Hanover
And while two are superintendents in southeastern New Hampshire and the third in Erie, Pa., all three have ties to the Upper Valley.
Elaine Arbour, the superintendent of SAU 11 in Dover, N.H., was a former school administrator and teacher in Claremont. She also worked as special education teacher at Mascoma Valley Regional High School 20 years ago.
Jay Badams, the Erie superintendent, lived in Saxtons River, Vt., 25 years ago, when he worked as an account manager for Eastman Kodak’s health sciences division, where his biggest account was Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
And Betsey Cox-Buteau, the superintendent of SAU 83 in Fremont, N.H., was in the second class of women to graduate from Dartmouth College, where she was a 1977 classmate of Phil Hanlon, now Dartmouth’s president.
The candidates to succeed SAU Superintendent Frank Bass will each spend a day in the Dresden district towns this week, meeting with staff at each school during the day as well as holding forums with parents.
Arbour graduated from University of Maine at Farmington in 1996, holds a master of arts in education from Castleton State College and earned a doctor in educational leadership in 2010 from Argosy University. The for-profit school has 19 locations around the country and also offers a variety of graduate programs online.
Arbour, who worked for the Claremont schools for more than a decade, including serving as director of curriculum and instruction from 2009 to 2012 and then as assistant superintendent from 2012-2014, noted that she helped secure funding for construction of a new high school in Dover and renovation of an elementary school.
“My work in Dover and Claremont has provided me with both depth and breadth of experience in school leadership. I value a collaborative leadership approach and seek out others’ expertise when making decisions, and I have worked to open lines of communication among multiple stakeholders to develop and enact a vision for the school districts,” Arbour said via email.
“I am skilled in the areas of curriculum and instruction, teacher and administrator evaluation, school finance, policy and school law, and I use these as tools for providing a strong educational experience for students.”
Badams served as a medical non-commissioned officer from 1987 to 1990 with the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division before graduating with a degree in English at Allegheny College, also in 1990, according to his resume.
He then earned a master of education from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and a doctor of education degree from University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
Badams has worked as a teacher and administrator in the Erie School District since 1997, but for a two-year stint as superintendent in nearby Wattsburg, Pa., from 2007 to 2009.
He became superintendent of the Erie schools, which have 11,500 students, in 2010, and faced a $26 million shortfall in a $180 million budget when he took the reins there, according to his resume.
He also is a finalist for a superintendent’s job at the newly created Essex Westford School District in Vermont.
Badams said via email that he and his wife started their family in Vermont, moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to relatives, but are eager to return to the area.
“We’ve always hoped to return, and now that three of our four children have finished or are in college, and our youngest son will be transitioning from middle to high school, we thought that this might be a good time to try to come back,” he said.
The Erie Times-News reported that Badams has been a “vocal advocate for reforming school funding across Pennsylvania,” often appealing to lawmakers in Harrisburg, the state capital.
“It is really tough to fight to try to get people who control the situation to understand how unfair it is. It is so glaring,” he told the newspaper, whose editorial page recently praised him for his “singular leadership” and said, “Badams has been an inspiring, indefatigable, passionate champion of Erie and its schools. But the strain shows.”
Cox-Buteau majored in music at Dartmouth, earned a master’s degree in music theory and composition from University of New Hampshire in 1994, and then a Ph.D in education from UNH in 2005, according to her seven-page resume.
She started as a music teacher, but has also worked as a school principal in Chester and Allenstown, N.H., and associate superintendent of SAU 41 in Hollis and Brookline from 2010 to 2012.
After a stint as interim superintendent in New Ipswich, she became superintendent in Fremont in 2013.
Cox-Buteau said her interest in the SAU 70 job was “sparked on several levels,” including the ability to work with the staff in Hanover and Norwich, and noted that her interest in a career in education started when she helped form an a cappella female singing group at Hanover High while she was in a similar group at Dartmouth.
She also has been an active alumna for the college, serving as an admissions interviewer for more than 20 years.
Two of her daughters also attended Dartmouth, she said.
“The Upper Valley is in my blood, I’m afraid, and being able to enjoy working back in Hanover, in the school system where I began my career in education, would be a remarkable coincidence and fitting close to my career,” she said via email.
Arbour will be in Hanover and Norwich on Wednesday, Cox-Buteau on Thursday and Badams on Friday.
The sessions include a coffee-and-danish session from 7:15 a.m. to 8 a.m. for parents and community members at the Marion Cross multipurpose room and a 45-minute community forum starting at 5 p.m. at Hanover High School’s music room.
Norwich School Board member Justin Campfield, who is the search committee chairman, noted that the SAU board will be interviewing each candidate at 6 p.m., and that how the candidates hold up under a “really long day” of meetings will help reveal “how they respond to different constituencies in the district.”
Campfield also noted that board members will review evaluation sheets that members of the public can fill out at the forums.
“We’re going to look closely at that feedback, and that will definitely play a part” in the board’s decisionmaking, he said.
For a copy of the candidates’ schedules and resumes, go to http://bit.ly/2iueSIj.
John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com or 603-727-3217.