Welcome to the Chatham Central School District
District Names Interim School Superintendent
Lee Bordick served as Lansingburgh Superintendent for 22 years
Lee Bordick, an experienced educator who served as Superintendent of the Lansingburgh School District for 22 years before retiring last year, has been named the interim Superintendent of Chatham Central School District.
Mr. Bordick will begin at Chatham Central School District on June 1. The Chatham Board of Education approved the hiring at its April 22 Board meeting, agreeing to a one-year contract.
“I’m really looking forward to working with the school board, school faculty and staff, and becoming active in the community, that’s incredibly important to me,” Mr. Bordick said. “The first thing I want to do is to get to know people and listen. I’m a good listener.”
Mr. Bordick will succeed current Superintendent Scott Hunter, who will remain with the district through June 30, when his contract expires. By starting in June, Mr. Bordick will be able to learn about the opportunities and challenges facing Chatham to ensure a smooth and stable transition. Mr. Bordick will initially be appointed Assistant to the Superintendent for June and then serve as Interim Superintendent beginning July 1. His one-year contract will pay him $135,000.
Dr. John Wapner, president of the Chatham School District Board of Education, explained the Board selected Mr. Bordick due to his tremendous experience as a Superintendent and his reputation for building excellent relationships with school faculty and staff as well as parents, students and other members of the community.
“We believe that we are lucky to have found Lee Bordick. He was a successful superintendent at Lansingburgh for more than 20 years. He led the Lansingburgh School District as it changed from a suburb of Troy to part of the city. He was able to bring the school community together by prioritizing allocations of district resources on the educational needs of the school district,” Dr. Wapner said.
The Board of Education believes the school district needs an interim Superintendent to provide stability and to deal with important issues before entering into what it hopes will be a long-term relationship with a new superintendent, Dr. Wapner explained.
The Board worked with James Baldwin, District Superintendent of Questar III BOCES, and Tim Kremer, Executive Director of the New York State School Board Association, to find an individual who had a proven record of success in a district that had gone through important changes.
“We agreed that we need a person who could lead the Chatham Central Schools as an excellent communicator, a person that inspired commitment to our district, and a person who could resolve differences among groups within our school district,” Dr. Wapner said. “We found Lee Bordick to be a person that we believe will be well received by the Chatham community. I fully believe he will help us deal meaningfully with the issues our school district faces.”
The district plans to start the search process for a new superintendent this summer and expects to have someone in place by July 2009. The district will involve the Chatham community as much as possible in the search process to ensure the next superintendent will have the qualifications and priorities that are important to the community.
Mr. Bordick started as Superintendent of the Lansingburgh School District in 1985. When he retired in 2007, he was the longest tenured superintendent in the Capital Region. During his 22 years as superintendent, he successfully shepherded many initiatives including increasing graduation rates to a record level for Regents diplomas and developing policies and procedures that promoted student excellence with more than 90 percent of graduates attending two- or four-year colleges.
Mr. Bordick had a 38-year career in education, starting as a science teacher. He later went on to serve as assistant principal at Jordan-Elbridge High School in central New York and principal of Catskill Middle School before joining Lansingburgh School District as an assistant superintendent in 1982.
For the last year, Mr. Bordick has assisted the Ichabod Crane Central School District and the Catskill Central School District, serving as an interim principal in each district.
Mr. Bordick earned a B.S. from the University of Scranton, PA. and an M.S. and C.A.S. in Educational Administration from SUNY Oswego.
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