F.C. School Superintendent Announces Her Retirement

After 34 years in the City of Falls Church School System, Mary Ellen Shaw announced Tuesday that she will be stepping down this summer at its superintendent.

With the exception of one year in West Virginia, Shaw has spent her entire career with the City of Falls Church schools. Coming from a graduate program at the University of Ohio, she was recruited for a first grade teaching job at the Mt. Daniel Elementary School in 1970. In 1977, she became the principal at Mt. Daniel for 13 years and moved to the schools' administrative offices as an assistant superintendent in 1990.

She served as an interim principal at the George Mason Middle School in 1992, became the interim superintendent twice in the 1990s, following the departure of Dr. Stuart Robertson in 1995 and the departure of Dr. Patricia Dignan in 1997. She was selected to be the superintendent in the summer of 1997.

During her seven-year tenure, the longest of anyone since Dr. Warren Pace's 20 years of service concluded in 1991, she met the many challenges attending a 50% growth in enrollment in the Falls Church schools, despite decreased state funding.

She oversaw school renovations at Mt. Daniel in the 1970s and at the middle and high school in 1992. She led the location search and negotiation of an innovative public-private partnership for the construction of a new middle school the last two years while maintaining the excellence and reputation of the Falls Church schools as a premier small public school system.

In 1989, she received the Washington Post Distinguished Educational Leadership Award.

Shaw will allow her four year contract to expire this summer, despite arduous efforts by and incentives from the School Board to renew it, noted School Board chair Ruth Brock. Brock was present with Shaw at a conference with the News-Press to break the news Tuesday in the school board offices.

Shaw told the News-Press she was determined to stay on through the passage of the bond referendum last November to construct a new middle school. The overwhelming margin by which that referendum passed, she said, will make it easier for the School Board to find a quality replacement, since it was explicit evidence of strong community support for the schools.

She said she wanted to leave before the new school's construction is complete, since it will take awhile for a new superintendent to prepare for a wide range of new issues the opening of the school will create.

"We have reached a fork in the road, but the road is long and is not going to be finished with this project," she said. "There remains much unfinished business with the impending reorganization of all the schools resulting from putting the eighth grade in the high school."

Brock told the News-Press that the School Board as a whole will direct the search for a new superintendent. "We will provide lots of opportunities to hear from the community about criteria for a new choice," she said. "We will seek professional help to manage the process and we hope to cast a wide net." She added that the current school board "is a good group to make this kind of decision."

She added, "These are going to be very difficult shoes to fill."

Shaw said she expects her retirement will mark a challenging transition. "Schools have consumed my life," she said. "I am not leaving the area and will be available to help the new school construction project."

But, she added, she looks forward to being in control of her own schedule and plans to travel. She also hopes to spend more time at her parents' 170-acre Christmas tree farm in Ohio and to do some teacher training and group facilitation.

"And when it snows," she smiled, "I'll be able to say, `Isn't that nice!'." (Having to get up at 4 a.m. during snows and to make tough decisions on whether or not to close the schools is one of the less-attractive demands of her job).

Shaw was asked if she enjoyed administrative work as much as being in the classroom. She said that, as a teacher at Mt. Daniel in the 1970s, there were opportunities to be involved in administrative decision-making, so that her transition to principal there was easy. But, she said, it was "hardest to leave being a principal, because it meant giving up direct contact with students and parents." As superintendent, the task is to work more with the community at large and political issues, she said.

A major step forward for the school system occurred in 1979 in the wake of a tumultuous controversy over which of the City's schools to close due to lagging enrollment then. The decision to close and tear down the Madison School was followed by a decision to consolidate the system.

Until that time, students through the sixth grade would attend one of three City schools – Mt. Daniel, Madison or Thomas Jefferson – based on what part of the City they lived in. This created funding and border disputes that divided the community.

It was resolved, and the entire community got behind the school system, when the decision was made that all the children in the community would attend the same schools, making Mt. Daniel for grades 1 and 2, Thomas Jefferson 3, 4 and 5, and George Mason Middle School 6, 7 and 8.

A similar reorganization challenge faces the schools when the new middle school is completed in 2005, Shaw noted.

On a personal note, Shaw said that her long career in the Falls Church schools is matched by her long marriage to her husband, and a cat that lasted 17 years. "I've even had the same hairdresser for 29 years," she quipped.

"I was encouraged to come to Falls Church in 1970," she said, "by someone who pointed out to me that it was a "lighthouse school district."

"It was, and is," she concluded. "I've never regretted my decision."