For retiring Superintendent Jon Bernard, it’s all about relationships

Published January 2, 2020

By MAUREEN DOHERTY

NORTH READING — Superintendent of Schools Jon C. Bernard, who officially retires on New Year’s Day, recently reflected on his 33-year career in education, of which the past 17-plus years have been spent serving the students of the North Reading Public Schools.

A Saugus native, Bernard started his career as a freshman English teacher at Saugus High School and is very proud of the fact that one of his first students grew up to become Dr. Glen McKay, the current principal of the J.T. Hood School in North Reading. McKay is just one of many former students mentored by Bernard who chose to enter the field of education for their career path.

After teaching for eight years, from 1987-1995, Bernard served as a co-assistant principal of Saugus High School from 1995 to 2003, prior to becoming principal of North Reading High School in 2003 when he was hired by former Superintendent David Troughton, now retired.

As principal, Bernard shepherded the students and staff at North Reading High School through the massive school building project, with all the ups and downs such a multi-million dollar undertaking entailed, and culminating in the joining of key elements of the new high school to be shared with the renovated North Reading Middle School, including the Performing Arts Center, the gymnasium and the adjoining cafeterias along a shared “Main Street.”

Just six weeks after the doors to the new high school opened in the fall of 2014, Bernard assumed the superintendent’s position upon the retirement of one of his many mentors, Kathy Willis.

Asked why he decided to retire at this stage of his career, Bernard said, “People that have retired in the past tell me you get a feeling. The building project was very important to me. Seeing that through was a part of the work experience I never thought I’d be a part of. I was pretty intimately involved and one of the few people involved from beginning to end. There was a lot of post construction work to be addressed and it was important to have some stability in the district.”

Adding to the school district’s stability is the team of people he has assembled here who have become “rapidly rooted” following a period of transition after multiple retirements at the administrative level, he said. Among them is his successor, Dr. Patrick Daly, the district’s current Assistant Superintendent; and Michael Connelly, who is now the Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations; as well as Cynthia Conant, the Director of Student Services, which Bernard describes as a “significant” position as the person in charge of all student services related to special education, nursing, guidance and psychology.

He is also proud of the fact that the district established a much needed Director of Digital Learning, which is a position held by Dan Downs for the past few years.

Bernard offers high praise for the entire administrative team and the talents and perspectives that they bring to the table. This team includes the district’s principals: NRHS Principal Anthony “AJ” Loprete, NRMS Principal Cathy O’Connell and the three elementary school principals, Sean Killeen (Batchelder), Christine Molle (Little) and Glen McKay (Hood).

“I felt that had come together very nicely and I anticipate all those people will stay. It felt like the right time and I feel very blessed to say I am retiring for all the right reasons. The community has been very good to me and we’ve done well as a school district on a number of fronts, certainly academics being at the top. I feel as though it was an appropriate time. My health is good and I have nothing lined up beyond retirement right now,” Bernard said.

Sometime in the future he may consider working again, but for now he is focusing on his travel plans, especially to visit family and friends, and other adventures. He has also moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and he plans to dust off the golf clubs. There will be opportunities to do volunteer work and to catch up on his reading.

“My family lives all over the country, including Hawaii, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida — all warm places! But I like the four seasons in New Hampshire,” he said.

“I couldn’t be more happy. There’s a part of me that is curious about what it is going to be like but I know I will miss the people,” he said, noting that as superintendent he had already “missed the kids to the extent that I do not know them as much as I had” as a teacher and a principal. Even as superintendent he would often take strolls down the school’s Main Street during lunch and Power Block to talk to the students, buy the cookies they were selling to support their clubs, and take an in interest in whatever interested them.

Bernard has always had a knack for remembering the names of his students and colleagues. He attributes this skill to learning early on in his career that doing so was important to others, so he made it a priority.

“I quickly became aware of how important that was to other people… It was important that I knew who they were as it gave people a sense of connectedness,” Bernard believes. But how did he do it? In his teaching days he would assign his students their seats in alphabetical order so he could more easily learn their names during the first quarter. “After the first quarter they could sit wherever they wanted!” he said.

A former selectman

Many people are unaware that Bernard was a former Selectman in the town of Saugus, serving from 1993 to 1999. Saugus has a unique tradition where the entire five-member Board of Selectmen must run for re-election every two years. So in the fall of 1993, when one of the sitting board members chose not to run for re-election, Bernard was recruited by the remaining four members to run for that seat.

“We served six years. It was a great learning experience about give-and-take and consensus building, and it was a good time economically; we did a capital improvement plan,” he recalled.

Last April, when Bernard chose to announce his intention to retire effective January 1, 2020, he did so intentionally in advance of the town’s annual May elections because he did not want to leave an impression that his departure was related to whoever was elected in that race.

In fact, he praised all of the School Committee members he has worked with in this town, past and present, for allowing the administrators to do the jobs they were hired to do. Bernard believes that when good people get micromanaged they will leave.

His predecessors had retired at a midpoint of the school year too. “I wanted it to be clean… David Troughton did it, Kathy Willis did it, and now I did it. It would leave a vacancy. I wanted it to be enough time to line it all up and make it work,” he said, knowing that Patrick Daly would be the front-runner for the position.

Bernard added that he will “forever be grateful to David Troughton for giving me the opportunity” to be the principal of North Reading High School, noting at that point the district was “looking for a culture shift” although he was unaware of it at the time when the job opening became available shortly after he had moved to town. Troughton “was very invested in my being successful and he provided a very good balance of not micro-managing me, but being available,” Bernard believes.

He also enjoyed his time working for Kathy Willis, whom he described as “classy, smart, poised, gregarious, supportive and insightful. She is a very smart and down-to-earth person.”

As for his successor, Bernard believes the town and the district will be in good hands. “I think the world of him,” he said. “Patrick is a smart guy; very talented and dedicated.”

Not wanting to presume Daly needs his advice, but should he ask Bernard’s advice would be: “Stay true to who you are. You got the opportunity based on who you are now, so if you stay true, you cannot go wrong.”

But doing so does not mean people won’t challenge him, Bernard said, who also knows that Daly will be surrounded by a talented administrative team, faculty and staff. “His administrators will not be opposed to telling him when some things need to go in a different direction,” Bernard said.

The reward is being a part of kids’ lives

Asked what was the most rewarding aspect of his career, Bernard said, “Oh, that’s an easy one. You get into this work to be a part of kids’ lives. The greatest reward is being a part of it in the moment and then seeing later, down the road, what they do and who they become. It is a huge reward. I have long believed that this work is about relationships of all kinds and among all ages. You cannot truly put a value on it until you experience it.”

The best compliment a student can give to an educator who mentored them is to seek him or her out later in life for advice on how to enter the teaching profession.

“There has been a number of  teachers that I had met with at their request over the years who were considering leaving whatever work they were in, mostly private sector business, and just wanting more fulfillment in their work,” said Bernard.

“There are a number of them — Kevin Lentini, Jessica Scioli, Josh Rocco, Matt DiVecchia. They are all kids who came through the high school” who are now working in the teaching profession locally after talking to him about it.

Another former student, Nick Granese, is working as a paraprofessional, he said, and will likely follow the teaching path. There are others who currently teach in other districts as well. “Ryan Sexton is a graduate of the high school that reached out to me in the last couple of years who is teaching in another district,” Bernard said.

“Those conversations are great for me because it suggests to me number one that their school experience was good, and it is nice to see that they are willing to put aside some of the short-term glory of a bigger salary or a fancier lifestyle in the immediate and do something that is going to get them more personal satisfaction,” Bernard said. “I can honestly say I never looked back or thought I wished I had never pursued this career.”

“It’s the relationships to me that are the most meaningful and what I will cherish the most going forward,” Bernard said.