NEW SCOTLAND — After serving for over three decades, Voorheesville’s longest-tenured school board member has decided to step down. 

“It’s just time to go,” Coffin told The Enterprise. “It’s too many years.”

Coffin, who had a 32-year career with the State Education Department, was elected to the board at least eight times (prior to 2009, trustee terms were five years), most recently in 2021.

He won his first election in 1989, served for 10 years, lost a nail-biter, and was then reappointed to the board in 2001 following the resignation of the person to whom he lost two years prior.

“I figured I was done, I wasn’t going to do anymore and I got the call, again” he said of returning the board in 2001 for another 20-plus years.

Asked how the board had changed from his early days to now it was Coffin’s wife, Betty, a former teacher, who offered the observation. “When he was first on the board,” Mrs. Coffin said, “they would have board meetings — they would end up in the parking lot until 2 o’clock in the morning.” She added, “They were so interested in what they were doing.”

With the more recent boards, she said, the members are younger and their families are younger and the meetings are shorter. 

Asked what she was most proud of from her husband’s time on the board, Mrs. Coffin said her husband, through his work with the State Education Department, brought a lot of institutional knowledge to the position and, while using another term, the description she offered of her husband was that of a “glue guy”: a sports reference used to characterize a player who helps meld a team into a close-knit and successful group.

As for his proudest accomplishment, Coffin said it was just meeting people and working with them. “I just liked being in action, you know; I want to be part of what was going on,” he said. “And I was still able to do everything I needed to do with my family.”

The couple raised two children, a daughter and a son, who attended the Voorheesville schools, and they now have a grandchild in the district.