Central School principal leaving for Oyster River

After serving as principal at Alton Central School (ACS) for two years, Principal Laura Rogers is moving on.

Friday marked the last day on the job for Rogers, who said she was glad to have worked at ACS.

“I think the thing I enjoyed best was spending time with the students and teachers,” she said last week. “I’d walk around the school twice a week and it was always interesting to have the students teach me what they were doing.”

(Roger demurely refused a request to have a photograph taken of her for this story. “Don’t you have enough photos of me kissing pigs and other animals?” she laughed, referring to the current phenomena have having the principal kiss an animal when elementary school students reach an academic goal.)

Rogers said that ACS is fortunate to have so many good teachers. “This is a place where there are some wonderfully dedicated teachers, teachers who spend their own time being dedicated to bringing the kids... to the point where they have the basic skills to succeed in high school.”

Rogers said she was also glad to be a part of ACS’s increased emphasis on using technology for teacher development.

“When the high school students left (for Prospect Mountain High School) I think some people thought there would be a drop-off in that,” Rogers said. “But Pam McLeod, who is involved with our technology, really helped expand that tremendously. And I’m happy to have helped facilitate that in any way I could.”

As Rogers takes leave of her 610 K-8 ACS students, she’s preparing to become principal of the 675 students attending Oyster River High School in Durham. Rogers admitted to feeling that her skills are better suited to working in a high school environment. Previously she served in administrative positions at high schools in Londonderry and Weare and she originally applied for the position of principal of Prospect Mountain. When that job was offered to then-ACS Principal Russell Holden, she was offered the principal’s position at ACS.

The Alton School Board is advertising for a new principal for ACS. The job is for someone who “will provide strong educational leadership and collaborative management, and demonstrate proven excellence in supervision, evaluation, team building, community relations, budget, curriculum an facility planning.” (The school district has begun considering either an addition or a new school facility to deal with the rising number of middle school students and the problems associated with the age of ACS.) The salary being offered is between $75,000 and $80,000, in addition to a “comprehensive benefit package”

The Alton School District has an unusual arrangement with its superintendent. Normand Tanguay works one-and-a-half days per week for Alton and two-and-a-half days per week as superintendent for Prospect Mountain High School (PMHS); Alton 9-12 grade students share PMHS with Barnstead students under the state’s only school Joint Maintenance Agreement. Tanguay is not an employee of either the school district or the high school but serves as an independent contractor in both roles.