East Longmeadow Public Schools Superintendent Gordon Smith marches in the 2024 East Longmeadow Fourth of July Parade.
Reminder Publishing file photo
EAST LONGMEADOW — East Longmeadow Public Schools is closing a nearly two-decade chapter at the end of June with the retirement of Superintendent Gordon Smith as it prepares for a new era under Dr. Joanne Menard.
Smith began his superintendency back in July 2010 and will retire on June 30.
The district hired Menard in January for a July start. She is currently assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for Holliston Public Schools.
Smith’s career didn’t start out in education, but in the New York City business world. He graduated from Vermont’s Middlebury College in 1988 and joined the Westvaco Corporation in Midtown Manhattan.
Smith said he was at a crossroads after a few years so he began taking education courses at Fairfield University, which led to some volunteer work at the local Boys and Girls Club and his enrollment at the University of Bridgeport. He stated, “the rest is history.”
“I got a masters in education and began my career in education,” Smith said. “I had always enjoyed coaching and working with children and students and so forth. There was always a little piece of me that said ‘maybe I should do that, maybe I should look into it.’ So I just said ‘all right, I have a job so I’m doing alright, but I can take night courses and see what it’s like,’ and I was hooked.”
Smith climbed his way up every rung of the educational ladder, working as a paraprofessional, a teacher, assistant principal at both the middle and high school levels, a high school principal and eventually superintendent.
He joined East Longmeadow High School as assistant principal in 2002, his first job after moving to Western Massachusetts, but left to become Ludlow High School’s principal in 2004. He said the one thing that moved him out of principalship was the chance to return to East Longmeadow.
“With what I was doing as a principal, I thought it was pretty successful and things were going well, but East Longmeadow was looking for a superintendent and I really enjoyed my time in the community,” Smith said. “I thought, ‘well if I’m gonna take a shot, this would be the position I want.’ That was in 2010 and it worked out and I’ve been here ever since and really enjoyed it. It’s an incredible community.”
Smith said the best part of his job is the student, family and community interaction, stating “if that could be the entire day, that would be awesome, but there’s always paperwork and other things.”
He added that it takes a village to do an accomplished job and that all of the people in the district “have been phenomenal,” giving credit to the various School Committees he worked alongside.
“They just really have been collaborative and always willing to do the work,” Smith said. “All school districts had some challenges, and that’s not always easy and it does require work.”
Smith leaves superintendency with two lessons he cited as important for success in an education career — to be self-reflective and always have an open mind.
“Make sure that you’re reflecting on what you’ve done and what you may achieve or what challenges remain,” Smith said. “Be self-reflective so that you can correct and get better … have a growth mindset, be open to new ideas, open to new ways of doing things because it’s so easy to get comfortable and say ‘this is the way we’ve always done it.’ One of the greatest things about education is every year you have new students, so ‘the way we’ve always done it’ may not be the best way for these new students.”
Smith made sure to thank the community for being “welcoming, supportive and collaborative” during his career. He said “the biggest thing is thank you, I can’t really say that enough.”
He added that he will be focusing on spending time with his family before looking ahead toward what’s next and where else he can “support, contribute and have some positive impact.”
