Superintendent returns to roots in Searsmont> Teaching’s positive, lifelong effects hailed by native SAD 34 leader

BELFAST — After Carol Robbins’ first day in the first grade she walked directly to her home in Searsmont to organize her nine siblings and 13 neighboring kids into a makeshift school class. She would be the teacher, a job choice inspired by the awe and respect she immediately felt for her new teacher, Mrs. Harleth Davis.

Now, almost 50 years later, with Robbins gearing up for her first year as superintendent of SAD 34, which includes Searsmont, the veneration remains. On Thursday Robbins introduced the 78-year-old teacher – retired for 20 years – during a gathering of this year’s teachers in the district. Her relationship with Davis, she told the faculty, is an example of how deeply a single teacher can sway a student’s life. Davis wept as she was presented a large bouquet of red roses and received a standing ovation from the crowd. It was a satisfying and jubilant moment for Robbins, but not an occasion she would have predicted a few years ago.

Although she’s known since the first grade that her life would be dedicated to education, Robbins had never expected to oversee the district that now comprises her hometown along with Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Northport and Swanville.

“I never thought I’d work back in Maine,” the 55-year-old Robbins said during an interview Friday at the district’s Belfast headquarters. For 27 years she worked in Virginia as a teacher, guidance counselor, assistant administrator and assistant superintendent. She and her husband, a Belfast native, made annual visits to Maine with a vague intention of eventually retiring here.

But after her husband died several years ago, she renewed a childhood friendship with a man in this area that eventually blossomed into marriage. She became superintendent of SAD 40 in Waldoboro in July 1996. Then she saw a job posting for superintendent of SAD 34.

“When I saw it in the paper, something pulled at my heart,” she said. “But I said to myself, ‘Carol, you can’t just leave this new job.'” But the attraction became too strong.

“The very last day that applications could be submitted. I brought it to the post office to see that it would be postmarked the right date,” she said.

A self-described people lover, Robbins is at ease in conversation, pulling her chair up close for chatting. It’s a style that should work well with her administrative style, which she jokingly calls MBWA: management by wandering around.

“I’m flexible in letting people do their jobs in the way they want to do them” she said. “But I’m demanding in focusing on giving the children what they need to learn.”

She is not a person of hidden meanings or secret agendas, she said. She summed up her philosophy for the district on Thursday with four goals. First, expectatons must be high for all students, not just those who consistently do well.

Second, the schools must be safe and orderly. “Some of our kids come from places that aren’t safe,” she said, referring to domestic violence.

Third, there must be parental and community involvement in the schools. “The schools and children belong to the community, not to the school district,” she said. “We need their involvement.”

Fourth, the faculty must keep in mind that they are educating and influencing the “people who will tend to our future,” Robbins said, borrowing from Abraham Lincoln.

“Every decision we make must impact positively on the teacher/student relationship,” she said. Too often, she said, administrative decisions become based on what’s best for the bureaucracy. “There are a lot of demands on teachers that have nothing to do with teaching,” she said.

Robbins also pointed out a couple of items about the start of the school year that she felt would benefit both faculty and students.

A half-time curriculum coordinator will join the district this year to help the eight elementary schools, middle school and high school align their courses.

The district also is eligible for $10 million in grant money being offered by MBNA. Teachers can apply for grants to fund improvements or enhancements that will “improve education in the classroom,” Robbins said. A spokesman for MBNA said that 10 applications from SAD 34 already have been received.