‘Truly a class act’
Bunnell High School principal retiring after 37-year career
“How many people get to come back to their alma mater in their hometown and lead a community? It’s been 37 wonderful years.” Bunnell High School Principal Nancy Dowling
STRATFORD — Bunnell High School Principal Nancy Dowling had already experienced plenty during an awardwinning career spanning five decades before COVID-19 came along.
The coronavirus wreaked havoc throughout the field of education. But for Dowling, personal circumstances made managing a school through the pandemic even tougher at the outset.
Dowling’s mother broke her hip in Florida the first week of March 2020.
“I flew out, and immediately sent an email to the staff and superintendent indicating I would be gone for five days, but I would be back, and the APs (assistant principals) were in charge,” Dowling recalled during an interview last week.
Turns out getting down to Florida was a lot easier than getting back.
“Little did I know I’d be gone through Mother’s Day,” Dowling said.
Overseeing the school through the first part of the
pandemic was not easy from 1,000 miles away. But via nightly emails and messages to parents, students, and staff, she said she tried to keep the lines of communication open and reassure the community that everything would be OK.
“I kept saying to the staff, just establish, maintain, and establish, and maintain relationships with your students, because it’s the relationships that are going to help us get back to whole someday,” she said.
Dowling is retiring this month after 37 years as a teacher and school administrator. Despite all that experience, she said the pandemic taught her new things.
“I learned important lessons as a leader, and I was reminded to always start with what’s important, and that’s how people are feeling, and communicating what people need to know in order to best handle the circumstances with which they are coping,” she said.
Born and raised in Stratford, Dowling attended St. James School through eighth grade before graduating from Bunnell and then Fairfield University. At Fairfield, Dowling knew she wanted to go into teaching, but the Jesuit university did not offer an education major. Instead, the school emphasized a core curriculum grounded in the humanities that led her to declare a double major in English and American studies.
After graduating and obtaining her teaching credentials, she spent six weeks as a long-term substitute at Roger Ludlowe High School in Fairfield. That was where she had done her student teaching, and an early retirement had opened up a shortterm position.
It was the early 1980s, and teaching positions weren’t easy to come by. So she counted herself lucky when she got a call the day before the next Labor Day weekend offering her a job teaching seventh- and eighth-grade reading and language arts at Fairfield Woods Middle School.
It was a part-time job, and it paid about $11,000. But Dowling said she was glad to have it.
By mid-year she was full-time. She spent the next seven years at Fairfield Woods, then taught for three years at Tomlinson Middle School before moving on to Fairfield High School, where she also became a curriculum leader.
She spent nearly a quarter century teaching in Fairfield and thought she’d retire there. But then the assistant principal position opened at Bunnell.
“There was something about coming back to Bunnell, and coming home to Stratford to serve my home community,” Dowling said.
She dropped her résumé off on a summer Thursday afternoon, and then drove to Cape Cod for the weekend. No sooner had she gotten there than she got a call from Dudley Orr, then Bunnell’s principal, asking her to drive back for an interview the next day.
She got the job, and then spent seven years learning from Orr before getting the principal’s job in her own right. She has held the top spot at the school for the past six years, and was named the state’s high school principal of the year last June.
While the commendation noted the school’s increased Advanced Placement offerings, 98 percent graduation rate and a recent 20-point bump in SAT scores, Dowling said she’s most proud of fostering a vision “of safety first, respect, and both of those as foundations for establishing and maintaining an academic environment for kids.”
“I have such regard for Dr. Orr that I’ve never felt that I came in and fixed anything but I just maybe tweaked what his good work had been to be more specific to my vision for what a high school should be,” she said. “And that is to ultimately establish a culture that is truly student-centered, that is really studentled, and where student voices are heard.”
She said she’s also proud of the fact that in her time as principal, the school’s administrative team — three assistant principals, three department heads, and an athletic director — has remained intact.
“So much of the success of the school I share with them, yet that I think is a measure of our climate and our shared vision of success and care for students,” she said.
Dylan Connor, a Latin teacher at Bunnell and a 2016 state teacher of the year finalist, had Dowling as a teacher while growing up in Fairfield.
“I still remember her grammar lessons,” he said. “She was a good teacher, and a fun teacher.”
And a pretty good boss, too, Connor said, citing Dowling’s establishment of a faculty committee where teachers could voice concerns and be more involved making decisions.
“It just made things feel like there were a lot more hands on deck, and a better team effort,” Connor said.
Now, Dowling said, it’s time to slow down. She said she looks forward to spending more time with family and hobbies like gardening, cooking, photography, and golf.
“How many people get to come back to their alma mater in their hometown and lead a community?” Dowling said. “It's been 37 wonderful years.”
Her successor has not yet been named.
Board of Education Chairperson Allison DelBene said Dowling will be hard to replace.
“We appreciate all that Dr. Dowling has done for Stratford Public Schools,” DelBene said. “She is truly a class act. She will be sorely missed and we thank her for her dedication to Stratford.”