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“I think there are three or so of us in the state with that kind of tenure,” Kay, 51, said during a telephone interview from his office in Randolph. “I don’t know where the time’s gone.”
As recently as three years ago, after his Vermont peers named him superintendent of the year, Kay said he didn’t see himself following a long parade of school-district bosses into retirement anytime soon. But with the supervisory union’s elementary schools in Randolph, Brookfield and Braintree and the Randolph Union High School set to consolidate under one governing board on July 1, and with his and his wife Rhonda’s parents all aging, he recently announced that they would pull up stakes and move back to their native Canada.
“We really want to be closer to family,” Kay said. “We’ve been away for a long time.”
When they arrived in Randolph in 2002, Kay didn’t try to guess how long they might stay. After five years running a school district sprawling over a 6,000-square-mile patch of Saskatchewan, on the central plains of Canada, he just knew that central Vermont reminded him much more of his home in the interior lakes region of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island, to which he and his wife will return.
Then he started getting to know the people.
“Four or five months before I took the position, I didn’t know I’d be moving here,” Kay said. “But as time went on, I came to appreciate that our communities are strong. I love our kids. It’s a combination of so many different things. It’s a community that expects a lot of education, and supports the schools very well.”
That support included the governing bodies and administrations of the supervisory union agreeing early on to share a single system of transportation, maintenance and food service — years before the state Legislature, in 2015, established Act 46, with the aim of encouraging small school districts to merge and provide education more efficiently.
“This system is already pretty well organized,” Kay said. “Our systems have worked collaboratively for as long as I’ve been here. Still, there’s a lot going on in education, a lot for districts and for superintendents to stay on top of. It’s something I have said to the Legislature: ‘You have to be careful how much you push into the pipe.’ ”
Orange Southwest posted its superintendency opening at schoolspring.com last Wednesday, listing a deadline of June 8 for candidates to apply, and a starting date of Aug. 1 for the new superintendent.
In the meantime, Kay isn’t rushing onto a new career path. Before going into education, he worked in corporate finance, so “that’s always an option,” he said.
For now, Kay welcomes having some leisure to decide — and to watch the evolution of education from a distance.
“It’s a time of change,” he said. “There have been and continue to be a lot of technological advances to keep up with. I’ve always been a change person. I embrace it. I’ve enjoyed working to keep our schools modern, moving forward.”
Quiz Kids
Will Cahoon, an eighth-grader at Hanover’s Richmond Middle School, scored in the top 50 out of 800 students during the recent National Academic Quiz Tournament in Dallas.
Cahoon placed 49th in the individual rankings while captaining Richmond’s B-division team to 117th place among 160 teams. His teammates are eighth-graders Fletcher Zeng, Soren Monroe-Anderson and Daniel Frost, and sixth-grader Sora Shirai.
The Richmond School’s A-division team placed 90th overall, with captain and eighth-grader Lazlo Snyder finished 90th as an individual. Rounding out the A team were eighth-graders Rose Luttmer and Jason Chou and seventh-graders Dill Eisendrath and Cole Griffiths.
This was the third year in a row that Richmond sent teams to the national tournament to represent New Hampshire. The A and B squads tuned up for nationals by winning the Hanover Junior Challenge earlier this spring.
By Degrees
Greg Frechette, of Wilder, on Sunday received his medical degree from the University of Vermont’s Robert Larner College of Medicine. A 2007 graduate of Hartford High School and a 2011 graduate of Bowdoin College, Frechette in mid-June will begin a residency in general surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
Norwich native Rachel Elliott received her master of science degree in special education from City University of New York’s Hunter College. A 2008 graduate of Hanover High School, Elliott recently achieved certification from the state of New York to teach in grades 1 to 6, in both mainstream classrooms and in classrooms for students with disabilities.
Samuel Finley, of Canaan, graduated cum laude from the State University of New York at Potsdam on Saturday, receiving a bachelor of science degree in psychology.
Collegiate Recognition
Fairlee resident Aidan Bardos recently received the Carol B. Ohmann Memorial Prize from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., for achievements in feminist, gender and sexuality studies.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute recently named Ching Wing Cheng, of Canaan, and Seth Norton, of Thetford Center, to its dean’s list, for their achievements in the classroom and in technical projects during the spring 2017 semester. Cheng, a freshman, and Norton, a senior, are both majoring in computer science.
Victoria Lyons, of Claremont, earned a spot on the dean’s list at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., for maintaining a grade-point average of between 3.0 and 3.74 out of a possible 4.0 during the spring 2017 semester. Lyons is a sophomore majoring in early child care and development.
For maintaining a grade-point average of at least 3.75 out of a possible 4.0 during the spring 2017 semester, Erin Beidler, of Randolph Center, earned a spot on the dean’s list at Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Va.
Upper Valley residents Allison Devins, Galen Moynihan and Kimberly MacLeod presented their research during the recent Steinmetz Symposium Day at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. Devins, of White River Junction, Moynihan, of Plainfield, and Lebanon resident MacLeod are all seniors at Union.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. Education-related news and announcements also can be sent to schoolnotes@vnews.com.