Big Shoes to Fill

When Door County students return to school in the fall, 33 people who dedicated their lives to teaching will not start the school year with them.

While the districts search for their replacements, the teachers reflected on why they started teaching, why they decided to retire this year and what they plan to do now.

Filling the holes

Those teachers will take more than 900 years of cumulative experience in Door County schools into retirement, leaving administrators with the difficult task of filling their roles.

Of Sturgeon Bay’s 107 staff members, 14 retired at the conclusion of the 2010-2011 academic year.

District Administrator Joe Stutting said Sturgeon Bay is filling many of the vacancies, but some positions were partially eliminated, with physical education at Sturgeon Bay cut by 75 percent and French completely eliminated.

To replace the seasoned retirees, Stutting said the district hired applicants with a wide range of experience, not solely first-year teachers.

“Obviously you have a lot of experience going out the door, but we believe we’ve hired great teachers with all levels of experience,” he said.

Sevastopol did so as well, according to Superintendent Steve Cromell. The school lost six teachers to retirement.

Only three of the six positions are being replaced with full-time staff members, while two more will be half time. Cromell said the school is not hiring another librarian to replace Carolyn Keller because they have another one on staff.

While he believes the new hires will be welcome additions to Sevastopol’s staff, he said losing such a large number of faculty members is a loss regardless.

“We’re not going to say that all that experience can be replaced overnight,” he said. “But by watching carefully what we were doing in replacements, we made sure they were seasoned people who could contribute immediately.”

While the other districts have more or less filled the open positions, Southern Door has filled two of its 11, according to Superintendent Joe Innis.

The district is continuing to interview candidates for its open positions and is looking to consolidate where it can, Innis said.

“We’ll have to replace some teachers, but they might not all be full time,” he said.

Nine of the 11 teachers had more than 25 years of experience at the school, which Innis said will take time to replenish. In addition to teaching experience, Innis said a vast supply of knowledge about the school’s occupants will also be lost.

“We lost some excellent people,” he said. “They know the families, they know the students, they’re familiar with the community – someone new will have to start from scratch.”

Why now?

A factor driving retirement for most of the teachers was Gov. Scott Walker’s Budget Repair Bill, which eliminated collective bargaining rights for teachers unions.

Southern Door Guidance Counselor Susan Leeder said she decided to retire because of the financial difficulty teachers would soon start facing under Walker’s budget.

A special education teacher at Sturgeon Bay, Kathleen Hills said she could not afford to keep teaching with the changes from the budget in place.

“I had no intention of retiring. I was thinking maybe five years down the road,” Hills said. “I had to leave a job I love.”

For other teachers, retirement may have been on the horizon already, but events in Madison accelerated their plans.

“It just seemed like it was right this year,” Southern Door Guidance Counselor Jim Dreweck said. “Most of it had to deal with the state – it just pushed me.”

Many of those who retired said it had been on their minds for a few years and thought the time was right to pave the way for new teachers. Having taught 11 years at Southern Door and the past 26 at Sturgeon Bay, Nancy Hunsader said, “After 37 years of teaching I think it’s time to move on…and to give another person a chance – a younger person with new ideas.”

Though their reasons for retirement varied, all the teachers recalled their teaching experience, and their start in the profession, fondly.

“Probably before I was even out of grade school I just knew – I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” said Gibraltar’s lone retiree Shirley Mann.

Hills said she “fell in love with it. Especially in Special Education, you can make such a huge difference if you’re good at what you do.”

Sevastopol science teacher Paul Leline said he’ll miss the variety.

“It’s always new every day. It’s always new personalities and interesting things happening, so that always kept me going.”

Southern Door Art teacher Jim Zellmer said teaching isn’t something you can do without passion.

“After 36 years, if you don’t like working with young people and working with kids, then you’re in the wrong business,” he said.

Door County’s school districts must now find a way to replace that passion.