Rosetta Treece says that she probably should have known that she was destined to teach.
But when the time came to choose a major in college, she instead opted to study science, with the goal of becoming a physician.
“When I was younger, I was always teaching my siblings. But I started out as a science major, en route to becoming a doctor, because that’s what I thought I wanted to do. And I hated it,” she says.
Today, people do call her Dr. Treece. Not because she has a degree in medicine, but rather because she has dedicated herself to the field that seemed to call to her from an early age: education.
This summer, Treece started her second year as the superintendent of the Hopewell Valley School district. She succeeded long-term schools chief Tom Smith last year, having previously served as director of curriculum for the district. Before that, she was principal of Timberlane Middle School.
Treece has broken several barriers as an administrator in Hopewell Valley. As At Timberlane she became the first person of color to serve as principal in a district school. When she took the superintendent’s role last July 1, she became both the first woman and the first person of color to lead the Hopewell Valley district.
The year 2021 was a challenging time to take the reins, to say the least. The Covid-19 pandemic was well into its second year. But Treece says that serving as director of curriculum with Smith helped prepare her for the role.
“I was blessed in that I spent three years with the former suprintendent,” she says. “I was in those meetings with the health department, with the principals, with transportation, with food services, with the state. I feel like I was well positioned because I know the community.’
As the 2022-23 school year starts, Covid-19 continues to pose problems for public health. Yet things appear to have improved to the point where in many respects, a person can feel like things are nearly back to normal.
For the school district, this means full-time in-person education for all for the first time since March 2020.
“We are really looking forward to having the students back in the classrooms, having parents back in the buildings for Back to School Night,” Treece says. “We are easing off a lot of the restrictions that had us at arms’ length for way too long. We are looking forward to reshaping those relationships.”
She says that a attitudes and behaviors survey conducted last year with 6th and 12th graders showed that students have concerns about their relationship with adults in the community.
“Not just teachers,” Treece says. “But in the larger community. Students don’t feel like they have as positive a relationship with adults as they had in the past.”
She adds that the full report of the survey will be presented at an upcoming meeting.
Every school year brings new state curriculum standards, and this year is no different. In recent years, financial literacy was one new focus for all school districts. The goal was to help students learn to become more self sufficient when it came to money matters.
A new curriculum focus for this year is social media literacy. The goal there is to help students gain critical skills in interpreting social media text and “really being critical consumers of media,” Treece says.
Other areas of increased focus include extending civics lessons and civic engagement down to the lower grades, and climate change-related education. “We have been doing these things for some time now, but climate change is now mandated (by the state),” Treece says. “We’re always adding new information.”
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Treece, a Bucks County resident, moved around a lot growing up because her father was in the Air Force, and had to move the family wherever he was assigned. She was born in Bartow, Florida, but spend her formative years in Las Vegas.
She gave a speech in 2017 to all staff at the annual convocation meeting, after becoming director of curriculum. In that speech, she said she owes much of her success to the support of her parents.
“They may not have always been able to purchase the long list of school supplies I brought home after the first day of school, or pay for that field trip or attend my Back to School Nights or plays or parent conferences, or even give me rides home from after school activities. In spite of what my teachers thought, they truly cared about my education,” she said.
She said that though her parents were very young, they made sure their kids went to school everyday, had a roof over their heads, were fed and clothed, and that they understood the importance of an education, even though they themselves had not gone to college.
“They believed that once they delivered me to the schoolhouse door, they could trust my teachers to give me what I needed to get to college. I was fortunate enough to have a handful of teachers who held up their end of the bargain,” she said.
Treece graduated from Rancho High in Las Vegas before enrolling at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where she started out as a science major.
“I was working three or four jobs to pay for school and trying to major in something I wasn’t in love with,” she says.
She took a break from college and entered the workforce. Around that time, she met her husband, Alexander, and got married. They moved east, settling in Pennsylvania and having children.
When she decided it was time to go back to college, she figured that she would resume her science education. But Alexander urged her to rethink the decision.
“My husband said, ‘Why are you doing that? The house is full of books, you love teaching. You should go to school to be a teacher.’ It’s funny when someone sees something in you that you don’t see in yourself.”
So instead of majoring in science, she started fresh at Bucks County College as an education major. Later, she transferred to The College of New Jersey to complete her bachelor’s degree in education, She completed a master’s degree from Grand Canyon University in 2007 and her doctorate in educational leadership and administration from Rowan University in 2015.
As a teacher she began her career in the Trenton school district, teaching English at the high school for five years before transitioning to a position as a literacy coach for Trenton secondary schools.
She spent some time as a vice principal in the Northern Burlington school district before taking the vice principal role at Timberlane, to be closer to home, she says. From there, she rose to the position of director of curriculum, then assistant superintendent, and last year, the school board tapped her to lead the district.
One challenge that HoVal — and all New Jersey school districts — face these days is staffing. Treece says the teacher pool is shrinking, and many districts are fighting over the same few candidates to fill all their open positions.
“It is not the case in education any more that you can always find someone,” she says. “TCNJ churns out a lot of great teacher candidates, Rider, Rutgers, but still we are all struggling. We really have to work on what has changed.”
She believes that fewer and fewer people are interested in helping to “educate those world changers of the future.”
“The background noise of the politics the attacks that people are under, it’s just been a very rough time,” she says. “This should be fun. Teaching is a hard job, but it is rewarding.”
Treece anticipates that school districts will want to revisit their drug-use policies as communities adapt to the recent legalization of marjiuana.
“The nature of marijuana, its use or being under the influence while in school, that’s not changed,” she says. “But this is an opportunity to really look at our policies and take steps to make sure it’s not as punitive as it is, but also make sure our policy is educational enough.”
She says the district works closely with the township and boroughs and have a task force of educators and stakeholders in the community to work on educating the community and the students on what happens when you use marijuana.
“We’ve always educated our students on that, but now we really need to make sure to unite our forces on that,” she says. “What avenues do we need to look at — enforcement, education, school policy and the mental impact. Those things are all things that we’re focused on.”
She says the district remains committed to focusing on student’s mental health and well being. “The superintendents of Mercer County did a call to action five yeras ago, and we’ve all been ramping up our mental health support,” Treece says. She points to the district’s partnership with local provider Comprehensive Mental Health Care, as well as AIR, or Attitudes in Reverse, which brings therapy dogs to the school.
Since Covid, the district has had a counselor who focuses on students who are considered high risk. And HoVal already has a threat assessment team, something that a recent law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy makes mandatory for all districts.
Anti-bullying measures continue to be in place, and Treece feels good about the progress being made there, although she acknowledges that a lot of bullying takes place on social media and in text messages. “What happens on line is pervasive and hard to get to the bottom of,” she admits.
She says the district is also committed to supporting the mental health of students who may be affected by personal losses, from Covid or other causes. Treece, who lost a son to suicide, knows all too well what it is like to be beset by grief.
“It’s something that affects everyone these days. It’s really important that we provide that level of support,” she says. “It hasn’t been Covid necessarily. A lot of students are dealing with loss. So the community should stay tuned for that,” she says.
Rosetta Treece, Hopewell Valley Regional School District superintendent.,
