BERNE — Four important slots in the staff of the Berne-Knox-Westerlo school district are no longer empty.

At its meeting Monday, the board of education voted to approve the appointment  of Mark  Pitterson as the secondary school principal; Annette Landry as principal of the elementary school, and Tom Galvin as long-term substitute dean of students and athletic director.

Pitterson is new to the district and brings with him administrative experience from Long Island school districts.

Landry has been serving in three roles  at BKW— as athletic director,  assistant principal of the middle and secondary schools, and alternate chief information officer for data — prior to her new job.

For Galvin — a social studies teacher in the middle school — one of his new positions will be a familiar one. He was the district athletic director until his resignation from that post in 2013.

The board seemed solidly behind all three appointees until board member Susan Kendall-Schanz balked at the move to give wholesale approval to a long list of 20  appointments—  Pitterson, Landry, and Galvin among them.  She moved that Landry’s and Galvin’s appointments  be removed from the list in order to be considered separately. But that motion was defeated 3 to 2, with Lillian Sisson-Chrysler and Kendall-Schanz voting for it, and Matthew Tedeschi, the board president, Russell Chauvot, and Nathan Elble voting  against it.

After  a statement from district superintendent Timothy Mundell  extolling “promoting from within,”  the board moved on to approve the entire list of 20 appointments, with Kendall-Schanz abstaining.

In recent years, the district has seen frequent turnover in its leadership posts. Most recently, the elementary and secondary-school principals left after one year. The current superintendent and business manager have been in place for just one year.

The new appointments docket approved by the board Monday states that Galvin’s pay is to be $75,000. Pitterson and Landy will each receive a salary of $88,000. All  three salaries will be prorated to reflect their effective start dates occurring several weeks after the beginning of the academic year.

Earlier in the meeting the board had presided over ceremonies honoring Hilltown men who died in the Vietnam War (see accompanying story),  as well as conducting a well-attended public forum to hear public comment on  a proposal to increase the level of property tax exemption awarded to veterans in the school district — from the current minimal level to one of several higher levels allowed by state law. The board will vote on the matter in November.

New high school principal

“We should make caring for students the linchpin of everything we do,” the new secondary school principal  told The Enterprise Tuesday, speaking in the musical cadence of  English as it is spoken in his native land, Jamaica.

The board and audience gave a warm welcome to Pitterson when he was introduced and enthusiastically endorsed by Mundell at Monday’s meeting.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Pitterson has lived the United States since 1991 — except for 14 months as an English teacher in the United Arab Emirates. He is a naturalized American citizen, married, and the father of two children. He will be relocating to the area from his current home in Florida.

One of the four high schools students invited to serve on the search committee  for a new principal said of Pitterson, “He spoke to my soul.”

Asked by one student  how he would make decisions regarding matters that directly impact students, he replied, “Whenever I can, I like to get students’ take on it…. Have meetings with student representatives so they can share their concerns.”

Seeing things from the students’ point of view and trying to understand where ”they are coming from” is important to him, he said.

“As educators, we should always try to remember ourselves as children, while also understanding that children today have a lot more to deal with, a lot more than family….But no matter where you are in the world, children are children, learning everything,”  he said.

Pitterson spoke frankly of his own early years and how family issues made him see a residential high school in Kingston as a means of escape. Later, after receiving a diploma in teacher education from Mico University in Kingston, he returned to teach English at his old high school.

“I have always loved English and English literature,” he said, confessing a special love for the plays of Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of William Shakespeare.

With much of his family already in the United States, Pitterson himself emigrated here in 1991, settling on Long Island where he taught in Suffolk County schools after receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees.  From 2002 to 2011, he served for six years as assistant principal of Southampton Intermediate School and then three years as a middle-school principal in the Amityville school district. During the same period, he obtained a doctor of education degree from Dowling College. He also holds  a master of arts degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a bachelor of arts degree from Dowling.

He is certified in New York State in teaching English, grades 7 through 12, and in school-district administration.

Pitterson declares himself happy to be back in administration and in a setting like the Hilltowns, which he says afford “a relief from all the hustle and bustle” of bigger and more urban school districts.

But city or rural, students today, he believes, have a common problem: insecurity.  “We need to make sure, “ he said, “that students thrive not just academically but socially and emotionally too.”

He cites the pressures on students, “the external interferences...the number of exams….the criminal acts” that beset some districts.

While he thinks the appointment of a police officer in the school, a topic discussed at the board meeting, could help in preventing criminal acts, he believes that such a person “should not be a discipline agent in the school; discipline should be school-based.”

He finds much to like in the Common Core approach to education, especially its goal “to drive students to higher levels of accomplishment,” but he regrets, he says, that it can “take the joy out of education” with its emphasis on testing.

“Academic achievement doesn’t mean you can pass an exam,” he said.  “I myself am very meticulous and horrible when taking tests because I take too long.”

Students like himself, he said, should not be penalized because they take more time.

Pitterson has a special interest in literacy and improving reading skills. He described  a computer-based program he worked to establish in Amityville, designed to help students who were reading below their grade levels.

“They grew up with computers,” he said, “and, if we don’t utilize what they are familiar with, we’re going to lose them.”

He said the interactive program for improving reading comprehension was tailored to student interests and priorities; measured their progress, and resulted in “most who entered  being remedied out of the program and advanced up to their grade level for reading comprehension.”

Pitterson said he would like to see “where BKW is” in promoting this key element of learning in all courses: understanding what is read.

“Most of the academic problems students have are because of literacy deficiencies,” he said.

Pitterson replaces Marna McMorris who resigned at the end of the 2015-16 school year after serving for one year as the secondary school principal  

New elementary school principal

A familiar face and presence at BKW for over 20 years, Annette Landry says she plans to build on what her predecessor, Leslie Smith, established during  her 0ne-year tenure.

“That building [the elementary school] is really moving forward positively,” Landry told The Enterprise.  “I am not looking to switch directions,” she said.

Landry says she intends to follow through on initiatives like professional learning committees for each grade level, a new trimester report card with more useful information for parents, as well as innovations in the teaching of mathematics and of reading and writing.

Landry graduated from BKW in 1988 and has spent her entire professional career  at the district. “It’s a great place,” she says of it, “a small community that’s very well knit.” For much of her time at BKW— from 1994 to 2015— she has been a  school counselor. In 2015, she was made assistant principal of the high school and athletic director.

She is a graduate of the State University of New York at New Paltz where she received her bachelor of arts degree in psychology. She holds a master of arts degree from The College of St. Rose and two New York State certifications: school counselor and school district administrators.

For two summers, she was elementary school principal when BKW operated its own summer school. And for the 2005-06 school year she completed an administrative internship in the elementary school.

Summarizing her thinking as an educator, Landry said, “I believe our job is to figure out what strengths students have and what motivates them,” something she has learned a lot about, she says, in her years of counseling students in grades 7  through 12.

Landry lives in Guilderland and has three children: One is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and two are students  in ninth and  12th grades at Guilderland High School.  Her husband, Scott Landry, is on administrative leave from his post as principal of Bethlehem High School.

Landry is the daughter of Arlene Lendrum who was posthumously inducted recently into the BKW Sports Hall of Fame for her work on behalf of female  athletics as a 27-year member of the district’s board of education.

Back to his old job

Tom Galvin had been the BKW athletic director for “two or three years” years when he quit the post in 2013 as the result of the abrupt dismissal of men’s varsity basketball coach Andy Wright, done without any consultation with Galvin. He will now serve as a long-term substitute, both in that position and as dean of students.

Galvin, a 1990 graduate of BKW, has been a teacher there for 22 years.

He told The Enterprise he will be taking a leave of absence from his teaching duties — which include teaching a high-school course in sports history as well as middle-school social studies — for the duration of his substitute appointment.

Asked if he thinks the appointment will lead to a permanent one, he said, “For now I am just filling in to keep this going in the right direction.” He said that in June both he and the board will re-evaluate where to take it from there.

He said he’s happy about the one-year appointment as athletic director, “It’s a job I like and the current administration and board are very supportive, which makes the job more enjoyable.”

He emphasized that he will continue to be the varsity women’s basketball coach, a job he has enjoyed since he first joined the BKW faculty more than two decades ago.