quickly,” he said. “Where are the students performing and where should they be? By the end of third grade, students should be reading at the third grade level or above. How are we getting them there? We can use NECAP once a year, and Northwest Evaluation Association tests two or three times a year.”
Hawkins said one of his first tasks is to dive deeply into the test score data and look closely at which grades and schools in the RSU need more work.
Children learn at different paces and in different ways, Hawkins said. “Every child should get the education he or she needs. Literacy is reading and writing and math. If you have those keys in place, they will open all the other doors,” he said.
Hawkins said committed parents are necessary to a child’s success in school. “In Cape Elizabeth the kids came to school already reading and writing in kindergarten,” he said. “An educational program is as successful as the parents want it to be. If you have communities where the parents don’t care about education, then the students don’t care about it either.”
Hawkins said he believes that the RSU system is viable, adding RSU 12 specifically needs to be more equitable. The board is in the process of doing that, he said. “Wiscasset and Westport Island are in a good place educationally,” he said. “The RSU is a good plan but the state did not do the best job developing it. It’s our job to make it work,” he said.
“I know there are very strong feelings about my community, and that it is my community, and I think it is hard for an RSU to begin to pull those different towns together, to work together to improve education,” he said. “Wiscasset and Westport Island are struggling. The geographic distance, the high school mascot for Wiscasset – these are major issues. There is distance between Wiscasset and the other towns here, but it shouldn’t make a wall. How do you make a bridge?”
In the final analysis, he said, “I hope people see it as a relief for the RSU towns that I am here. I am trustworthy. I am not here to cut your throat. I hope I have the reputation of working together and making things work.”