The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Schools chief agrees to delay retirement
Will fill out contract term
PORTLAND — Superintendent of Schools Philip B. O’Reilly has changed his mind and will remain as superintendent through 2020.
O’Reilly, who has been superintendent since 2014, previously had announced he would retire at the end of the 2019 school year. However, he gave into persistent pleas from Board of Education members that he remain to complete a series of initiatives he began.
During Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, the board conducted his annual performance evaluation. When members emerged from that closed-door executive session, Chairwoman MaryAnne Rode “asked O’Reilly to delay his retirement and commit to finishing his three-year contract,” according to a statement released by the board Wednesday afternoon.
In response to Rode’s request, “O’Reilly extended his appreciation to the board and announced he would commit serving as (superintendent) for the next two years.”
“After long consideration I decided I was not ready to leave such a vibrant community,” O’Reilly said in the statement.
O’Reilly met briefly with First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield to inform her of his decision.
In a July interview about his intention to retire, O’Reilly said, “It was a very difficult decision to make.”
The 59-year-old O’Reilly has been a professional educator for the past 38 1⁄2 years. The pressure of an ever-increasing number of mandates from both the state and federal governments have begun to weigh on him as they have all superintendents.
O’Reilly also has acknowledged the strain caused by school shootings. What’s more, his six children have begun producing a new generation of O’Reillys for him to enjoy.
“We’re very pleased. This is good news for everyone,” Rode said Wednesday. “Good for him in that he can feel a sense of accomplishment — and gratitude — for completing a number of things he began, good for solidifying the administrative team he has put together, and good for the
students and their parents.”
Speaking shortly after he met with Bransfield, O’Reilly said he initially had been approached in July about staying on by Board of Education member Meg Scata. “Meg encouraged me to re-think this,” he said.
After Scata “planted the seed,” Rode said she “nurtured it” in subsequent conversations with O’Reilly.
“People were really sad about it,” Rode said about O’Reilly’s initial decision to leave. “I really feel he has done a lot of really good things for the district.”
In their first discussion, Rode recounted many of the improvements O’Reilly had begun, such as the introduction of one-to-one technology in the classroom and enhancements in reading, writing and mathematics instruction.
“I told him, ‘You really need to stay and finish these things,’ ” Rode said.
She said she, too, had sensed an ambivalence on O’Reilly’s part about leaving.
“This is a whole new chapter in his life,” she said. “So I followed up on what I had said to him. I told him, ‘We’d love to have you stay.’ ”
And then just in case her message wasn’t sufficiently clear, Rode said, “I told him this is the most important thing in his life.”