Brewer bids farewell to veteran educator

BREWER – In what Chairman Mary Ann McGuire said was a bittersweet night, members of the local education community said goodbye to a 25-year school department veteran and welcomed half a dozen new faculty members.

Superintendent Allan Snell retired last month from his full-time post in Brewer to accept a similar part-time post in nearby Union 91 (Orrington, Orland).

Snell is succeeded by Betsy Webb of Bangor, formerly principal at State Street School, whose education career spans 18 years. Webb was the sole internal applicant for the school department’s top spot.

Monday’s meeting was Webb’s second as superintendent.

Before being hired by the Brewer school system four years ago, Webb served in a variety of teaching and administrative roles in SAD 68 (Dover-Foxcroft, Charleston, Monson, Sebec), Thornton Academy in Saco and in the Wells-Ogunquit school district.

After a reception catered by culinary arts students from the United Technologies Center in Bangor, school officials presented Snell some parting gifts.

School committee member Mark Chambers gave Snell a plaque on behalf of the community. Joseph Ferris, another member, presented Snell four box seat tickets to a Boston Red Sox baseball game on Monday, Sept. 24. On Sunday, Snell received a Brewer High letter jacket and letter from members of the administrative team.

Six new teachers were introduced during a separate reception later in the meeting.

In other business, school officials heard Webb’s report on the opening of the new school year; Curriculum coordinator Joseph Gallant’s report on improvements in reading after Brewer’s first year of full-day kindergarten; and library media specialist Marilyn Joyce’s vision for the new Brewer High library.

The library, which should be ready for occupancy in the next few weeks, is being expanded and upgraded to meet current educational needs.

No longer are school libraries mere warehouses for books, Joyce said. In the future, she said, students here will use the facility as a “laboratory where students [learn to] locate, evaluate, apply and present information.”

These skills, Joyce said, will become increasingly important as students graduate and enter a labor market in which the average worker will change careers an estimated seven times, with at least half of those jobs not yet in existence.

Also during the meeting, committee members fielded several questions about the status of negotiations with the Brewer Education Association.

Chairman Mary Ann McGuire read a prepared statement that said the two sides were undergoing mediation but said she could disclose little else, under the rules the committee and BEA negotiators had mutually agreed to follow.

The committee’s contract with the local teachers union expired at the end of August 2000. Teachers here have since been working under the terms of their prior three-year labor agreement.