After just over two years as RSU/MSAD 40 superintendent, Frank Boynton will leave the district office in less than two weeks in favor of living full time with his family in Durham.
Although Boynton said during an interview at the district office in Union on Aug. 4 that he enjoyed his time with RSU/MSAD 40, his retirement will allow him to stop spending weeknights in an apartment away from his wife.
“I wish the best for the district,” he said. “I had a good time here for a couple of years.”
Boynton said he’s pleased with the work he did for RSU/MSAD 40 and couldn’t think of anything he would have done differently. He’s particularly proud of the improvements made to the buildings under his tenure.
“We had a significant amount of [federal stimulus] money,” Boynton said. “We were able to do some things that were planned before I got here, but that would have been four or five years off.”
He also cited changes his administration implemented to district operations.
“We had a lot of internal work to meet expectations for an RSU as opposed to an SAD,” Boynton said. Regional school units and school administrative districts are two different school district structures that differ in how they are organized. “We tried to update and meet the new state standards.”
He said many of those changes have been positive, but it make take two to three years to know to full effect of many changes. “You don’t know: are those changes going to work or are they going to be changed,” Boynton said.
Traditionally, it’s common for Maine school and district administrators to retire, with a pension and other retirement benefits, and then go back to work and receive both a salary and a pension. Until a few years ago, they could go back to the same job as long as they were away for at least one day.
School officials who retire before this September will still be able to take jobs in education and receive their pension, as well as receive 45 percent funding towards their health care – benefits that will be removed when new state law governing educator’s retirement benefits takes effect in September.
Boynton, who turned 59 and a half this month – the minimum age for educators to retire in Maine – said he has no definite plans for future employment, but that he’s exploring his options.
For now, he’s excited to spend more time at home, where, according to his wife, he spent 51 days last year.
His 37-year career in education started as a seventh grade teacher in Millinocket, where he taught for 14 years. Boynton then served as a principal in Steuben, the Woodstock School, Durham Elementary and Chelsea for a total of 14 years.
Boynton then had the distinction of being the only superintendent of Union 132, which formed with him at the helm and disbanded eight years later. He then became superintendent of RSU/MSAD 40.
When he took the job at RSU/MSAD 40, his wife elected to remain in Durham. Boynton anticipated spending several nights each week away from home, but at the time he “didn’t realize it was going to be come here Sunday night and leave Friday,” he said.
He said he will miss the communities that make up the district the most. “I enjoyed working with the people here, getting to know the communities and becoming a part of them,” he said.
