Barlow High head set to retire
REDDING — Staff members across Region 9 will miss seeing Gina Pin in her office through the open door as her 36-year career as a Connecticut educator draws to a close in June.
The Region 9 Board of Education is looking to hire an individual for the dual assistant superintendent and head of Joel Barlow High School position as Pin eyes retirement.
“I think the school is in great shape to go forward,” Pin said.
Pin, who has worked at Joel Barlow since 2008, decided in January to retire and will step down on June 30. She initially began as an assistant principal at Barlow, but was later promoted to oversee the school and serve as its assistant superintendent in 2015.
“It’s been wonderful, but it’s time to go be a grandmother and go explore my next career path,” Pin said, although she is “sorry” to be leaving the school community.
Jackie Garvey, executive secretary to the head of the school, said Pin will be missed at Barlow. She described Pin as “an amazing, compassionate leader” who is “just always there for you.”
“Her door is always open to everyone,” Garvey said.
“I have so much respect for her,” she later added. “She’s so open and I just love the way she treats everyone the same and listens to their concerns to help solve problems.”
Garvey said she’s grown so much working with Pin over the years.
Assistant Principal Jennifer Desmarais said the “upbeat, positive” Pin “puts students first and looks at issues through multiple lenses.”
“This year has just been one problem-solving activity after the next,” Desmarais said. “Whether it be how to open the building, how to feed the students, it’s as if we became logistical engineers overnight and that’s per her leadership.”
Pin said seeing initiatives — such as ones focused on social and emotional wellbeing — she laid out at the start of her tenure at Barlow come to fruition has been “very rewarding.”
“To see how we’ve been able to come together, not just as a leadership team, but as a school community to help our students navigate all the trauma, anxiety and loss they’re experiencing, it’s been humbling and wonderful,” she said.
With her retirement date in sight, Pin said she is “neither lame nor duck,” and knows she still has plenty of work to do in the second semester of the school year.
Pin said she is excited to spend time with her family, but believes she’ll be teaching part-time at her alma mater, Manhattanville College, though Pin said there has to be a “sit on the couch period” where she can unwind a little.
The Region 9 school board started taking steps toward finding Pin’s replacement. Board members met on March 11 to discuss a timeline for the hiring process, estimating they’d name a candidate in May for a July 1 start date.
“It’s more than a vocation,” Desmarais said. “Whoever comes in has to embrace that and see Barlow as an extension of their family. If you didn’t see us like that, it would be undoable.”
Region 9 Board of Education Chairman Todd Johnston said they are looking for a similar replacement to take up the binary role and are searching both “internally and externally.”
The board plans to work with a consultant in facilitating the process.
“We will have a robust pool of candidates, with or without a search consultant,” Easton-Redding-Region 9 Superintendent Rydell Harrison said during the meeting.
“I think Barlow’s reputation as a school, I think people would see it as a premier place to work and continue their administrative career,” he said.