March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Bangor school official honored by peers> Forthright Doughty top superintendent

Jim Doughty did not want to be the Bangor school superintendent.

When the veteran school administrator was first offered the job in 1987, he refused. Members of the school committee, however, were convinced that Doughty, a Bangor native, was their man. They offered the job three more times before Doughty finally accepted.

“The school committee was very persistent,” he said with a laugh during a recent interview.

Nine years after taking the helm of his hometown school department, Doughty has been named the 1996 superintendent of the year by the Maine School Superintendents Association. Doughty was selected from among more than 180 of his peers throughout the state.

The state superintendents’ association will now nominate Doughty for the national superintendent of the year award, which will be given by the American Association of School Administrators at their annual meeting in March. In the award’s 10-year history, there has not been a national superintendent of the year from Maine.

“He is a very deserving selection,” said Gerald Clockedile, president-elect of the MSSA and the superintendent of SAD 3 in the Unity area.

“Jim Doughty deserves nothing but the highest accolades,” said Mayor Marshall Frankel, whose two daughters graduated from Bangor High School before going on to successful college careers. “He helped make the Bangor school system one of the best not only in the state, but in the country.”

Doughty is characteristically modest about the honor.

“If recognition is bestowed on Bangor through me, that is great,” he said during an interview in his City Hall office Thursday. He praised Bangor residents, members of the school committee, administrators, teachers, students, parents and the City Council for their dedication to high academic standards.

Doughty’s philosophy is simple: He wants to make a positive difference in the lives of Bangor’s children. He aims to do that by providing the city’s 4,500 students with a high-quality education. He said his goal is for all students who graduate from Bangor High School to be eligible to enter a two- or four-year college or university. Currently, 88 percent of the city’s high school graduates qualify to go on to postsecondary education.

He said being recognized as Maine’s superintendent of the year is an indication that what Bangor is doing is right — not perfect, but right.

Doughty has remained steadfast in his belief that all students can learn. Coupled with that belief is his conviction that success must be measured.

“I would like to be remembered as someone who cared an awful lot and demonstrated, factually, that all students, regardless of their social and economic condition, can learn at high levels,” he said.

Martha Newman, chairwoman of the Bangor School Committee, points to this conviction that all students can succeed as Doughty’s strongest selling point.

“Jim has a vision of Bangor that has unlimited horizons for our children,” she said. “He makes things possible.”

She said Doughty turned a mediocre school system with declining test scores and a lack of direction into the envy of the state.

“Jim, without a doubt, is the best superintendent in Maine,” Newman said.

Doughty’s current employers are not the only ones who sing his praises. Former students, employees and colleagues also had nothing but praise for the veteran administrator.

“Jim Doughty is one of the most significant persons in my life,” said Howard Ryder, principal of Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.

Ryder was a student at Greenville High School when he first encountered Doughty. Ryder recalled that he was goofing off in the hall one day when Doughty, the district’s principal, asked what he was planning to do after high school. Ryder, a senior, said he didn’t know and soon found himself in the principal’s office filling out college applications. Ryder graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington with a degree in education. His first teaching job was working for Doughty in Searsport. Although he now has 25 years of experience, Ryder said he still calls Doughty for advice several times a year.

“Bangor is very lucky to have him,” he said.

“Jim Doughty is the most forthright, decent, effective, bright, capable superintendent,” said Beverly Styrna, a former school nurse in Orono where Doughty served as superintendent from 1972 to 1979. “He was not always popular, but he was always respected.”

Styrna, who is now on the Orono Town Council, said although she was only a school nurse, she always felt comfortable talking to Doughty because his door was always open and he had a way of putting people at ease.

Robert Cobb, dean of the University of Maine’s College of Education, wrote a letter in support of Doughty’s nomination for the superintendent of the year honors.

“It is his unrelenting commitment to educational excellence that makes his influence on people and organizations so marked and lasting,” Cobb wrote. “He is, and deserves to be, very highly regarded as an education leader.”

Doughty, who graduated from Husson College with a degree in business administration, began his education career as a teacher in Monson in the early 1960s. In 1963, he was named principal of Monson Academy and later took over the town’s elementary school as well. In 1965, Doughty moved to Greenville where he became superintendent in 1968 at the age of 29. He served as superintendent in Searsport and Orono before moving on to the University of Maine, where he was an assistant dean in the College of Education from 1979 to 1987. He also received a master’s degree in administration and a certificate of advanced study in superintendency from UM.

Doughty credits his wife, Susan, a teacher at The Hilltop School, for encouraging his career aspirations and being willing to relocate their family as he moved up the administrative ladder. Unlike the old refrain that behind every successful man is a good woman, Doughty said his wife of more than 30 years was often ahead of him, leading the way.

After much encouragement from his wife and a bit of friendly arm-twisting by the school committee, Doughty took Bangor’s top education job in 1987. The committee has hung on to its prize despite requests from two governors that Doughty become the state’s education commissioner.

The most recent honor was the result of more cajoling from the Bangor School Committee. Phyllis Shubert, vice chairwoman of the committee, said she tried unsuccessfully for years to nominate Doughty for the statewide award. This year, she tried a new tactic. She mentioned to the 1956 graduate of Bangor High School that his alma mater would receive a $10,000 scholarship if he won the national superintendent’s title.

Shubert said Doughty begrudgingly agreed to allow the nomination. Because he had thrown away the nominating papers, Shubert had to write to the national association for additional copies of the paperwork.

“He said he was just doing his job and didn’t need to be honored for that,” Shubert recalled this week.

With the appropriate materials in hand, Shubert wrote a letter to the national association.

“James Doughty is an excellent candidate for superintendent of the year because he would be an outstanding model for all educators of how to turn a mediocre school system into an excellent one with little cost,” Shubert wrote in her nomination letter. “His administration is marked by high expectations, common sense, integrity, creativity, energy and an uncompromising commitment to the education of each student in his charge.”

Shubert points to Doughty’s introduction of intervention programs and dedication to the city’s students as evidence of his success.

For example, under Doughty’s leadership, Bangor was the first community to participate in the federally funded Reading Recovery program, a low-cost kindergarten literacy program.

Doughty also implemented what are called student improvement plans to ensure that the city’s students do not fall behind national standards. Any student in the second through 10th grades who scores below 50 percent on nationally normed tests in math and reading is placed on individualized plans by teachers.

Most recently, Doughty battled for the right of a Bangor High graduate who had received tutoring for a learning disability to retain his football scholarship at the University of Maine when the National Collegiate Athletic Association questioned his credentials.

“With his leadership, integrity, compassion and commitment to education, Jim Doughty is a model for all superintendents,” Shubert concluded.


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