As the WW-P community wraps up the remaining days of the school year and prepares to send off its graduating classes, four of the district’s principals are also making their exits.
Long-time principals Charles Rudnick, at South, and Art Downs, at Community, are among those departing this year. At Community, Downs served as the founding principal, and the only one in the school’s 25-year history. Jeanine Heil, principal at Dutch Neck, and Mary Ann Isaacs, principal at Millstone River School, will also be leaving. Isaacs has been with the district for a total of 23 years.
Downs has taught or overseen as many as three generations of families coming to school in what was once a rural area with little diversity. He began his career here in 1960, when he was hired as a science teacher for grades six, seven, and eight, in the West Windsor district, before it became a regionalized district with Plainsboro, and prior to the construction of Maurice Hawk elementary school in 1963.
Downs said he got the job because he was a geologist, and the district was looking for a science teacher. His entrance into the world of education was not typical. He grew up in Lincoln Park. His mother was an operator for the New Jersey Bell telephone company. His father built airplane engines and later served as a technical advisor and troubleshooter for Curtis Wright. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi. (He would later earn his master’s from what was then Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey), and his doctorate degree in 1978 from Rutgers University).
Things weren’t working out at that particular time,” said Downs. He said had put his name in a professional commercial employment agency, who called him and told him about the teaching position open in West Windsor. “I was actively involved in a lot of sports programs, and a lot of things that brought me into contact with children,” he said. “Applying for a job in West Windsor was the best decision that I’ve made.”
Education was a perfect fit for Downs, who, in 1968, became the acting principal at Maurice Hawk, eventually becoming principal there the following year. “I was filling in for somebody who was out on leave, and then the district regionalized, and WW-P joined together,” he said, explaining there were openings both at Maurice Hawk and in Plainsboro for principals. He served as principal at Maurice Hawk for eight years before he was transferred to Dutch Neck, where he served as principal for another eight years. At the time, Dutch Neck was a school for grades four, five, and six.
By 1986, the district was ready to build the current Community Middle School. Downs was instrumental in its development, working for 10 months preparing the building as the principal, although it was not open to the students yet. The school opened the following year, and he has been principal there ever since — for 22 years to be exact.
Now, 50 years after his initial employment with the district, Downs said it is the right time for him to retire. For him, “50 years was a nice, round number, and I want to spend more time with my family, my wife, and my grandchildren,” he said.
Downs has remained so long with the district because “it is a very supportive community. There was really no need to change.”
He was also impressed with how smooth and organized it has been for the district to accommodate its growth. “The transitions that the Board of Education and district went through were always done in a professional way,” he said. “The diversity is a big change from when I first started. It was very rural, and now it is much more diverse and much more sophisticated.”
Downs always enjoyed seeing former students come back and share their life experiences with him. “It feels a little strange when students I taught back in the 1960s had children, and their children come back to school, and say, ‘My mother had you when she was in school,’” he said. “Or even grandchildren.”
He said he will miss the interaction with the community, students, and teachers, but he will not be too far away. Downs, who lives in Montgomery, will try to get involved in as many school activities as he can. “I enjoyed the 50 years in WW-P,” he said. “I have a lot of fond memories I’ll look back upon in days of reflection. I met a lot of great people, and hopefully, somebody will think I made a difference somewhere.”
Like Downs, Rudnick has also been a huge part of the WW-P community, having begun his career here in 1991 as a teacher at South. In 1997, he became assistant principal at South, a position he held for half a decade.
In 2002, Rudnick was named to replace the retiring Michael Carr as principal at South. Born and raised in Trenton, Rudnick graduated from Trenton High School in the 1960s. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey), becoming the first member of his family to get a college education.
After graduating he taught mathematics at Ewing High School from 1970 to 1982. After 12 years in the Ewing classrooms, Rudnick decided to take on the challenge of a new career, moving to the corporate world. For nine years he worked as a programmer, and then managing other systems programmers. But even during his years away from teaching, Rudnick kept busy in education, serving on the Ewing Township school board.
Despite his career success, Rudnick felt that there was something missing in his life. Rudnick reentered the teaching profession, and was hired to teach at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School in 1991, teaching advanced placement mathematics, honors algebra, and computer programming until becoming assistant principal in 1997. He also coached the varsity swimming team and the junior varsity girls soccer team.
At Dutch Neck, Heil, who has been with the district since 2007, is also preparing to move on. Heil was hired over the summer in 2007 as the assistant principal at Dutch Neck, leading to her position as principal. She came from Burlington County’s Eastampton school district, where she was the director of curriculum, instruction, and technology. Prior to that, she was a classroom teacher and reading specialist for many years.
Heil said she loved the diversity of the district. “The students interact in a way in which they’re open and accepting to everything,” she said.
Heil will be relocating to serve as principal of an elementary school in another district, but declined to specify that district.
She earned her undergraduate degree from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey), and earned her master’s degree in reading education from Rowan University. She has also earned the distinction of being a National Board Certified teacher, which she earned in 2002.
Heil pointed to her work with the PTA to set up an art auction to raise money for the WW-P Education Foundation this year. “Each class created a piece of artwork,” she said. “Looking at the art pieces, they don’t look like they were created by 4 to 8-year-olds,” she said. The event was held at Mercer Oaks and ended up raising $11,600. “All that money was donated back to the WW-P Education Foundation, so it went right back to the schools.”
She said a theme in the school is “Dexter’s Good Deeds,” named after the school’s mascot, Dexter. “This was another step we took to show students how things come full circle,” she said. Heil says she hopes they will continue with the program next year.
“I’m hoping it’s these little legacies I can leave to Dutch Neck School,” she said.
In addition to the four principals, Mary Ann Fornal, assistant principal at Town Center; Nancy Icenhower, the district’s director of guidance for K-12; Stephanie Leroux, assistant principal at Community Middle; Sam Hendrickson, assistant principal at Village; and Miriam Robin, the supervisor of science for grades 4 through 8 have all announced they are leaving the district after this year.
The Replacement Process. The school board held an executive session meeting on June 8, where it interviewed one of the candidates for a principal position, as well as candidate to take over as the new director of guidance, according to school board President Hemant Marathe.
Whether the board is anticipating hiring the candidates will be known on Friday, June 11, when the agenda — which typically lists the names of personnel, including the administrators, up for employment approval at every meeting — is posted on the district’s website.
And as the district looks to replace the four principals, Marathe said the district is not anticipating any additional administrative cuts through attrition than was anticipated in the 2010-’11 approved school budget.
“In the budget process itself, we said we were reducing the administrative positions above and beyond the three positions who had already retired,” he said, pointing out that the district has already reduced the number of administrators by five.
“We have significantly fewer administrators than we had,” he said. “We are restructuring all the positions to make sure we have coverage where it is needed most.”
For example, the district will have just one K-12 math supervisor next year. “In order to provide support for that person, we will restructure some of the other jobs to make sure there is coverage,” Marathe said.
Marathe pointed to the $7.5 million the district has already cut during the budget process.
