CAMDEN — Today, Maria Libby is the assistant superintendent for the Five Town Community School District (Camden Hills Regional High School) and School Administrative District 28 (Camden-Rockport_ systems. It is a job she has held for two years. On March 10, the Camden-area school boards voted to hire Libby as the districts’ new superintendent. Current Superintendent Elaine Nutter tendered her resignation in December and will continue to hold that position until June 30. PenBayPilot caught up with Libby and talked with her about her new job, the schools, it’s students and the system.

PBP: Is this new position something you aspired to?

“Not originally, I got into education because I really cared about kids and their learning and just took it one step at a time in our district teaching, eventually I felt as if I was bursting out of the walls of my classroom and wanted to do more and went into administration, happily, being assistant principal at the middle school and then principal for seven years. I didn’t really think much about the superintendence because I was doing what I wanted to do, and then saw an opportunity that was coming in the superintendence and decided I felt like I could do a lot of good for the district by stepping up into the assistant superintendent’s job. Once I did that, I did have the aspiration of moving into the superintendent’s job.”

PBP: When you took that assistant’s job did you know that Elaine Nutter might be leaving?

“I knew that Elaine wouldn’t be there for an extended period of time. I figured it would be between three and five years. She’s leaving a little sooner then I thought she would, but I knew she was close to the end of her career when I took the assistant’s job.”

PBP: Was there a search to fill the superintendent’s job, or did the board just ask you to do it?

“There was a national search. They posted the job in January and it was open for a couple of months. There were ads in the Boston Globe and on ServingSchools.com, which serves mostly Maine, and the Portland and Bangor papers, as well. I’m not sure if they did any national publications, but it was an extensive search. I don’t know how many applications they got or how many people they interviewed; all I know is that I was the person who came out on top at the end of the process.”

PBP: You are originally from this area?

“I am. I grew up in Camden, I moved here in fifth grade, when I was 9 years old. I went through my secondary schooling here and graduated from Camden-Rockport High School in 1982. I moved back about 18 years ago, and have pretty much worked in this district as an educator since I moved back.”

PBP:  “You were the valedictorian for your graduating class. Can you recall any of that speech you gave?

“It’s so, so funny because I actually can recall that speech. I had done an Outward Bound course the summer before my senior year. It was a pretty grueling experience that was challenging and pushed a lot of envelopes and it pushed me out of my comfort zones. When the course was finally over and I was going to get a shower and some comforts of home, my mother picked me up and she brought a batch of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies with her. I incorporated that into my speech in terms of making sure that along the way in life you stop to appreciate those especial moments, like when your mother arrives with fresh cookies and you haven’t had anything that good to eat in a long time. That was part of my speech to slow down in life enough to appreciate the small things.”

PBP: You must be happy here.

“I’m very happy here. I raised both my children here; I have two college age sons. I don’t think there’s a better place in the world to live. I love this community; I love the things it has to offer from the lake to the ocean, to the Snow Bowl, to the state park, to all the things happening culturally. I think it is a fantastic place to live and I couldn’t be happier. I feel like getting to place for me is like completing a circle since I went through the school system and worked my way up through a variety of positions to get where I am. I can’t imagine a better community that I would like to lead particularly in terms of education. I really look forward to working with other community leaders just because of the health and vitality of our community.”

PBP: Is the school system here in good shape?

“The school system here is in great shape. We have a lot of top notch teachers, our students in general come prepared to learn, they work hard, they perform well, they’re very engaged in school in terms of extracurricular activity, we have a wide breadth of programming where many other schools have lost that breadth of programming and we have not have really retained a holistic experience for students and we have fantastic people working within our system, so we are in great shape.”

PBP: It would have been nice to come into the superintendent’s position with a new middle school, which was voted down. How does that make you feel?

“I was disappointed it was voted down, particularly after having been principal there and worked there for a long time. As principal I worked very hard to try and get some movement on some of the issues that affected the middle school. It was disappointing, but I’ll tell you, I have had many defeats and been knocked down many times in my life and I am not one to stay down. For me it’s a problem of we’re looking at the matter with fresh eyes. Working collaboratively to find out why the vote was turned down and we’re trying to find a solution because the problems have not gone away at the middle school and they really need to be addressed. For me it’s a matter of finding the solution that’s going to work. I have no doubt that this community will find a solution for the middle school.”

 PBP: You sent a letter to the editor not long ago talking about standardized testing. Would you please take a minute and explain what that was about?

“We have some upcoming tests. Required state standardized testing. It changed this year. We used to take what was called the New England Common Assessment Program. Now the state has joined with 21 other states in administering what is called the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium. This test is much more rigorous than any test students have taken basically at the secondary level. It’s also a lot longer then any test they’ve taken. We have some reservations about standardized testing in general. We have some reservations about this test specifically, although many design facets are positive. It adjusts as the kids are taking it, so it adjusts for the level of difficulty. I think it’s a more accurate test. It also includes a performance task that really requires students to integrate their critical thinking and other important skills.

Students aren’t used to taking this kind of test. We do expect scores to go down. Some criticism of standardized testing is that schools take a long time to prepare for the test and it takes away form regular classroom instruction, which is the most important thing happening in education. That’s not true in our district, we have spent a lot of time preparing students to take this test, or what’s called teaching to the test. We have maintained a great balance for art, music and all our other programs are thriving. We do want the students to be familiar with the test designed, the types of test questions and the new embedded electronic tools that are available to them within the test, so it’s important that students go into it knowing how to take it and what the tools are. Beyond that we are not spending a lot of time teaching to this test, in particular.”

PBP: Do we push our kids too hard?

“I personally feel in our district that we don’t push our kids too hard. I definitely think we have high standards in our district. Across every level of the district we hold our students to high standards. We hold our teachers to high standards and we hold our administration to high standards. There’s no question about it, we are a district that has high standards, but I feel like everybody in the system is very well aware of the balance of pushing, without pushing too hard, that it becomes detrimental. Some amount of pushing kids to reach their potential and meeting with some amount of success and failure, learn how to be resilient; those things are important in life because as most adults know, life is not easy. There are so many challenges that students have to face. For the most part to be successful as an adult requires a fair amount of hard work.”

PBP: Do you think the kids have fun at school?

“I definitely think the kids have fun at school. I was just at the high school on Friday and I saw many teachers and many students dressed up in pajamas. I’m in the schools all the time and I see kids smiling, kids happy. Kids greet me all the time. I do think we try to pay attention to those details and try to make school a rigorous yet fun experience for students.”

PBP: When people look at this area as someplace to move to, they look at the infrastructure and they look at the school system itself. People who come in from the outside, how do you think they perceive the school system now?

“There’s no question that people from the outside perceive our school system as top notch. We hear from realtors frequently that a draw to our area is our school system. The elementary and high school is particular draws because when people see those facilities, they are very nice facilities. The middle school is not quite as nice. We used to have a saying at the middle school that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. And I truly believe that despite the middle school facility, great things are happening at the middle school, just as they’re happening at every school in our system. I think that’s evident from participation rates. Our band and chorus programs are huge, our sports programs have high participation rates and academically we hold our own. I do think people from the outside perceive our schools as very strong.”

PBP: You touched on sports. The school system produces a fair amount of state champions, in a number of athletic events. Can you attribute that to something?

“The schools can take some of the credit, but certainly not all of it. There are a lot of community sports programs as well that help strengthen a foundation for the athletic programs that we have in our schools. Within the schools, certainly prior to the high school level, we really encourage wide spread participation. That is more important than athletic performance and peak performance because we really try to make sure kids get playing time and are allowed to develop at their pace and have opportunity. At the high school level there are various levels of sports teams and many students, whether it’s skiers, swimmers, basketball, soccer or baseball players, many of them are participating on our school sports teams, but in addition they’re also participating on other leagues within the community, or around the state. It’s that dedication to athletics by many of our students that helps us to churn out so many good athletes. We are so lucky with the community resources we have between the Snow Bowl, the YMCA, Midcoast Recreation Center and the new Pitch, in a very small community we have a lot of additional resources to help support our kids in athletics and other types of extracurricular activities.”

PBP: Nationally those involved with the school systems say students aren’t as proficient in math as they should be. Do our students academically come up to those math standards?

“That’s an interesting question because I have noticed in our district that our students do relatively better in reading than they do in math. While that may be a national phenomena as well, I think that in our school system it’s something to pay attention to. When we get our proficiency rates back, or we compare it to the state average, there is more of a gap in reading for us then there is in math, although our students do perform fairly well in math. Relatively speaking it is something we will be taking a look at.”  

PBP: Anything you’d like to say in general about your new position?

“I would just like to say that I truly am thrilled to be in the position I was just hired for, for many reasons. I have invested a lot in the school system here and I have invested a lot in the community and it feels really great to be given this opportunity to be superintendent and really try to make a difference as best I can. I feel particularly lucky because of the investment I’ve made that I have a lot of people standing beside me as I step up into this role within the school system; teaching staff, administration, custodial, bus drivers and those across the board. I also feel like I have a lot of support within the community from parents of people that I went to high school with, people I worked for when I was a teenager, I just feel like there are a lot of people rooting for me. It makes me feel proud and honored to be able to do this.”

Maria Libby will assume the duties of superintendent of schools on July 1. We wish her the best of luck.

Related stories:

• Longtime local educator, administrator Maria Libby tapped for superintendent post

• Camden Hills school Superintendent Elaine Nutter resigns, effective next July

• Camden-Rockport, Five Town CSD appoint new assistant superintendent

Related links:

• Five Town CSD

• MSAD 28

Contact Chris Wolf at news@penbaypilot.com