WALES — After 37 years at Oak Hill High School, the last 12 as principal, Patricia Doyle is moving on to higher education in the form of employment with the College Board, a New York-based nonprofit membership association dedicated to helping students excel.
Doyle, who lives in Rome, will start July 25 as “director of state and district partnerships,” a position she is bullish about because it is aimed at helping students with college entrance tests and getting a step up toward college and the workplace.
She said the new post will help continue her career goals of being an educator and a principal.
“Now I will have the ability to help kids in a greater way and have a larger impact,” she said, and that impact will not depend on money.
The program is done in partnership between College Board and Khan Academy and offered for free to any student who can access it on an Internet-capable device.
“It will be a game-changer,” she said.
On Wednesday, Doyle donned a powder blue suit jacket before walking through the large front hallway to the school’s lunch room area and talking to some of the students and teachers. The lunch area was less crowded than usual, she said, a result of losing the seniors last week to graduation.
School ends this week for the other high schoolers, some of whom are completing requirements for the school’s proficiency-based learning standards.
Doyle, now 60, recalled being hired as a business teacher for Oak Hill in 1979 by then-Principal Bob Pelletier and then-Superintendent Ernie Hughes. She had a degree in business education from Thomas College.
In her second year, she co-facilitated Project Discovery, a gifted and talented program, in which students studied Jungian psychology, read “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell, and watched Jacob Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man.”
The enrichment program, which was started by Roger Fuller, was the precursor of the school’s Capstone Project for seniors and helped accelerate the school’s offerings of Advanced Placement courses.
Oak Hill has 10 AP classes in its curriculum.
“It was like a brain trust, especially in the early years,” Doyle said.
While teachers at the school say Doyle always has been innovative, at times she has had to be creative, such as the time the teacher was attending the University of Southern Maine over a five-year period to earn her administrative credentials and was coaching varsity girls’ basketball.
“We had 5 a.m. practice so I could get to my 4 p.m. class if I had a 4 p.m. class that day,” she said. Of course, the students turned up. She also coached field hockey and softball, as well as volunteering as first base coach.
While she has remained loyal to Oak Hill, the community, in the form of the district’s board of education, remained loyal to her, refusing to oust her to qualify for school improvement grant funds after the school was labeled “a persistently low-achieving school” in April 2011 because of standardized testing results.
That designation gave the district a chance to apply for federal money for programs designed to boost student performance, but it required the school to make significant changes, among them replacing the principal and dismissing about half the teachers.
The board voted 8-1 against applying for the grant.
“I was 100 percent behind her at that time,” said Scott Weeks, a representative from Litchfield on the School Board of Regional School Unit 4. “I’ve always been in the camp of one person can’t make it all better. Just like in any sport, it takes a team to make it work.”
Weeks graduated from Oak Hill in 1989, and he recalled seeing Doyle at the school.
“I never actually had her as a teacher,” he said. “I always thought she was really nice.”
From his perspective on the board, he said, “I think Pat has given a lot to the district and the high school. I think she’s been very valuable asset to the school and done a lot for the kids.”
Doyle said she will miss the people, the community and the students. She said this year’s seniors overcame a lot of adversity on their way to graduation, including losing a classmate in a car crash in December 2015, and more than a dozen students suffering the loss of one or more parents or parental figures.
She said the Oak Hill graduates are creative entrepreneurs: “They’re good, solid kids — good, solid people. They don’t always do well on academic tests, but we do well in life.”
The school had 365 students when she started work there, and it ends this year with 441. In some years, however, the student body ballooned to close to 600.
At this year’s commencement ceremony, Rhyanna Austin, a member of the class of 2016, spoke of Doyle’s contributions at the school and wished her well on behalf of the class.
Superintendent Jim Hodgkin said he had known Doyle long before he came to the district partly as a result of doing basketball camps with her in Casco.
He said it’s unusual for someone to remain at a school for so long.
“She has served the students of the three towns faithfully, with a lot of commitment in three different roles,” Hodgkin said, referring to Doyle’s positions as teacher, coach and administrator.
Patti LeBlanc, who heads the English department at Oak Hill and who is retiring after 28 years there, credits Doyle with encouraging student leadership and allowing students a voice.
“In the accreditation process, she had students speak for us,” LeBlanc said. Now a student from the Oak Hill Leadership Assembly prepares materials from students for school board meetings.
She said Doyle rounded up grant money to send teachers to out-of-state training involving Advanced Placement courses, and that allowed that teaching method to trickle down to the regular curriculum.
“She was really forward-thinking that way,” LeBlanc said.
Doyle will be succeeded in the job by Marco Aliberti, who is principal of Oak Hill Middle School in Sabattus. His appointment was announced Wednesday at Oak Hill.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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