Paul Perzanoski

BRUNSWICK — Paul Perzanoski, Brunswick’s superintendent of schools for more than a decade, will retire at the end of the school year.

Perzanoski announced his retirement in a Sept. 3 letter to board Chairman James Grant.

“I have appreciated the opportunity to work with many hard-working school board members over the last 12 years, as well as a dedicated staff and supportive community,” he wrote. “I will continue to advocate for public education as long as I’m able in some shape, capacity or form. Thank you for electing me to serve.”

School board members began interviewing firms Wednesday to lead the search process for the next superintendent and hope to have a firm selected after the special school board meeting Oct. 2, Grant said. They hope to have someone in place before Perzanoski leaves at the end of June.

Grant called Perzanoski “one of the best (superintendents) that I’ve ever worked with in my tenure on the board.” Grant served on the school board in the 1990s and then, after a break, was re-elected in 2008. Since then, he and Perzanoski have enjoyed a “good working relationship,” he said.

Corey Perreault, who was on the school board when Perzanoski was hired in 2007, said he was an attractive candidate not only due to his experience as a superintendent in Connecticut, but also because he had been a special education director and came from a department with a robust technical program.

“He truly understood that each child had a different path in life and a school department needed to provide every student the opportunity to follow that path,” she said.

Perzanoski joined the district in 2007, “at a time when Brunswick was experiencing more change than it had ever experienced in its entire history,” Perreault said. The Brunswick Naval Air Station was closing, taking thousands of people, including roughly 10 percent of the district’s students, and Durham students were moving to Freeport, she said, adding, “Our economy had not been this poor since the Great Depression.”

Between 2008 and 2012, the department closed Hawthorne Elementary School, which is now being used as the district’s administrative offices; Longfellow Elementary School, now Bowdoin College’s Edwards Center for Art and Dance, and Jordan Acres Elementary School.

“Paul‘s steady leadership style kept Brunswick from losing what makes us a great school department, while reducing our size and budget where necessary,” Perreault said.

“It was a difficult position to be in,” Grant added, “But Paul met with every single person affected on our staff.”

Perzanoski also oversaw the construction of two new schools: Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School, which opened in 2011, and the Kate Furbish Elementary School, which is slated to open next year on the grounds of the old Jordan Acres.

Perzanoski faced some criticism in 2012 for a back-to-school letter he wrote criticizing then-Gov. Paul LePage.

He later issued a public apology, not for his rebuke of LePage’s policies, but for writing it in the back-to-school letter.

“There comes a time when you have to stand up and say enough is enough,” Perzanoski said in 2012. “Our educators work harder now than they ever had before, and their reward for it is additional unfunded mandates and then political bashing.”

In 2016, Perzanoski also helped the department take over the then-struggling REAL School, a Falmouth alternative school for behaviorally and academically challenged students. The REAL school, which stands for Relevant, Experiential, Authentic Learning, was moved from Mackworth Island to Brunswick Landing.

Moving the school was a big step toward building the program for Brunswick students and others, Grant said.

He complimented Perzanoski for being a “forward thinker,” always looking for alternative solutions for budget constraints that otherwise would unfairly impact students or taxpayers.

Perzanoski helped implement a public pre-kindergarten program in Brunswick – a pilot program launched at Coffin Elementary School this year. He has also been an advocate for a performing arts academy, a dual language immersion program and more multi-year classrooms, programs which were presented to the board in December.

Movement on the projects has been slow, but “very positive,” Grant said, adding that Perzanoski is “good at keeping the ship moving forward but keeping the school growing.”

Perreault agreed.

“He encouraged new ideas, new programs, new collaborations — all in an effort to provide a better education to our students,” she said.

His retirement comes amid some turnover in district administration.

Former longtime Assistant Superintendent Gregory Bartlett retired in 2015 and was replaced by former REAL School director Pender Makin.

Makin left the department this winter after being named Maine’s new Commissioner of Education, and Bartlett stepped into his old role for the remainder of the school year. New Assistant Superintendent Shawn Lambert was hired this spring and started in his new position July 1.