BY MARLENE CANTY
Staff Writer
Whoever said “you can never go home again” didn’t know Martha Simon and Cecilia Skove.
After collectively almost two decades in elementary education, both women have become principals in the Old Bridge School District, where they each began their careers approximately a decade ago, and both are loving every minute of it.
Skove, the new principal of Raymond Voorhees Elementary School, once taught fifth grade at Virgil I. Grissom School. And Simon, now principal at Memorial Elementary School, taught second- and third-grade special education at Voorhees.
The women worked as teachers within the district for six and eight years, respectively, but both have something else in common.
After each decided to make the move into administrative work and obtained a master’s degree at Georgian Court College, Lakewood, each was faced with the same dilemma – they realized that if they wanted to progress up the ladder of success in elementary education, they would have to leave the school district that they so admired.
Why?
Old Bridge elementary schools have no vice principal positions.
According to Skove, Old Bridge is no different than most school districts that primarily have elementary schools with populations so small they don’t warrant assistant or vice principals.
For some, it’s the missing brick in the yellow brick road of career advancement.
“For as long as I’ve known, Old Bridge elementary schools have never had vice principals,” Skove said, adding that many of the Old Bridge elementary schools where she’s worked had enrollments under 300 students.
“There would have been no way to justify the expenditures that would have been involved in creating vice principal positions,” she said
Those expenditures coupled with limited school budgets with caps on spending can account for the rarity of elementary schools with vice principals anywhere in New Jersey, not just in Old Bridge, according to Simon.
Old Bridge Superintendent of Schools Simon Bosco agreed, saying that even with far larger school populations, the problem remains a shrinking or limited budget.
“When you’re dealing with tax dollars, it’s a matter of priorities,” Bosco said. “If I hire three or four elementary vice principals, that means there are going to be less teaching positions I can fill. That means either class sizes are going to be larger or programs are going to be cut.”
In a district where the only vice principals are in the middle and high schools, the two women faced a choice of staying put, moving out of elementary education or moving out of the Old Bridge School District. They both left the district.
Skove went to Berkeley Township, where she divided her time between assignments at two elementary schools with an upward of 450 students each. She worked at the H.M. Potter and Bayville schools, and even with a combined total of about 925 students, the schools could only justify having one vice principal between them.
“I would do three days at one school and two at the other,” Skove said.
Simon went to Veteran’s Memorial Elementary School in Brick, a school with a population of 725 students.
Skove stayed at Berkeley two years; Simon was in Brick for three.
The women concur that they were lucky to have found the vice principal posts they got, not just because the jobs are rare but because of what each was able to absorb and take away from the experience.
“With admin. you deal with kids on a different level,” Skove said, noting that the job involves more of the planning stages of how children are educated than the actual mechanics of teaching them.
“Berkeley had a terrific administrative department that provided an opportunity to get vital experience in elementary education,” Skove said.
Simon said her sojourn in Brick has given her “experience, ideas and perspective,” priceless assets for a principal in the making.
By gleaning the best of each of their schools, the women got valuable experience they could bring back to Old Bridge, where they both had longed to return.
Consequently, when the Old Bridge School District began one of the largest administrative reorganizations it had since the 1960s, including the hiring of six new principals, Skove and Simon were in an excellent position to bring to bare the experiences they had been able to gain “abroad” as vice principals.
Today, Simon said the first order of business for her as principal at Memorial is to examine ways of improving standardized testing methods at the school.
Skove said she will institute some of the organizational techniques she learned and will concentrate on establishing an open and welcoming climate, one that stresses mutual respect and is conducive to the positive character development of her students.
Contrary to Thomas Wolfe’s philosophy, both women are back home in Old Bridge now, energized and enthusiastic about the challenge of their new positions.
“Dr. Bosco and assistant Superintendent Francis Perrino are so supportive,” Simon said. “They give you that sense that the school district really wants you here.”
Both women realize they’re in a special position to bring new ideas and approaches to education, applications they may not have been exposed to if they had not left Old Bridge at some point in their developmental process as administrators.
Simon said she has no regrets.
“If given a choice,” she said, “I wouldn’t have done it any other way.”